"Vladivostok, far away, near and near. Since you are in the navy, you will go to sea in the future, and there will always be a chance to say goodbye. ”

"You can rest assured, although there are more tigers, more wolves, and colder, it is unlikely that you will starve to death. I also fired a gun, and the land where it is reclaimed will be shot with a tiger first. There is land to be farmed, and there are cattle and horses, and life will not be bad. ”

Zhang Erbiao can be regarded as relieved, tigers and wolves, as long as there are guns, there is really nothing to fear.

has a wife again, and there is a large area of wasteland, and there are cattle and horses to use, no matter how you think about it, this day will not be bad.

He can also trust Liu Yu.

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

It's no different from transporting livestock.

The boat is full, and if you want to go to the bow of the boat to, you have to move it a little bit, and if you have diarrhea, I'm afraid it won't be too late.

Now there are only four of them left in the living family, and since the living family can continue to live, he doesn't have too much to worry about.

In the months following this conversation, Zhang Erbiao spent the months in training with little end in sight.

Until the sixth month of the lunar calendar, when it was the hottest time, several large ships of Westerners appeared on the sea near Weihai.

There are a lot of Western ghosts on Liugong Island, and Zhang Erbiao has seen a lot, so he doesn't feel unaccustomed.

He could tell which were Rakshasas and which were French.

Because Zhang Erbiao feels that the mouth of the French is particularly cheap.

When they meet, they are "stupid pigs" and "stupid donkeys".

But at last I knew that the French had come to deliver the ship, and they had unloaded a large number of muskets and cannons.

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

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

After that, the two big ships were named Weihai and Penglai, and Zhang Erbiao was also selected as the first batch of sailors to board the ship because of his hard training, and was arranged on the Weihai.

The day of boarding the ship is the seventh day of July, the Begging Festival, which is a very memorable date.

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

Before boarding the ship, Zhang Erbiao, like the rest of the sailors, was transported to the river near Weihai and bathed in large wooden barrels.

Some medicine lice powder was sprinkled on his body, and his skin was burning hot.

After being tortured as if they had been burned all over their bodies, each of them was given a set of military uniforms.

A cotton shirt, a pair of trousers.

The trainee officers who boarded the ship wore military uniforms of woolen material that made Zhang Erbiao feel greedy.

Envy is envy, but Zhang Erbiao knows that he will never be able to become an officer.

Because he can't read and write, and he doesn't know the rest of the craft, at most he can be mixed into a first-class sailor.

There are clear hierarchies on board, trainee officers are trainee officers, and sailors are sailors, which cannot be crossed.

On the Weihai that he was arranged, the quota was 160 people, but the first batch of people on board was full of 320 people, which was doubled.

There were 140 sailors like him, and the rest were all alternate officers.

When you meet, you are an official, there are more officials than soldiers, and there are people everywhere.

There are four trainee captains alone.

Zhang Erbiao, the captain of the trainee ship, recognized that it was Master Mi who took him in back then, and he was a good person. The remaining three were all lieutenant captains, whom he did not recognize.

The real captain was the Rakshasa named Bering, and there were twelve Frenchmen on board who called stupid pigs and stupid asses when they met.

Their boat spirit, a tanuki tom, roams the ship all day.

And now she is only a third-class sailor, with a salary of one or two halves a month.

If you can mention a sailor of the first class, there are three halves.

On the day of the 7th of July, all the sailors who boarded the ship ate a meal of dumplings.

To Zhang Erbiao's surprise, this dumpling was not filled with fish and meat, which was simply the most memorable day in the thirteen years of Taixing.

After eating the dumplings, they were sent to the boat.

Zhang Erbiao saw the scene on this big ship for the first time, densely packed with cables, and he didn't know what these cables were for.

There are more than a dozen small swing guns on the deck, which are said to have been used to strafe the enemy on the opposite deck after the naval battle was approaching.

It was necessary to sweep the decks of the enemy ships with light boom guns before they could board the ships and seize them. If you take a ship, you will receive a dividend according to the price of the ship and the cargo on board.

Below the open deck was an all-access artillery compartment, with nearly thirty cannons tied to ropes.

Such was his task, the trainee gunner of the left string.

However, I heard that Lord Liu was very dissatisfied with these nine-pound cannons, and was hoarding copper, preparing to let the craftsmen who disembarked from the ship melt some bigger ones.

When he slept at night, he was placed in a hammock, and nearly three hundred people were crammed into the small cabin, as you can imagine.

Fart, feet, snoring...... These were already accustomed to it, and they had tried to sleep like this when they were on shore.

Only the cabins of the trainee captains are a little spacious, but not that spacious.

The toilet is in the bow of the boat and pulls directly into the sea. Because the boats are sailing downwind, there is no need to worry about the "aroma" wafting all the way to the entire ship.

The bow of the French ship is a wood-carved girl with a spear in her hand, and I don't know where it is.

Of course, this is also the only girl on the ship.

Many people came around to look at the chest of this wood-carved girl, hehe, smirk, point, or say that it really looks like a steamed bun, big.

In view of the fact that there were no women on the ship, Zhang Erbiao knew that his salary was paid monthly when he was docked, and if he was sailing outside, he would be paid as long as he docked. It is tacitly agreed to do whatever you want when you go ashore.

I slept in such a cramped cabin for the first night, and the next morning, as soon as it was dawn, the bell rang out.

The bell thought of a second ring, and all the people in the cabin were to get up.

Zhang Erbiao is only a third-class sailor, and the hammocks he sleeps in are particularly increased. The moment the wake-up bell rang, he won the first lesson of life on board.

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

These bundled spare hammocks are tied in a large ball and tied to the side of the ship in a special knot.

According to the alternate officers, this is to wait until the time of the naval battle is approaching, and the roundhouse cannon on the opposite side can be used as cover.

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 it is possible to survive.

For the first three days, he was basically learning this thing.

I didn't fully learn how to tie knots like this until the fourth day, and after passing the assessment one by one, I proceeded to the next lesson.

Got up, tied up the hammocks, and then all squatted on the deck of the first row.

One man was given a brick-sized grinding stone, and buckets of sand were poured on the deck, and began to grind the deck with grinding stones and sand.

It is said that when there is a war, sand is spread on the deck. Because the war will kill people, and the dead will bleed, and the bleeding will make the soles of the feet slip, so it is necessary to spread sand.

On the ships of the French, there was a lot of sand. It was said that if the French died at sea, they would bury them in the sand at the bottom of the ship, and then bury them when they returned to the land, so that they could be buried in the ground.

Zhang Erbiao thinks this is very good.

However, Lord Liu was not allowed, and quarreled with the French officer for this.

The French officers could not win the quarrel, so they had to change the rules on the Weihai: if a person died, he put it in a bag, attached it with a cannonball, and threw it directly to the bottom of the sea, and he was not allowed to bury him in the sand of the cabin.

The sailors, including Zhang Erbiao, were very unhappy about this matter, and in the end they could only use a compromise method.

The boat was loaded with a few barrels of rice and dates, and no matter how hungry they were, they were not allowed to eat.

After the person died, he put it in a bag, learned from the incident of Dr. Qu throwing himself into the river, and filled the bag with some river rice and dates, so that the fish and shrimp would not eat the corpse of the person and leave a whole corpse.

When Zhang Erbiao knelt on the ground to wipe the deck, a large group of alternate officers squatted on the bow of the ship, looking at the sun with a sextant.

When he finished wiping the deck, another group of people watched.

Every day at noon, it is the most lively time for the officers to watch the sun, and twenty or thirty people learn together how to judge the moment of noon.

After wiping the deck for five days and making sure that everyone would wipe the deck, Zhang Erbiao realized that the things he learned were just things to do during the time period from getting up in the morning to having breakfast.

It's been a long day, and this is just the beginning.

From the day you get on the boat, breakfast becomes easy.

Five dates, a large bowl of oil tea batter, and a dried salted fish.

After breakfast, I began to learn to examine the cannons.

Thousands of pounds of things, and the boat is so bumpy, once the rope is not tied properly, and the people are so dense, it is normal to kill ten or eight.

Thousands of pounds of big guys, rubbing will hurt, next to death, Zhang Erbiao knows that this is related to whether he can survive, and he studied very carefully.

After checking the ropes of the cannon, it is necessary to divide the gunpowder with the members of the artillery crew.

Gunpowder is not placed next to the cannon, but in a special powder magazine, which is divided and passed back and forth by specialized short soldiers.

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

On the door of the powder magazine, there was a thick piece of cotton felt, and next to it was a large bucket. The first thing to do is to splash water on the cotton felt.

As the gunner of the left string, Zhang Erbiao had to learn how to fire the cannon and how to use the musket and grenade.

If the opponent's mast or rudder is damaged, a group of sailors on the left or right chord will be transferred to organize a commando team to board the ship and seize the ship.

As for how to operate the artillery, as long as you learn to listen to the orders of the officer, know what kind of wedge to put and how to aim roughly.

From getting on the ship on the seventh day of July 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.

Include:

When he learned to speak, he shouted at a loud voice. Because the cannon is always fired, the sound is so low that it can't be heard clearly. The voice is small, and he is not qualified to go on a warship.

When you learn to shit, you can skillfully pull the cable with one hand, and let the boat swing with your butt against the sea without falling. Because there are so few toilets, everyone has to learn to hold on to the cable and pout their cheeks outside when others occupy the toilet.

Learned to drink and was able to walk around the rocking deck after drinking. Because the water will turn green after a period of storage, if you want not to die of diarrhea, you have to mix it with white wine to drink. And life on the ship is really boring, only a glass of wine every day is the most lively moment for sailors, and after drinking, this prison-like boring life always has a kind of dizzy pleasure.

I learned to pull the cable and at the wooden statue on the bow of the boat. Because I don't do this, in the small cabin, I always think about those sailors who are more delicate, especially when they pout and wipe the deck, which is even more impulsive.

I learned to use stinky fish or stinky meat to draw out weevils and maggots in some dry cakes or oil tea noodles before eating. Maggots taste okay, but weevils are bitter and really unpalatable. Smelly fish and the like are also a great way to lure those bugs to it, and it can also be used as bait for fishing.

I learned to lie in a hammock and fall asleep in only a quarter of an hour, letting the people next to me snore louder than a cannon. But as soon as the drums for war and the bell for getting up rang, you can quickly jump up and tie up the hammock.

As for firing guns and jumping ship to kill, in the words of the trainee captains, they are still far behind. At least I have to train for another half a year or so.

On this ashore trip in October, Zhang Erbiao heard that he was going to be issued another military uniform, go to the shore to take a bath, and take a three-day vacation to go to the city to have a good time.

The life like three months of imprisonment made Zhang Erbiao feel for the first time that life on the shore was so beautiful. Even if you are just standing on the beach, there are no people crowded to death next to you, and there is no smelly smell.

He was illiterate and uneducated, but looking at the blue sea and white waves, he had a sense of poetry.

The sea is so beautiful, but it is only beautiful when viewed from the shore.

He received a new military uniform, took a bath, paid three months' salary, and went to Weihai in a small boat.

He did not go to the kiln with the rest of the sailors, but went to find his younger brother Sanbiao and his younger sister, who were also on vacation, and went to a restaurant in Weihai for a meal.

On the days of rest, the restaurant was crowded with people. In just a few years, there are many restaurants, brothels and grocery stores around Weihai.

Military salaries were sent from the capital in a steady stream, distributed to the soldiers, and slipped into the pockets of the traders.

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

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

The younger brother Sanbiao brought a piece of news that he didn't know, this time Xiu Mu was because someone in the capital was coming.

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

As for who came, my brother didn't know, and he didn't need to know.

Zhang Erbiao thought to himself, no matter who he is, he can do whatever the chief tells him to do.