Wealth of the Egypt

Working all summer with big depth bombs and small depth bombs, grim Italian divers have blown and bubbled their way slowly nearer to a bullion treasure of $5,000,000 sunk off the west coast of France in the strong room of the foundered British liner Egypt (TIME, Sept. 8, 1930 et seq.). Last week with the treasure almost grasped, the Italian diver ship Artiglio II ran out of wine & spaghetti, promptly put back to the harbor of Brest. There, while she took on cases of spaghetti and 600 litres of the scorching red wine that Italian seamen like, her divers talked, showed a splendid shilling.

They said they have blasted down to actual contact with the Egypt's strong room wall. To burst it may be possible before winter storms set in. The splendid shilling (an ordinary English coin dated 1918) is the first "treasure," the first bit of precious metal brought up from the Egypt after more than a year of diving.

"We found this shilling," said a proud

Artiglio II seaman, "in some mud the divers sent up from the Egypt's galley-- cursed smelly mud!" Other "finds" washed by nose-holding sailors from the pantry mud: P: Brass disk stamped "P. & O." (the Egypt was a Peninsular & Orient liner). P: Rusty tube of a onetime shaving stick. P: Portion of an English Bible. "The rest of this Bible," conjectured the diver who sent the mud up, "had been gnawed away, probably by rats before the Egypt sank." Soon primed last week with wine, spaghetti and fresh bombs, Artiglio II resumed from Brest her quest.

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