From Robinson Crusoe

Chapter 8 Heavy Rain
The weather at sea is like a woman's face, changing at any time.

Not long ago, it was a sunny day with clear blue sky, but in the blink of an eye, it was covered with dark clouds and it looked like a sudden rain was about to come.

The sea breeze blew weakly, failing to disperse the thick clouds; it only made the air even heavier, as if it could squeeze out water.

Walking out of the corridor and seeing the gloomy sky, Chen Zhou could hardly believe his eyes.

This is not surprising. After all, he has almost never left the inland from birth to work, and has never experienced the changeable weather in coastal areas.

Before leaving Robinson's room, he was thinking about whether he should take out the wet bedding and clothes to dry them in the sunny weather. Now, not only could he not hang the clothes, but he also had a lot of new work to do.

Worried that the rain would come soon, Chen Zhou hurriedly took down the hourglass and turned it upside down on the table in Robinson's room. Then he trotted back to the deck and began to pack up things that were afraid of getting wet in the rain.

In a corner of the middle of the ship were several large wooden barrels with open lids, filled with bundles of ropes and rolls of canvas.

While moving them, Chen Zhou discovered that there was some water at the bottom of the barrels, which he thought must have been caused by yesterday's storm.

So he took out the soaked ropes and canvas from the bucket, poured out the accumulated water, and then moved them into the cabin to avoid the rain.

Passing by the middle of the boat, he casually closed the lid of the wooden barrel containing gambling equipment, and looked down to see the ventilation grille with holes. Chen Zhou had to take out the canvas again, hurriedly covered the ventilation board with it, and pressed a few wooden boards on the canvas to try to prevent rainwater from flowing into the cabin through the holes.

The sound of leather boots stepping on the deck never stopped. While moving the wooden barrels, Chen Zhou felt his heels were rubbed and hurt. He knew it was because he was not wearing socks, but he didn't care.

It was not until he put down the last piece of wood and sat on the ground panting that Chen Zhou had time to take off his shoes and check the situation.

His tender feet were as pampered as he was. He had seldom worked in the fields for more than 20 years, and in recent years he had even walked only a few times, so he had never developed calluses.

Before this, the feet had been wearing soft and comfortable sports shoes. After all this frequent running, the skin on the heels was actually rubbed off, and now it was bleeding slowly with bursts of stinging pain.

Although Chen Zhou had never suffered any hardship, he had been influenced by his parents and elders since he was a child and knew that the heavy physical labor they did was a thousand times more tiring and difficult than his.

Seeing the injuries, he just frowned slightly, then reached out and tore off the abraded skin, went back to Robinson's room barefoot, got a pair of socks and put them on, then put on his shoes again while enduring the pain.

Just at this moment, he noticed that the fine sand in the upper sand bucket of the hourglass had flowed out and completely flowed into the lower sand bucket.

Chen Zhou roughly estimated that a complete sand replacement process in the hourglass takes about half an hour.

Due to unexpected conditions such as bottle wall wear and blockage by coarse gravel, this time may fluctuate by a few minutes.

Compared with mechanical watches of the same period, the accuracy of the hourglass was obviously very backward, but it was sufficient for sailors to take turns to keep watch.

It may come in handy in future situations where simple timing is needed.

After sitting on the bed and resting for a while, Chen Zhou felt the hunger gradually growing in his stomach. He took out a few pieces of Robinson's private candied fruits to replenish his energy, and then continued to work.

He took all the saws, needles, awls and other tools from the ship's doctor's room to Robinson's room and placed them neatly in a wooden box. He also wrapped the hourglass with the sheepskin chart and torn fishing net on the table and put it in the same box with the equally fragile glass lantern.

Chen Zhou then sorted out the clothes of the ship's doctor, the carpenter, and Robinson and stored them in two boxes. The clean clothes were put into the large box in the carpenter's room, and the dirty clothes were stuffed into the small box.

While sorting out clothes and tools, Chen Zhou did not forget to continue recording the quantity of these supplies on parchment.

To be on the safe side, he also used a chisel to carve symbols on the lid of each box to distinguish the materials inside each box. For some tool boxes that are prone to rust when exposed to water, they are wrapped with thick canvas to prevent damage caused by water.

These supply boxes start with letters of the alphabet: tools are G, resources are Z, food is S, weapons are W, clothing is F, and property is C.

A capital letter is followed by a number, for example G1 means tool storage box number one.

Symbol marking adds a work step, which seems cumbersome and redundant, but in the long run, it is beneficial to the integration and management of materials.

This is a rule of thumb.

Because as he grows older, Chen Zhou increasingly feels that his memory is like a very patient liar.

When it is young, it disguises itself as honest and reliable to numb people's hearts. After successfully gaining trust, it can't wait to reveal its true colors and suddenly trip people up at the most unexpected moment, causing them to fall.

If you blindly place your hope on your memory and accidentally leave a box of tools behind, it will cause big trouble in future construction.

In order to solve this hidden danger, let alone just carving two lines of symbols, it would be worth it even if it took ten times more effort.

The feather pen made a rustling sound as it fell on the paper, and the occasional pain in his heel reminded Chen Zhou of the passage of time.

By the time I finished organizing and recording the supplies, the room was already very dark.

I stretched myself, opened the porthole and looked out. The sea in the distance had become foggy, as if it had been blurred with a layer of image blur effect.

The electric python shuttled through the clouds, occasionally hitting the sea surface. Amid the muffled thunder, a gust of wind suddenly rushed into the house with the smell of rain, rolling up the papers covered with words on the table, and startled Chen Zhou so much that he hurried to pick them up.

Just as he bent over and pressed the parchment, he suddenly felt a pain in his lower abdomen, followed by an uncontrollable flow of warm current from his buttocks. Fortunately, Chen Zhou reacted in time and prevented it from spurting out.

"Sigh~"

After closing the window and pressing the paper on the table, Chen Zhou couldn't help but take a breath, randomly took out two pieces of torn canvas and held them in his palms, pushed open the door and ran towards the bow.

He had a bad feeling when he was eating raw fish sashimi in the morning, and sure enough, he had diarrhea.

Squatting on the protruding toilet at the bow, the sea breeze passed through my body, making me feel so cool that goose bumps appeared on my skin.

Looking at the beach with surging tide, Chen Zhou had nothing to do and his thoughts were flying.

It's hard not to feel disgusted when you think that the sea water you're swimming in probably contains the sailors' excrement.

But since he had already swum, he could only comfort himself this way - "Even if there is no human feces and urine, there is still excrement from fish, shrimps and crabs. We are all part of the earth, so no one should look down on anyone else."

"Besides, there is so much water in the sea, so adding some seasoning is normal and it doesn't matter."

Then he thought of the sudden diarrhea.

To be honest, he didn't recognize any of the fish he ate, just because he was forced to do so and because he was too brave, he just swallowed them down in a fit of anger.

The pain in his abdomen has not subsided yet, and Chen Zhou is really scared.

He was worried that the dead fish might be mixed with some highly poisonous species like the herb Gelsemium elegans, which would cause him to be torn to pieces and bleed to death in a matter of moments.

Thinking of this, Chen Zhou felt a little aggrieved.

A tall and strong man, a man who can stand tall and proud, can accept death in an earthquake or storm, or at the hands of wild beasts or cannibalistic natives. But if he is poisoned to death because of eating fish carelessly less than two days into the challenge, wouldn't that be too unlucky and too depressing?

And to take a step back, it is not impossible to die from eating fish poisoning, but at least it has to be the best and most delicious fish like puffer fish. Then when you go to the underworld and meet the King of Hell, you can confidently say "I would risk my life to eat puffer fish", and be known as a glutton.

You can't just say, "I was brave enough to eat any fish I didn't recognize, but I ended up dying of diarrhea." Such a weird thing would be worthy of making the headlines even in modern society.

People can't help but let their minds wander when they're squatting on the toilet, and Chen Zhou happens to have a very divergent mind and his thoughts are jumping around.

He uncontrollably recalled the details before and after participating in the challenge and arriving on the isolated island, and simulated the "marquee" before his death.

Just as he was about to imagine what his body would look like after death, and whether the disappearance of a young and strong man like him in the real world would cause a sensation, Chen Zhou suddenly found that the pain in his abdomen had disappeared.

Like many brief abdominal pains caused by gastrointestinal discomfort, this was just a common diarrhea, not food poisoning, nor an incurable difficult disease.

"It turned out to be a false alarm..."

After being worried for a long time, Chen Zhou finally breathed a sigh of relief.

After wiping my butt with the torn canvas, before I had time to feel the friction of the rough cloth on my buttocks, sparse raindrops fell from the sky.

In just a few breaths, the rain turned from dots into lines, crackling and covering the entire sailboat.

The accumulated water on the deck gathered into a small stream at a speed visible to the naked eye, flowing from the stern to the bow.

Pulling up his trousers, Chen Zhou hurried back to the stern building.

Walking through the dense rain, it only took a few dozen steps before the thin cotton underwear was completely soaked by the rain.

Every inch of my skin was pressed against the wet fabric, which felt sticky and slightly cool.

As I was passing through the corridor, a gust of wind happened to blow through.

The wind blew on Chen Zhou, causing him to sneeze uncontrollably. He felt a chill creeping into his bones, and he shivered with cold.

"Damn it, if you're unlucky, even drinking cold water will get your teeth stuck."

Cursing his bad luck, Chen Zhou took off his clothes as he walked towards Robinson's room.

The rain and cold wind were quickly taking away the temperature from his body. If this continued, he would inevitably catch a cold.

The raft had not yet been built, and the supplies had not yet been sorted.

The countdown for the storm to destroy the ship was ticking away every second, and it would not stop for a moment because of his illness. At this critical juncture, he could not fall down no matter what.

After throwing away his wet underwear, wiping off the remaining rain on his body with dry clothes, and wrapping himself in a thick coat with a fur collar, Chen Zhou still didn't feel warm.

Although he was clearly at the subtropical seaside, he felt as if he had returned to his hometown in late autumn. Even though he was huddled in his coat, he was still shivering from the cold.

His mind was still clear, and Chen Zhou quickly figured out the key to the problem.

On the one hand, the rain came so suddenly that the cool breeze met the cold rain, and the body temperature was robbed by this group of "robbers", making it impossible to return to normal levels in a short period of time.

On the other hand, he had just suffered from diarrhea and his immunity was at a low point. His stomach and intestines were empty and there was no food in his stomach to generate calories. It was really difficult for him to rely solely on burning his meager fat reserves.

To get rid of this situation, it is best to warm yourself by the fire, eat a hot meal, drink a cup of hot water, and then follow the traditional remedy of your hometown, cover yourself with a quilt and take a nap. When you sweat, the disease will be cured.

I opened the window and glanced at the sky. Although it was very dark, visibility was not a problem.

Before it gets dark, Chen Zhou plans to go to the kitchen to light a fire and cook something to eat. While warming himself up, he can also learn about the specific situation of the ship's food reserves and fresh water resources.

Fortunately, the leather boots are waterproof and the instep is still dry, saving the time of looking for new shoes.

Wearing a wide-brimmed hat to keep out the rain, he rushed out of the corridor and quickly walked up the stairs leading to the cabin on the side of the ship. After a while of getting used to the dimmer light in the lower cabin, Chen Zhou found the chimney in the approximate direction according to his memory.

The lattice panels above the head for ventilation and lighting were covered tightly, and the cabin was only illuminated by small round windows on both sides. Objects could be seen where there was light, but where there was no light, it was pitch black, as if some unknown demon was lurking there.

Chen Zhou opened his eyes wide, hoping that his pupils could collect more light like a cat's so that he could see more clearly.

The interior of the cabin was a little messy, with all the guns leaning towards the bow, arranged crookedly in a row, and some lying sideways on the ground.

The large wooden barrels that were originally neatly stacked together were rolling all over the place.

The lower cabin was not very spacious to begin with, and was made even narrower by the cannons and barrels on both sides.

Unfortunately, two gunpowder barrels lay on the path leading to the chimney.

Chen Zhou was wearing Robinson Crusoe's coat, which didn't fit him well and made it difficult for him to move. The buttons on the hem also squeezed his thighs, so he couldn't step over the two large wooden barrels. He had to lift up the gunpowder barrels with great effort, move them aside, and place them against the wall to make way.

When approaching an independent room near the wall, Chen Zhou suddenly sniffed and smelled a foul odor.

Going further, he found the source of the stench.

It came from a small room against the wall in the middle of the ship. The door was closed tightly, and the smell was squeezed out from the gap in the door. It was a bit like the smell of a rotting corpse, with a faint smell of rust and blood.

The sound of rain had not stopped yet, and in the dark and gloomy environment, a strange smell shook Chen Zhou's mind.

He tried to suppress his thoughts that were drifting towards horror stories, and convinced himself that there was no danger on the ship and no wild animals were imprisoned.

But in this kind of atmosphere, who can truly control the fear and anxiety deep in their heart?
Chen Zhou was well aware that the book never mentioned that Robinson encountered any danger on the ship.

But from another perspective, are there really two things in the world that are exactly the same?

Is it reliable to bet your life on trusting the description in the original work?
If there really were wild beasts or cannibalistic natives who secretly swam onto the boat when the sea was calm in the early morning and attacked him from hiding in the room, he would have no chance of survival as he was unarmed.

To be on the safe side, Chen Zhou quietly left the cabin and returned to the carpenter's room to get the crossbow.

After pulling the string and loading the crossbow, he realized that he was still missing a melee weapon.

So Chen Zhou fastened Robinson's belt again, chose a convenient position, and hung the rapier diagonally on his waist, so that he could quickly pull it out to meet the enemy after the crossbow arrows were shot empty.

These two heavy weapons increased Chen Zhou's confidence.

He crouched all the way and tiptoed back to the lower cabin.

Chen Zhou held the crossbow in his right hand and pretended to aim, with his left hand on the trigger, ready to shoot at any time. He slowly came to the door of the smelly house like the Japanese invaders entering the village.

　Thanks to the excellent old bookworm for his hard work in giving the reward.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)