The pirates searched Portobello for a whole day, and the mayor of Fort Honor scraped together more than 60,000 pesos, which did not meet Chen Shouxu's request of 100,000 pesos.

Philip. Edward asked Chen Shouxu, "The Spaniards have not met our conditions, do you want to burn the city?" ”

Chen Shouxu looked around, he admired this Spanish colonial city, "Forget it. It's not easy to build a city like this, so let's do it another way." He ordered the soldiers of the Marine Corps to "seize all the single carpenters and blacksmiths in the city, and all the non-Spanish workers in the armory and shipyards." ”

"Including Indians and slaves?"

"Including."

Chen Shouxu said to Edward, "Tell the mayor of Spain that because he has not met our reasonable conditions, I will detain some of the city's residents as punishment for him." ”

There were wails and screams from the city hall, and Chen Shouxu frowned and asked Walter, "Tell those soldiers that when the time is up, we need to go back to the ship." Unable to get up to keep up with the brigade, he himself stayed to face the Spanish defenders. ”

Under Chen's strict orders, the pirates withdrew from the city before dark and returned to the ship along the road they had come.

The conquistadors received a total of 400,000 Spanish silver pesos and 1,000 pieces of gold in the city, and according to the rules, the pirates received half of the actual payment of 50 pounds, and the rest was put into the public account.

The ships lit their whale oil lamps at the stern of the ship, regrouped in column, and headed for Aruba.

The fleet sailed along the coast of South America, only briefly leaving the coast near the port of Katanach to avoid the escort fleet of the stationed fleet and galleons.

For most of the voyage, the northeast trade winds were less noticeable to be disturbed by the mainland. Day and night, the wind direction alternates between the continent and the ocean most of the time. This crosswind is not bad, and a large part of the reason why sailboats prefer to sail close to the mainland is because of this crosswind.

In the waters off Aruba, the Tempest broke away from the fleet and sailed into the island's harbor.

Soon after, Robert and Maiden joined the fleet under the guidance of the Tempest on the Adventure, but Chen Shouxu did not greet the Dutch officials, and the entire fleet continued to sail south.

At the mouth of the Amazon River, the entire fleet slowed down. After repeated measurements of the sun, the captains of the five warships finally determined that the fleet had sailed through the equator.

The pirate fleet, in accordance with the tradition of seafarers, sought out those who had not crossed the equator. All the battleships were in a circle, and each ship hoisted the four feet of a sail and lowered the sail into the sea. The singled out crew members were thrown into the sea one by one by the old sailors. The sails in the sea block the possible presence of sharks, and eventually the veteran crew members jump out of the canvas-enclosed pool to enjoy the tropical waters.

The weather is getting hotter, and fresh food has been eaten. The rest is salty, salty, boiled half-cooked peas and oats. The hot weather and poor diet made the crew begin to get sick, and sepsis did not appear for the time being, and most of them were bloody diarrhea and edema. Chen Shouxu ordered the port side of the battleship to be vacated for the sick to live. Healthy people live on the starboard side, separated by canvas in the middle.

The manpower was strained again, and Chen Shouxuan was forced to resume the two-shift system. The three-shift system, which had been used by the fleet because there was no war and a large number of sailors were replenished, was cancelled. Three shifts meant that sailors only had to work on deck for 4 hours and had 8 hours to rest. Two shifts mean 4 hours for 4 hours.

The tired sailors slept on the open deck directly after getting off duty.

The sea is calm at the equator, with strong convective air often bringing showers of rain and sudden gusty winds coming from all directions. In order to protect the mast, Chen Shouxu was forced to order the upper mast to be lowered and the bottom mast sail to be retracted, and the whole ship retained the mid-mast sail to barely maintain power.

It took the fleet two weeks to cross the equator, and Chen found the Brazilian Current, a tributary of the South Equatorial Current, which travels about 10 to 15 nautical miles a day, and the morale of the fleet was slightly boosted.

There were more and more sick numbers among the sailors, and the sea breeze on the open deck made many people catch a cold. Cases of death began to appear among sailors. The battleship held a sea burial for the sick and dead sailors. As is customary, the sailors were stripped of their clothes and tied naked to a plank, with a cannonball tied to each of their legs. The body was pushed into the sea, sank to the bottom of the sea under the tow of a shell, and lost a trace.

Sailing in the tropical seas was nothing short of terrible, and the heat caused the sailors to run out of beer. The battleship was forced to anchor several times, sending sailors ashore to replenish fresh fresh water, which in turn left some suffering from malaria and yellow fever. These two diseases are completely insolable in this day and age. There is still a lot of hope for recovery from vivax malaria, but almost nine deaths from falciparum malaria are borne. Chen Shouxu looked at the cinchona tree seeds brought by Maiden in a daze, if he had a mature cinchona tree, then the bark might be able to cure the falciparum malaria of these sailors.

Chen Shouxu can't do anything now, and the sea burials are one after another. The morale that had been boosted by the ocean currents suddenly fell to the bottom.

The misfortune is that no matter what safety measures the fleet takes according to its position, latitude and air pressure, it cannot withstand the domination of nature. In the morning, the sky was still clear, and in an instant it was dark and the wind was fierce, which made people feel terrified. The hull rattled in the wind and made a terrible popping sound. The clouds were thickening, the wind was howling, and they couldn't even hear each other on deck. The sea is pouring into everything, and the ship will be swept up to the top of the waves, and then thrown into the valley of the waves as if they were falling into a cliff. The waves were crashing and the planks began to crack. Thankfully, the linen that fills the gaps in the planks swells and automatically plugs most of the leaks. The waves mixed with the rain rushed down the open deck to the cabin, and the sailors tied ropes around their waists and pumped the water with all their might.

No one can be an exception, Chen Shouxu tied a rope around his waist and joined the duty of the damage management team. Chen Shouxu was joined by his exclusive captive, the first mate of the Portuguese slave carrier, Cottinho.

Chen Shouxu nodded to Coutinho, under the power of nature, there is no difference between a captain and a captive, everyone must do their best to save this sailboat struggling in the waves.

Each shift was responsible for running the pumps for 4 hours, and everyone was exhausted.

A sailor who was not tied up with a rope should be glad that the waves had knocked him out of the cabin. The sailors beside him grabbed him by the arm, otherwise he would have fallen into the sea.

The goats on the boat were also half dead by this time, and none of them could stand up.

Chen Shouxu should also be rejoicing. The storm blew the flotilla into the depths of the Atlantic, and not the other way around, blowing him ashore. If the storm were blowing upwards on the mainland, the entire fleet would run aground and there would be no survivors.

The storm blew for three days, and on the fourth day the wind and waves became less and less, and by the morning of the fifth day, the sea was calm and the air was fresh. As if the sailors had been given a new lease of life, the devout believers knelt down on the spot and sang hymns in unison.

The fleet was blown apart by the storm and scattered within a radius of tens of nautical miles. Chen Shouxu sent a schooner to contact the ships, but the foremast of the Changbo was broken, and its navigation ability was very weak. This is the scar from the previous battle, and it is at this time.

Chen Shouxu ordered the regrouping in the direction of the Long Wave, and he calculated the current longitude and latitude of the fleet, and the storm blew him southeast to near 30 degrees west longitude, far away from the coast of Brazil, and also bypassing Recife, the stronghold of the Dutch West India Company.

Taking advantage of the calm weather, the Nagawave passed the lower end of the broken midmast through the deck, and tied the midmast tightly together with a rope. The fleet took with them some logs, which the sailors pushed out of the hatches, and the sailors of the open deck tied them with ropes and hoisted them onto the open deck. The carpenter sawed the 20-metre-long log, split it in half and tied it to the broken mast, and added four thick iron hoops to restore the mast to its function. The Nagawave used the middle truss as the current bottom boom and the upper truss as the middle boom, so that the foremast was restored to the use of both sails.

The rest of the ships carefully moved the heavy guns and ballast stones, cocking the hull so that the carpenters could patch the holes in the side sides. Chen Shouxu was secretly glad that he had collected a lot of carpenters and blacksmiths by various methods, so that the fleet could have enough manpower to repair the ships at this time.

Soon after, the wind rose again, this time from the tail, strong but not violent. It was a very smooth wind for the sailing ships, and the fleet sailed south for eight days, passing through Salvador, the capital of Portuguese Brazil.

The last day of the storm brought clean rain, followed by more than a week of good weather. Chen Shouxu slaughtered all the goats and hens to feed the sick, and under the doctor's half-scientific and half-nonsense care, someone finally got lucky enough and began to recover.

The captains offered to plunder a few merchant ships off the coast of Brazil to replenish supplies, but Chen Shouxu refused, citing the fleet's poor condition. If you can't grab a large fleet, the supplies of a few small boats will not be enough for so many people. And the resistance of the large fleet itself may be tenacious, and Chen Shouxuan does not want to waste time.

Coutinho. Morality. Norania was very curious, "Mr. Commander, you have such a powerful fleet, why don't you go and raid the coast of Brazil?" It seems to me that the reasons you have made to the captains are very inadequate. ”

"Mr. Norania, you're right. I can't convince my captains of my reasoning, but they will still follow my orders. There is no need for Chen Shouxu to keep a low profile in front of the captives, "You look at the coastline looming in front of you, I can accurately lead them to find the ocean *** and predict where we are." They didn't have the courage to oppose me. ”

Coutinho shrugged his shoulders, "Mr. Commander, I have been sailing with you for a long time. I must admit that you have what you call abilities. But it has nothing to do with you abandoning the Brazilian coast. ”

"It's not far ahead of Rio de Janeiro, and you just want me to take this Portuguese city, right?"

"No, no, don't get me wrong, I'm just curious. You're supposed to be a pirate. ”

"Pirates should also do something and not do something, and needless robbery will only force everyone to become their enemies."

"Aren't Spain and Portugal your enemies?"

"Spain must be my enemy," Chen Shouxu glanced at the Portuguese meaningfully, "Mr. Norania, don't you think that the rule of the Habsburgs over Portugal is unreasonable?" Think of your country, His Majesty the great Manuel I, Henry the Navigator, Vacos. Da Gama, Francisco. Morality. Almeida, Alfonso. Morality. Albuquerque ......, think of these great names, Mr. Norlannia. It was your country that started this great era and found new routes of exchange between East and West, but it was the Spaniards who took the fruits of yours. This is neither just nor legitimate, and I think you should stand up against Spanish rule. ”

The expression on Coutinho's face was stunned, independence was a dream that many Portuguese had been fighting for years. Among the conquerors mentioned by Chen Shouxu, Almeida and Albuquerque conquered the coasts of Africa, the Persian Gulf, India, and Malacca in a matter of years. The Portuguese were saying that if it weren't for the early deaths of Almeida and Albuquerque, they would have had every chance to take advantage of the Annihilation of the Egyptian Mamluk fleet at the Battle of Diu to capture Suez, Cairo, and even Alexandria. Finally, it was Jerusalem, the holy city of the world, that fulfilled Manuel I's lifelong dream.

Seeing that Coutinho's expression was struggling, Chen Shouxu continued, "Mr. Norania, if Portugal can become independent from Spanish rule and return to its former glory, then we will probably not be enemies, but on the contrary, we will become friends. So I'm not going to raid the Brazilian coast. ”

Coutinho took a step back, putting away the playful protective color that had been on his face since he was captured. He bowed deeply to Chen Shouxu, "On behalf of the people of Brazil, I thank you for your kindness, Honorable Commander of Shouxu. Whatever extent my country's relations with Spain may develop, I think I myself will be your friend. ”

The fleet continued south, and it was summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and the temperature was slightly lower than the equator, but still in the mid-20s. At the chart table, Chen Shouxu looked at his second target, the mouth of the Río de la Plata, the port of Buenos Aires. He needed a well-equipped harbor to repair ships and replenish the winter clothing of the sailors of the whole fleet. Many of the crew members showed signs of sepsis, and he had to make it possible for the sick to land on land, and many of the patients could recover naturally by resting on land for a week or two and eating a finer diet.

The Port of Buenos Aires gave him everything he needed.