New Shun 1730

"Vladivostok is both far and near. Since you are a navy, you will go to sea in the future, so there will always be a chance to see you again."

"Don't worry. Although there are more tigers and wolves there, and the weather is colder, it is unlikely to starve to death. I have also fired a gun, and the tigers will be killed in the reclamation area first. That area can be used for farming. , there are also cows and horses, life will not be bad. "

Zhang Erbiao felt relieved now. Tigers and wolves, as long as they have guns, are indeed nothing to be afraid of.

Now that I have a wife, a large area of ​​wasteland, and cattle and horses to use, life is not going to be bad no matter how I think about it.

He still trusted Liu Yu.

The reason why he was worried was because he saw that scene when his eldest brother boarded the ship and left.

It's no different than transporting livestock.

The boat is so packed that if you want to go to the bow to defecate, you have to move over little by little. If you have diarrhea, you may not have enough time.

Now there are only four of them left in his family alive. Since his family can continue to live, he no longer has too much to worry about.

In the months after this conversation, Zhang Erbiao spent his time training with almost no end in sight.

It wasn't until June of the lunar calendar, when it was the hottest time, that several large Western ships appeared on the sea near Weihai.

There are many Western ghosts on Liugong Island. Zhang Erbiao has seen many of them, so he doesn't feel any discomfort.

He can actually tell which ones are Rakshasas and which ones are French.

Because Zhang Erbiao thinks that French people have very mean mouths.

When you meet someone, you will be called "stupid pig" or "silly donkey".

But I finally found out that these French people were here to deliver the ship, and they also unloaded a lot of muskets and cannons.

As soon as those Westerners arrived, the army in the camp next door began to practice ping-pong-pong.

Zhang Erbiao didn't know what happened in those army drills, but he knew that when the French left, they left behind two large ships, some cannons and guns, and more than 400 craftsmen.

Later, the two large ships were named Weihai and Penglai. Zhang Erbiao was selected as the first batch of sailors to board the ship because of his hard training, and was assigned to the Weihai.

The day we boarded the ship was July 7th, the Qiqiao Festival. This day is easy to remember.

The Weihai and Penglai are both big ships, at least in Zhang Erbiao's opinion, they are very, very big ships.

Before boarding the ship, Zhang Erbiao, like the other sailors, was transported to the river near Weihai and took a bath in a large wooden barrel.

Some lice medicine powder was sprinkled on his body, which made his skin ache.

After being tortured as if their whole bodies were being burned, each person was given a military uniform.

A pair of cotton shirt and trousers.

The trainee officers who boarded the ship were wearing military uniforms made of woolen material that made Zhang Erbiao covetous.

Envy was envy, but Zhang Erbiao knew that he would never become an officer.

Because he was illiterate and didn't know any other crafts, he could only become a first-class sailor at most.

There are clear hierarchies on the ship. A trainee officer is a trainee officer, and a sailor is a sailor. There is no crossing.

The Weihai ship he was assigned to had a quota of 160 people, but the first batch of people to board the ship was filled with 320 people, double the number.

There are 140 sailors like him, and the rest are all officer candidates.

When you meet, you are an officer. There are more officers than soldiers, and there are people everywhere.

There are four trainee captains alone.

The trainee captain Zhang Erbiao recognized Mr. Mi who took him in back then. He was a good man. The remaining three are all deputy trainee captains, and he doesn't recognize them.

The real captain was the Rakshasa named Bering, and there were twelve Frenchmen on board who would call each other a stupid pig or a stupid donkey.

Their boat spirit is a civet male cat who wanders around the boat all day long.

And now she is just a third-class sailor, earning one or two half of her pay a month.

If we can mention first-class sailors, there are two and a half.

On the day they boarded the ship on July 7, all the sailors who boarded the ship had a meal of dumplings.

What surprised Zhang Erbiao was that this dumpling was not filled with fish or meat. It was simply the most memorable day in the entire thirteen years of Taixing.

After eating dumplings, they were sent to the boat.

This was the first time that Zhang Erbiao saw the scene on this big ship. It was so densely packed with cables that he didn't even know what they were used for.

There are more than a dozen small swivel guns on the deck. I heard that they were used to straf the enemies on the opposite deck after the naval battle approached.

Only after the decks of the enemy ship have been cleared with the light swivel cannon can the ship be boarded and seized. If you capture a ship, you will receive dividends based on the price of the ship and the cargo on the ship.

Below the open deck is a fully accessible artillery warehouse, with nearly thirty cannons tied up with ropes.

This is his mission, Zuo Xian's trainee gunner.

However, I heard that Mr. Liu was very dissatisfied with these nine-pound cannons and was hoarding copper materials to prepare for the craftsmen who disembarked to cast some larger ones.

When he went to sleep at night, he was placed in a hammock. It was easy to imagine that there were nearly three hundred people crammed into the small cabin.

The smell of farts, smelly feet, snoring... they have long been accustomed to these, and they have already tried to sleep like this when they were on the shore.

Only the cabins of the trainee captains are more spacious, but not by much.

The toilet is on the bow of the boat, pulled directly into the sea. Because the ship sails with the wind, there is no need to worry about the "smell" spreading all the way to the entire ship.

On the bow of the French ship is a woman carved from wood, holding a spear in her hand. I don’t know where the woman is.

Of course, this was the only woman on the ship.

Many people gathered around to look at the chest of this wooden carved woman, giggling, pointing, or saying that it looked like a steamed bun, so big.

Given that there were no women on the ship, Zhang Erbiao knew that his salary would be paid monthly when docked, and if he was sailing outside, he would be paid as long as he docked. He could do whatever he wanted after landing, which was tacitly allowed.

After sleeping in such a narrow cabin for the first night, the next morning at dawn, the bell rang.

When the bell rang for the second time, everyone in the cabin had to get up.

Zhang Erbiao was only a third-class sailor, and the hammock he slept in was specially added. The moment the wake-up bell rang, he won the first lesson of life on the ship.

The old French sailor gestured and grumbled, and Zhang Erbiao followed the reserve officers to tie up his spare hammock according to the rules, and then carried it to the deck.

These spare hammocks should be tied into a large ball according to a special knotting method and tied to the side of the ship.

I heard from the reserve officers that this is to wait until the naval battle is close, to guard against the opponent's swivel guns, and to serve as a shelter.

In addition, if this thing falls into the sea, it can also float on the sea, and the person who falls into the water can hold this thing and may survive.

In the first three days, he basically learned this thing.

It was not until the fourth day that he completely learned how to tie the knots and tie them. After passing the tests one by one, he moved on to the next lesson.

Get up, tie the hammocks, and then squat on the first row of decks.

Each person was given a grinding stone the size of a brick, and buckets of sand were poured on the deck, and the deck was ground with grinding stones and sand.

It is said that when fighting, sand should be spread on the deck. Because fighting will cause death, death will cause bleeding, and bleeding will make the feet slippery, so sand should be spread.

There is a lot of sand on the French ship. I heard that if the French died at sea, they would bury them in the sand at the bottom of the ship, and then bury them after returning to land, so that they could rest in peace.

Zhang Erbiao thought this was a good idea.

However, Lord Liu did not allow it, and he had a quarrel with the French officers for this.

The French officers could not win the quarrel, so they had to change the rules on the Weihai: if someone died, they would be put in a bag, attached with a cannonball, and thrown directly to the bottom of the sea, and they were not allowed to bury people in the sand in the cabin.

The sailors, including Zhang Erbiao, were very unhappy about this matter, and finally they had to compromise.

A few barrels of glutinous rice and dates were loaded on the ship, and no one was allowed to eat them no matter how hungry they were.

After people died, they were put in bags, and like Qu Yuan's story of throwing himself into the river, some glutinous rice and dates were put in the bags, so that fish and shrimp would not eat the bodies and leave them intact.

When Zhang Erbiao knelt on the ground to wipe the deck, a large number of reserve officers squatted at the bow, watching the sun with a sextant.

After he finished wiping the deck, another group of people came to watch.

Every day at noon, when the officers were watching the sun, twenty or thirty people learned how to judge the moment of noon.

After wiping the deck for five days and making sure that everyone could wipe the deck, Zhang Erbiao realized that what he had learned was just what he had to do from getting up in the morning to having breakfast.

A long day had just begun.

From the day he boarded the ship, breakfast became very simple.

Five dates, a big bowl of oil tea paste, and a dried salted fish.

After breakfast, he began to learn to check the cannons.

There were several thousand kilograms of things, and the ship was so bumpy. If the ropes were not tied well and there were so many people, it would be normal to hit and kill ten or eight people.

A big guy weighing several thousand kilograms would be injured if it was touched, and would die if it was touched. Zhang Erbiao knew that this was related to whether he could survive, so he learned it very carefully.

After checking the ropes of the cannons, he had to pack the gunpowder with the members of the gun crew.

Gunpowder was not placed next to the cannon, but in a special gunpowder depot. After it was packaged, it was passed back and forth by special short soldiers.

These short sailors were nicknamed "gunpowder monkeys". When fighting, they had to run back and forth with gunpowder in the smoke and the shaking of the distance.

There was a thick cotton felt on the door of the gunpowder depot, and a large bucket next to it. The first thing to do when fighting was to pour water on the cotton felt.

As a left-hand gunner, Zhang Erbiao had to learn how to fire a cannon, as well as how to use a musket and a grenade.

Once the opponent's mast or rudder was damaged, a group of sailors from the left or right string would be drawn to organize a commando to board and seize the ship.

As for how to operate a cannon, you just need to learn to listen to the officer's orders, know what kind of wedge to add, and how to aim roughly.

From boarding the ship on July 7 to getting off the ship for the first time in early October, in just three months, Zhang Erbiao learned several things.

In the words of the trainee captains, he finally looked like a sailor.

Including:

He learned to shout loudly when speaking. Because he was always firing cannons, he couldn't hear clearly if he spoke softly. If he spoke softly, he was not qualified to board the warship.

He learned to poop skillfully, holding the rope with one hand, facing the sea with his buttocks and not falling off even if the ship swayed. Because there were too few toilets, everyone had to learn to grab the rope and stick their buttocks out to relieve themselves when someone else was using the toilet.

I learned to drink, and I can walk on the shaking deck after drinking. Because water will turn green after being stored for a period of time, if you want to avoid diarrhea and death, you have to mix white wine in it. Moreover, life on the ship is really boring. Only a glass of wine a day is the happiest moment for sailors. After drinking, this boring life like prison always has a kind of dizzy pleasure.

I learned to pull the rope and masturbate to the wooden statue of a woman on the bow. Because if I don’t do this, in the narrow cabin, I will always think about those sailors who look more beautiful, especially when they stick their butts out and wipe the deck, I am even more impulsive.

I learned to use stinky fish or stinky meat before eating to lure out some weevils and maggots in some dry biscuits or oil tea noodles. Maggots taste okay, but weevils are bitter and really unpalatable. Stinky fish and other things can also attract those insects to the top well, and can also be used as bait for fishing.

After learning to lie in a hammock, it only takes a quarter of an hour to fall asleep, even if the person next to you snores louder than a cannon. But if the drums for preparation and the bells for getting up ring, you can quickly jump up and tie up the hammock.

As for firing cannons and jumping off the ship to kill people, in the words of the trainee captains, they are still far from it. At least they have to train for another half a year.

This time on the shore in October, Zhang Erbiao heard that he would be issued another set of military uniforms, take a bath on the shore, and take three days off to have fun in the city.

Three months of prison-like life made Zhang Erbiao feel for the first time that life on the shore was so beautiful. Even if he just stood on the beach, there were no crowded people next to him, and no stinky smell.

He was illiterate and had no culture, but looking at the blue sea and white waves, he felt a sense of poetry.

The sea is so beautiful, but it is only beautiful when you look at it on the shore.

After receiving the new military uniform, taking a bath, and receiving three months of salary, he took a small boat to Weihai.

He did not go to the brothel with the other sailors, but went to find his brother Sanbiao and sister who were also on leave, and had a meal in a restaurant in Weihai.

On the day of the leave, the restaurant was crowded. In just a few years, many restaurants, brothels and grocery stores appeared around Weihai.

Military pay was continuously sent from the capital, distributed to the soldiers, and slipped into the pockets of the vendors.

After waiting for a long time, they finally got a seat. The three brothers and sisters sat down, ordered three meat dishes, and a full pot of wine.

After watching his sister write a few words she had recently learned with chopsticks, Zhang Erbiao took a big sip of wine and felt very happy.

His brother Sanbiao brought a piece of news that he didn't know. This time the leave was because someone from the capital was coming.

Lord Liu wanted to prepare a drill for the adults in the capital.

As for who was coming, his brother didn't know, and he didn't need to know.

Zhang Erbiao thought, who cares who he is, just do whatever the superior asks.