In the early morning of the third day, the shouts from the foremast observation deck were blown to all parts of the deck by the sea breeze.
The first mate came to the bow of the ship with the crisp sound of his boots, opened the monocular and looked out, and the outline of the horizon appeared vaguely in the distance.
"It's finally here..." the young first mate murmured to himself, took out the pocket watch in his arms and opened the cover. There was a photo of a beautiful girl on it. "Selena, wait until I come back as a hero..."
When-when-when-
The bell on the deck suddenly rang, and a short whistle sounded from the armored ship not far away.
The time of silence has come.
The sailors ran around, fixing themselves under the mast or hugging the side of the ship as they had done several times before. Ever since three unfortunate guys were swallowed up by the silence due to the shaking of their footsteps, no one dared to rely on experience and ignore it.
A time of silence.
The swollen sails led the Old Gentleman towards the land, but time seemed to stop passing on the deck, and the crew remained eerily still.
Ten minutes later, two long whistles sounded from the armored ship, indicating that the hour of silence had left.
The deck came back to life, tying up his crew members with hemp ropes and walking around, flexing their stiff bodies.
At eight o'clock in the morning, two ships from the Lennon Islands arrived in the waters near the old river channel.
Several ships have anchored in this calm water. Among them are two wooden multi-masted sailing ships of the same era as the Old Gentleman, and there are ironclads escorting them.
"Sign a signal and tell them we are coming." Manik Pa said, raising his monocular and looking at the warship that was similar in size to the Old Gentleman.
He almost saw a guy who was as old as himself standing on the deck and shouting something arrogantly.
The last to arrive, the Old Gentleman and the following ironclads sailed into the fleet. In a moment, the three warships gathered and docked at the makeshift port.
Manik Pa and Cang Lang, the captains who were both enemies and friends, met again after decades. Neither of them seemed to want to talk about the past. After greeting the owner of the small battleship Luo Chi Behrman, Cang Lang looked at
Hai Mian: "Why is there one missing?"
They were all escorted by two ships, except the Old Gentleman.
"...We encountered some trouble on the road." After a moment of silence, Manik Pa took off his captain's hat, clasped it on his chest and gave a slight salute to the direction they came from.
Cang Lang and Luo Chi Behrman knew what this meant and made the same move.
They were caught up in something strange last night, and the ship stayed behind and never caught up with them again.
"Go and meet the commander of this operation, Kellan Fast." Gray Wolf put on his hat again and said.
"You go ahead, I'll go back to the ship and wait for action." Manik Pa refused.
"You're still the same." Canglang shook his head nonchalantly and went to the small town with Luo Chi Behrman to meet the true-sighted night watchman.
The first mate on the side of the ship saw Manik Pa return to the ship. "Aren't you going to get together with Mr. Cang Lang?"
"No need." Manik Pa walked towards the captain's cabin, no one knew what he was thinking.
Dozens of minutes later, the two captains boarded the Old Gentleman, went to the captain's cabin to talk for a few minutes and then left. Before leaving, Cang Lang looked around with nostalgia and said a few words of emotion.
On the eve of setting sail, First Officer Manik Parang told the crew what they needed to pay attention to.
They will go nearly two hundred miles inland away from the ocean and stop about a mile away from the oasis.
This distance will not be like the surroundings of Silence, where rituals are present all the time. And the seven or eight-minute interval is enough for them to anchor and reload ammunition.
At the same time, it prevents the shells from deviating too far from the aiming point, ensuring that the first round of shells can cover the main body of Silence.
The Exorcist Joint Organization led the locals to solve the narrow and winding river channel as much as possible, but they could still only allow three wooden warships to enter because the ironclad ship's draft was too deep.
They just had to make sure to drop anchor and stay quiet during the increasingly long stretches of silence without letting the ship hit the shore.
The latter is a problem, but fortunately the river current is gentle and there are three experienced captains.
There was no extra time to meet and say goodbye, so the three warships who got the plan left the port and sailed into the winding river.
Five armored ships on the sea sounded the echoing whistles at the same time. People in the town also looked at the warships entering the deserted land.
They carry people's last hope.
"You go and rest first. We won't be near the Hour of Silence until early tomorrow morning." the first mate advised.
The old captain never closed his eyes after the strange encounter last night.
"Wait until you encounter a moment of silence." Manik Pa took off his captain's hat and said.
Outside the Desolate Land, the Time of Silence will only appear once a day, but in the Desolate Land, it will appear more frequently.
The closer we get to the time of silence, the more serious the situation becomes.
For example, it is written in the information brought back by the expedition team that when one mile away from the oasis, time will switch back and forth between ten minutes of silence and a gap of seven or eight minutes.
The first moment of silence comes at noon, a few hours after entering the river.
The crew seemed to be in a hurry due to nervousness, but they still dropped the anchor and fixed themselves to the deck.
The two ships behind also anchored and stopped.
Ten minutes later, we lifted anchor and continued sailing.
The first attrition of the Old Gentleman occurred late at night, and no one knew when he disappeared. Only after a roll call did the crew discover his disappearance. Then came the second, and the third.
The following two ships also inevitably experienced attrition, and correspondingly, they were getting closer and closer to the oasis...
In the early morning, the darkness covering the desolate land began to dissipate.
Thirty minutes have passed since the last moment of silence.
"The map shows that we are very close to the oasis, less than 20 miles away." The young first mate handed the parchment map to Manik Pa. If they moved forward at full speed, they could reach the oasis in one hour.
"What's the situation with the two boats at the back?"
"It's not good... They are the same as us and have reduced their numbers by almost a quarter."
"Pay attention to the next river channel, here-"
Manik Pa's words were interrupted by a sudden vibration of the ship's hull. Manik Pa couldn't stand still and hit his forehead on the wooden wall, cutting his skin.
The first mate almost fell down, helped the old captain up and rushed out of the captain's cabin shouting: "What happened just now!"
The sailor lying on the side of the ship observing the hull replied loudly: "We hit the rocks - we scraped to the bottom of the river!"
"Is it serious?"
A crew member ran to the deck from the bottom: "The cargo hold is slightly leaking, but it's not serious."
Just as he was about to breathe a sigh of relief, a crew member stumbled onto the deck and rang the bronze bell that signified the approaching time of silence.
Except for the sailor who lowered the anchor, everyone else numbly and skillfully fixed themselves,
The young first mate returned to the captain's cabin, fixed the drowsy Manik Pa on the chair, and then tied himself to the wooden pole with hemp rope.
"Be careful... ahead..."
Manik Pa pointed forward with difficulty, and the young mate who had tied the hemp rope raised his head - in front of the river, a narrow pass blocked the front, and the water rushed through it.
The anchor has not yet sunk to the bottom of the water.