Chapter 36 - 13: Supplies in the Ship’s Hold (Part 3)
Fortunately, after running aground, most of the bow was above water, preventing seawater from seeping into the cabin. There were no large waves to widen the damage to the hull, or the ship would have fallen apart long ago.
Nevertheless, the bilge at the bow was still filled with water. As Chen Zhou stepped down the stairs, he felt his boot tops getting submerged, quickly stepping back to higher ground.
After taking a wooden stick to measure the water depth, he found that the water at the entrance of the room was deep enough to cover the shin. Because the bow tilted downward, the further in, the deeper the water got. Conservatively, the water lodged in the portion of the ship submerged in the seabed was at least over a meter deep.
More importantly, the accumulated water obscured his vision, making it impossible to discern if there were any continuous water seepage points beneath.
If seawater kept pouring in, even constantly scooping it out with buckets wouldn’t improve the situation. The best option was to leave it alone and pretend the room didn’t exist.
But Chen Zhou didn’t want to give up easily; he hoped to understand more of the situation.
Opening the door leading to the lower bow compartment as wide as possible, Chen Zhou turned his body to avoid blocking the light shining into the room, trying hard to discern the interior setup.
He noticed several wooden racks placed against the walls on both sides of the compartment.
The style of the wooden racks was the same as those in the kitchen, divided into four tiers. The two bottom tiers were half-submerged in water, and he could faintly see the wooden barrels on the third tier with a quarter of their height exposed. The sacks at the topmost tier were high enough to avoid damage.
These sacks were lined up from one side of the room to the other, numbering more than thirty. Even if most were soaked by the seawater, part of them was still salvageable and useful.
For supplies, Chen Zhou always believed the more, the better. As long as there was hope of salvage, he would do his utmost.
Silently noting that there were sacks in the fore compartment that could be moved, he exited the room, planning to get an oil lamp from the kitchen and check how the water was heating.
After having been extinguished for a while, there was still residual warmth under the stove.
The big dog snored lazily, motionless, until Chen Zhou used the remaining embers in the charcoal to light the oil lamp. It then leisurely got up, shook its fur, and stretched lazily.
Ignoring the big dog’s attempt to cozy up to him, Chen Zhou lifted the iron lid. Steam immediately surged out, hot and obscuring his vision, making it impossible to see the water inside for the moment.
Helplessly, Chen Zhou could only put down the lid, waiting for the steam to dissipate. Taking advantage of this idle time, he left the kitchen with the lamp to inspect the cargo holds on both sides.
The big dog, seeing this, wagged its tail energetically, eagerly following behind him.
The packaging of the resources in the cargo hold was carelessly done, extremely rudimentary.
The box frames were thin, the bag openings were loose, and a gentle tug would spill the contents everywhere.
Checking them one by one, there were various shell jewelry, rudimentary telescopes, ceramic figurines, glass beads, glassware, iron machetes, scissors, and axes.
Their costs were low, and the workmanship was crude.
The machete handles were only fixed with two rivets and smeared with a bit of glue, misaligning upon minor collision.
The axe heads were made from cast iron, highly hard but with nearly no malleability, poor in toughness, and would chip if they struck something hard.
The glass beads were filled with bubbles, the same with the glassware.
The ceramic figurines’ painting was so poor they would turn a perfectly fine doll into an Annabelle, sure to give the native kids nightmares if played with at night.
The single-tube telescopes containing two loose lenses were an insult to intelligence, only magnifying objects a dozen meters away at most, utterly impractical, even inferior to the toy telescopes Chen Zhou bought in his childhood.
In a nutshell, they were all inferior goods used to deceive natives into bloody and sordid human trafficking, with limited durability, breaking after only a few days.