A pull of less than an hour brought us to the spot where Bedloe declared that the treasure of the Santa Fè lay hid. The shoal, to the southward extremity, where we now anchored the boats, split into two long branches or arms, having deep and sheltered water between them. It was on the weathermost or eastern of these banks, among spits of sand and jags of rock, that the remains of the ill-fated ship lay. Making fast a grapnel to a point of coral, we allowed the boats, under the pilot’s direction, to drift five or six fathoms to leeward, until they floated in a rather deep channel, or hole, well sheltered by the coral reefs from the motion of the sea. ‘Now then,’ quoth Bedloe, ‘look beneath you.’ Immediately, we were all bending over the gunwales of launch and shallop, and presently, shading off the light with one hand, we saw, some five fathoms down, wavering and quivering through the clear cold water, the mouldering form of a ship of size. There lay the once graceful hull, bulged and split by the rocks, the bows broken off altogether, the quarter and stern firmly jammed in a crevice of the reef, and so uninjured that we could distinguish the quarter galleries and the outlines of the sculptured figures and medallions and carving. The deck had been partially broken up, and two or three cannon lay half upon the bulwarks, half upon the rocks. All three masts had been broken off close by the board, and their stumps, like the rest of the wreck, were encrusted with masses of shell-fish, and heaped, here and there, with wavy bunches of slimy sea-weed. Fish of many sizes and forms glided tranquilly between us and the foundered ship, and once or twice we saw a great flat ray rise up from the dark recesses of the hold, and glide like a plate of burnished copper along the deck. ‘There, gentlemen,’ says Paul Bedloe, ‘you see I have dealt fairly by you. You look upon the Santa Fè, which, more than one hundred and sixty years ago, set sail from Porto Bello for Old Spain.’ So, rising up, we gave a great shout, which, in a minute, we heard echoed by our comrades, whom we had left behind in the Will-o’-the-Wisp. ‘Will Thistle,’ says the captain, ‘bring up the schooner directly, and for heaven’s sake, take care of her bottom against the reefs; we may have a freight of price to carry home in it.’