that Captain Phips's divers would be unable to penetrate 

 it? I doubted it. In nearly five hundred years the anchor of 

 Columbus's time had been covered with only an inch and 

 a quarter of calcerous growth. Under the most salutary 

 conditions it was doubtful if any more coral than that 

 could have been produced from the time the galleon 

 sank until Phips attempted to reclaim its cargo within the 

 same century. 



There was a striking irregularity in this reef directly 

 beneath me. The more or less sohd coral rock which 

 formed the body of the reef was transfigured by burgeon- 

 ing coral growths of many types, these in turn masquer- 

 ading behind creeping sponge formations in wonderful 

 reds and yellows, and lush Gorgonias and sea fans. The 

 whole colorful pattern stood forth against a background 

 of deep, rich yellow-brown, the underwater look of the 

 minute coral animals which, crowding the surface of the 

 dead rock, reach hungry mouths into the waters around 

 them. 



In my mind I tried to compare these Silver shoal reefs 

 with those I had become familiar with along the Florida 

 keys and in sections of the Bahama islands. I concluded 

 that in these crystal-clear ocean waters, a more prolific 

 growth had produced a junglelike entanglement of corals 

 of much greater size, as each separate colony of polyps 

 struggled toward the sunlit surface waters. 



The result was these steep, distorted, grotesquely 

 beautiful rock castles which thrust almost vertically up- 

 ward from the ocean floor, creating there on the white 

 sand bottom such topheavy pinnacles it was hard to be- 

 lieve the narrow bases could support the riotous top struc- 

 tures. 



It is the nature of coral to grow upon itself, the live 

 polyps fastening themselves to the deserted shells of 



ZI2 Sea Diver 



