“What came out of the sandbank?” I asked, looking down into the trench.

Kenneth pointed into a wet gully the incoming surf had carved out.

Lying in the gray sludge was a five-foot cylinder of pitted metal, crusted thick with orange rust and shells.

“World War II practice bomb casing,” Kenneth said.

“Looks like a five-hundred-pound general-purpose shell.”

I ducked under the orange tape and went down on one knee in the wet sand, ignoring the damp cold seeping into my work pants.

I took a brass scraper out of my pocket and cleared a patch of barnacles near the nose cone assembly.