Deep Blue by Kat Martin Page B

You found the cannon! I can hardly wait to see it.”
    “Good morning, Professor,” Hope said, smiling.
    “Isn’t it, indeed? Looks like you brought them luck.”
    “I hope so.”
    “The cannon’s in the holding tank,” Conn said. “You can take a look at it now or we can load it onto the truck and you can wait till we get to the museum.”
    “Wait? What are you talking about? I’ve been waiting for this moment for the last twenty years! Come on—let’s go see what you’ve found.”
    They made their way back aboard the Conquest and the professor walked straight to the holding tank on the bow of the boat. He looked inside the tank and began to frown. “One of the smaller artillery pieces.”
    “We weighed her in at twelve hundred pounds. She’s seven-and-a-half feet long.”
    “A good-sized cannon will go three thousand, maybe forty-five hundred pounds.” He reached into the tank, measured the size of the bore with his fingers, ran them over the barrel. “Muzzle-loader. About three-inch caliber. Handled iron shot of a little less than three pounds.”
    He patted the gun as if he had found an old friend, then turned away from the tank. “The trouble is, she’s a wrought iron cannon.”
    The look on the professor’s face made Conn’s stomach tighten. “So is it off the Rosa? ”
    The old man shook his head. “All the cannons aboard the Rosa were bronze.”
    “All of them? Are you sure? Couldn’t there have been a few—”
    “According to the records from the shipyard where the Rosa was built, she carried thirty-eight tons of armament. She was the pride of the fleet, outfitted with the most modern munitions. Which meant her cannons were forged of bronze and not iron, as the older ships’ cannons were.”
    “Forty-two of them,” Hope said, “in various sizes. At least that’s what I read on the Internet. It never occurred to me there wouldn’t be iron ones as well.”
    The professor stared down at the cannon, looking older than he had when he had arrived. “I’m afraid the piece we have here came from a less important ship. Likely a slightly older merchant vessel. In their day, they were often ill-equipped.”
    “What other ship could possibly be down there?” Conn asked, his stomach feeling like a ten-pound cannonball sat at the bottom.
    “I’ll need to go back and recheck my research. But all along, I’ve been worried this might happen.”
    “Worried that what might happen?” Surely the old man hadn’t kept something important from them. Then again, he wanted the search. The man just might have.
    “If you remember, the Santa Ynez also sank during that terrible storm in 1605. It was believed she went down on the Serranilla Banks, just like her two sister ships. While I was tracking the Rosa, it occurred to me that perhaps both the Santa Ynez and the Rosa might have missed the banks and been blown toward Isla Tormenta .”
    For a moment, Conn couldn’t think of anything to say. They had found the wrong ship and the professor wasn’t all that surprised.
    “What was she carrying?” he asked, praying the ship was also filled with treasure.
    “I’m afraid the Santa Ynez was a nao, not a galleon. They were short, fat, rather cumbersome, square-sailed merchant ships. Sometimes they carried treasure, but this one was carrying medicines and dyes—things like spices, rare woods, and hides. Her most valuable cargo was tobacco, worth a small fortune in its day, but certainly nothing like gold or silver that can withstand the ravages of time. You might find a few of the passengers’ valuables. There were more than three hundred ill-fated souls aboard.”
    The wrong ship! Conn could almost see Brad Talbot’s eyes popping out when he heard the news. Conn wished he didn’t have to ask the next question.
    “You said the Rosa was the last ship in the line. That means she would have been sailing behind the Santa Ynez. If that’s the case, where do you think the Rosa went down?”
    The