It is the worst place Waterhouse has ever been. Like the corvette he has just left, it rises smoothly on each roller, but unlike the corvette it comes down with a crash on the rocks, nearly throwing him to the deck. It is like being sealed up in a garbage can that is being beaten with a sledgehammer. U-553 is about half full of a rich brew of cheap wine, diesel fuel, battery acid, and raw sewage. Because of the way she is pitched, this soup quickly gets deeper as you go forward, but it rolls aft in a drenching tsunami every time her midsection slams down on the rocks. Fortunately, Waterhouse is now far beyond nausea, in some kind of transcendent state where his mind has become even more divorced from his body than usual.