Zhang Heng returned to the captain's cabin on the Jackdaw and wiped the rain off his head with a towel, while Annie also changed her clothes neatly on the other side.
Zhang Heng poured a glass of rum for the red-haired girl to warm her body, and then he drank a glass himself. This kind of wine is considered a standard drink for sailors, but the taste is not very good, even though it is sugar cane. It's made from juice, but it's a little bitter, and it's far less tasty than wine and brandy, but it's cheaper and has a longer shelf life than fresh water.
Generally, the bottled water on the ship will become unpleasant to drink after a month, and various plankton will breed in it. However, rum can last for a year or two and is a must-have on the ship.
After drinking a cup, Zhang Heng's stomach immediately felt warm, and at this moment there was a knock on the door.
Billy walked in with a somewhat embarrassed young man.
"This is Mr. Vincent," the helmsman gave a brief introduction. "I asked all the crew members on the ship to read the notebook you gave me. We were lucky. Mr. Vincent happened to know the man above. Word."
Zhang Heng also recognized the other party. He was the ship's doctor who had just boarded the ship this time. He was personally recruited by Billy. However, he seemed to prefer botany. On the way to the ship for research, he was hijacked by a group of pirates and was forced to become the other party. A year later, the pirate group disbanded and merged into another pirate group. Vincent regained his freedom, but because he was afraid that his pirate experience would be revealed, he had to stay on the island.
He lived next door to Billy, and usually made money by keeping accounts for places like pubs and theaters. After Billy's persuasion, he finally decided to go to sea again with the Jackdaw.
"This is a cargo list, but it is written in Dutch. It records the cargo carried by a ship on each voyage. They are all very common things, such as cotton, woolen cloth, or wood." The young man The ship's doctor was talking to the captain for the first time and seemed a little nervous. Worried that Zhang Heng would not believe him, he explained, "My father is Scottish, but my mother is Dutch. I lived in the Netherlands for a while when I was a child, so I will also Some Dutch.
"What about these?" Zhang Heng also gave Vincent the other two notebooks.
Anne was about to leave, but she stopped at this time. She was very curious about the mysteriously missing crew members on the ship and wanted to know what happened to them.
The young ship's doctor took the notes, opened one of them, read two pages and said with some uncertainty, "This should be... a collection of poems."
"A collection of poems?"
"Yes, and they are love poems." Vincent turned a few more pages, "Most of them are written to a woman named Betty, but the quality is not very good. This is the first time I have seen someone use storm to describe themselves. His lover, and most of the descriptions are... very explicit."
The young ship doctor blushed first after finishing speaking.
"Can you read one to us?"
"Oh, okay... ok, no problem." Vincent secretly glanced at Anne beside him. The red-haired girl had no reaction at all.
The young ship's doctor flipped through the pages and found one that looked good. He cleared his throat and said, "Betty, my love\I praise you\I adore you\You are the storm\My master\Your chest feels like it is bending Fruit of the branches\Your...well, your legs are like valleys flowing with honey\..." After reading this, Vincent's forehead also broke out with sweat, and he couldn't help but relax. He raised his head and asked Zhang Heng, "Should I continue reading?"
"Now that you've read this far..."
"Okay," the young ship doctor touched the hot ears and continued, "Wrap me with your body\whisper in my ear\let me fly\I love you so deeply\regardless "Everything is better than my own soul. I am willing to be with you for the rest of my life... and there will be no more." Vincent said, "If you like Dutch poetry, I can find much better ones than this."
After the young doctor finished speaking, he found that the three people in the room were looking at him, so he obediently picked up the third notebook and said after a while, "This one looks like a record of their supplies at various ports. There are port names, dates, and supply statistics.”
"So there's no captain's log in here?"
"I don't think I've ever seen anything like it." Vincent shook his head.
"Did you forget to take it?" Annie asked.
"It's unlikely. I've checked all the books in that room, including those that fell on the floor. Except for these three, there are no handwritten ones. They are all printed matter."
Zhang Heng asked the young ship doctor again, "Are the handwriting in these three notebooks the same?"
"There are two books that are almost the same. The cargo list and supply records are different. The love poems are different." Vincent flipped through it again and then confirmed, "Yes, these three notebooks should be written by two people."
Billy said, "The first two are usually the job of bookkeepers. Unfortunately, we can't find the captain's log and it's hard to know what happened on that ship."
As soon as he finished speaking, Vincent suddenly said, "Wait, there's something strange here."
The young ship's doctor still held the last supply record in his hand, with a look of confusion on his face, "I know these two ports. They are quite far apart. It took my brother and I almost a month to sail. Time, how could it be that the time between their two resupplies was less than fifteen days? The speed should be more than nine knots. Were there such fast cargo ships in that era? "
"Given the condition of the ship, it should be almost possible to sail at full speed with full sail." Billy said, "But in reality, this is simply impossible to achieve. The wind force was maintained at the same level for fifteen days. The probability of something happening without breaking the mast while still providing the maximum speed required for sailing is about the same as if a thousand gold coins fell right in front of you.”
"But it seems that the captain of that ship didn't think so."
Vincent pointed to the line above and recorded, "They only replenished the fresh water and food needed for about sixteen days of sailing at the first port, and the difference between the final sailing time and the last sailing time was only one and a half days."
"Ha, no wonder they had an accident in the end."
"But their supplies were still abundant when we boarded the ship. The ship was obviously not in trouble because of the captain's arrogance." Zhang Heng said, and then said to Billy, "I remember that there was Zhang Gengquan's navigation chart on the ship. Find it and let Vincent see if he can mark the ports it stopped at along the way and calculate its average speed, so we know whether his previous sailing time was an accident."
Xiao Dai Zhao said
Sorry, it’s just the first update today.
