As Sergeant Robert Shaftoe lies there with his face pressed against that chilly grid, taking a few deep breaths and trying to regain his nerve, a big wave rocks the boat back so hard that he’s afraid he’s going to fall backwards and plummet all the way to the submerged bow. The swill in the battery hold rolls downhill, gathering power and velocity as it falls, and batters the forward bulkhead of the hold with terrifying power; he can hear rivets giving way under the impact. As this happens, most of the battery hold is exposed to the beam of Bobby Shaftoe’s flashlight, all the way down to the bottom. And that is when he sees the splintered crates down there—very small crates, such as might be used to contain very heavy supplies. They have been busted open. Through the gaps in the wreckage, Shaftoe can see yellow bricks, once neatly stacked, now scattered. They look exactly like he would imagine gold bars. The only thing wrong with that theory is that there are way too many of them down there for them to be gold bars. It is like when he turned over rotten logs in Wisconsin and found thousands of identical insect eggs sown on the dark earth, glowing with promise.