Chapter 35 - 13: Supplies in the Bottom of the Hold (Part 2)
On the first night aboard the ship, Chen Zhou intended to rest in the first mate’s room; he was very satisfied with the environment and the hammock there.
However, before it was dark, taking advantage of the dusk before nightfall, he planned to do some more work.
It’s not that he was particularly diligent, just that he knew delayed work wouldn’t disappear—it would only pile up for tomorrow, doubling the burden.
If he couldn’t solve this extra burden, the work would accumulate more and more until it overwhelmed him and entirely messed up the situation.
Besides, when the rain was pouring earlier, a lot of water would have flooded the cabin, and if not cleaned in time, it would ruin the food, soak the wood and gunpowder; regretting then would be too late.
Having eaten and drunk enough and having seen the reward for succeeding in challenges in advance, encouraged by the gold coins, Chen Zhou felt his physical and mental state reached a peak, filled with energy throughout.
After spending some time in the pump room working the hand pump and enduring the stink while dumping the waste water into the sea, Chen Zhou noticed a large amount of rainwater pooled on the mid-cabin floor.
Without tools like brooms and dustpans that would make water sweeping easier, Chen Zhou had to use his ingenuity, using a short plank to push the water towards the lower bow area, then scooping it into buckets with a large iron ladle to clean it out.
This repeated work was indeed inefficient.
But the accumulated water on the ship was ultimately limited, gradually decreasing bit by bit, leaving only a thin layer that was no longer hazardous.
After a brief rest, Chen Zhou headed to the fore cabin he had never set foot in before.
This space was even narrower than the lower cargo hold, with nothing but a half-buried winch drum beneath the deck, and some large barrels of biscuits, alcohol, boxes of sugar and flour, and compressed tea dregs and salt scattered around.
The sailors seemed like they had been assimilated by the ship’s roaches and lice, setting up their bunks in every corner here.
Some lay grimy dark blankets flat in the corridor, some placed two planks across rum barrels to sleep in mid-air, or squeezed between crates, all sorts of formations, strange and diverse.
In short, there’s nothing you could imagine that they couldn’t do.
As for their luggage, it was just some hole-covered patched ragged clothes and dirty stinking shoes.
Adhering to the principle of "thieves never return empty-handed," Chen Zhou lifted the sailors’ blankets and quilts, trying to find unexpected treasures.
𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚
But most of the time, he only disturbed a nest of hiding roaches or bedbugs, occasionally finding a few blackened mushrooms, wide-mouthed fish with eyes glinting strangely, and twisted body hair, enlarging his psychological shadow area.
"No wonder they risk their lives enduring the stench to become sailors, turns out they’re all penniless, without much to gain."
He flipped over another mattress, almost vomiting at the sight of worm-riddled black bread underneath.
Just as he planned to abandon this "treasure hunt," his gaze caught the corridor’s end, seeing only four or five bunks left, ultimately deciding to press on.
"Might as well turn them over, who knows, something good might come up; anyway, it’s convenient."
So, with a tinge of hope, Chen Zhou continued checking the supplies in barrels and boxes as he moved forward.
Under the floorboards of the nearest bunk to the corridor’s end, he found a small jar full of grease.
The grease in the jar looked just like the oily scraps from a kitchen meat-curing barrel, with slippery contents bearing fingernail marks and smudges of black grime, making Chen Zhou feel nauseous.
In fact, the grease’s use wasn’t as outrageous as he imagined—it wasn’t edible but used by sailors for hand protection.
Frequently exposed to sea winds and blazing sun, while engaging in heavy tasks of handling cables and winches, the lower-class sailors’ skin was badly damaged, prompting the birth of this primitive hand cream.
Nonetheless, Chen Zhou was destined to never understand this 17th-century sailors’ unique bitterness.
After unscrewing the jar to see what was inside, he discarded the greasy jar treasured by the sailors and continued searching to the last bunk.
The owner of this bunk seemed very privacy-conscious, placing blankets behind two side-by-side crates, forming an independent space against the wall, unlike the other sailors who slept out in the open.
Due to space constraints, rummaging through this bunk required some effort, either climbing over the one-meter-high crates or moving them aside.
Due to a tight coat, Chen Zhou couldn’t stretch his legs, so opted for the latter.
The crate had no bottom gap and was particularly heavy after getting wet; Chen Zhou had to use all his strength to shift it out.
Upon turning over the bedding, beneath the thin quilt lay a half-eaten white bread and a silver spoon, matching the pattern of the first mate’s room tableware.
"Goodness, no wonder it was hidden so secretly—there was indeed something fishy."
While lamenting the dishonesty of these fellows, Chen Zhou pocketed the silver spoon.
"I suppose this is like a guaranteed prize in a draw; at least my effort wasn’t in vain."
While muttering, Chen Zhou pushed open the door to the lower bow cabin, descending the sloping stairs into the darkness below deck.
As written in the original story, the ship, driven by the storm, touched a reef with its head, leading to cracks in the upper wall of the lower cabin, and those light-penetrating fissures were strikingly visible in the dark surroundings.