I didn't expect the sky to be unpredictable. This large ship, which clearly belonged to the Chinese Empire (with a displacement of more than 300 tons, is already considered a large ship in the Arab world), attracts attention like a piece of black charcoal in the middle of the snow in the almost empty Gulf of Aqaba. The Fatimids were not as powerful and wealthy as they were a hundred years ago, and after the loss of Syria and Jordan, Egypt's trade with the Middle East shrank to almost one percent of its original size, and the once prosperous city of Aqaba disappeared into the dust, and there was naturally little money to support patrols and interceptions without a fleet. Theoretically, Lear would not have encountered any Egyptian army or fleet at the Gulf of Aqaba, but the news of the fall of Aqaba to the Crusaders reached the ears of the Fatimid court, and in order to prevent the Crusaders from raiding Cairo, a large army gathered in the Gulf of Suez, and many ships were mobilized to Sharm el-Sheikh, the southernmost tip of the Sinai Peninsula. As soon as Lear's fleet entered the Red Sea from the narrow channel between Tiran and Senafel in the Gulf of Aqaba, it was surrounded by four schooners of about 100 tons. The warships of the Egyptian navy in the decline of trade along the Red Sea coast were almost always used as troop carriers, and the aging ships that lacked financial maintenance could sink due to the slightest impact.

Three hours later, Egyptian ships surrounded the exploration ship, which did not have enough ammunition. In the complex course full of coral reefs, the large ship with too deep draft could not move at full speed, and the Discovery was surrounded by many small boats with a shallow draft.

After voluntarily surrendering, Egyptian generals imprisoned Lear and others, who were suspected of spies, in the military camp of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The next two months were marked by a confrontation between the staff of the Imperial diplomatic service and the Egyptian generals. The most speechless thing is not that the Fatimid dynasty decided that the Battle of Aqaba was related to Lear, but that the unreasonable demand of the Egyptian side to extort a huge amount of ransom from the aristocratic prisoners of war after learning the identity of the king of Lear was brought to the table and bargained for more than 20 days.

In the space of two months, Lear feared that the Empire's expeditionary fleet would reach the southernmost point of Chizhou and steal the honor of being the first person to circumnavigate the globe. After the powerful diplomatic corps negotiated in the tent of the Egyptian generals with a letter of interrogation from the Seljuk Sultan Malikshah condemning the innocent detention of Fatima by friendly nobles, they successfully picked up the detained Lear and others after paying a small fine symbolic surname.

After returning to the ship, the crew's belongings and other valuables and arms were naturally gone (all of them were stolen by the Egyptian officers, even the better bacon and cheese and other ingredients and cans were gone, all the pots and pans in the kitchen were missing, and even the hammocks where the sailors slept were gone), and fortunately, all kinds of precision instruments, charts, and precious nautical records hidden in the secret mezzanine at the bottom of the ship were still intact. Naturally, Lear vowed revenge, and the crew returned to Socotra within three days, radioing intelligence and information back home. With all the purchases ready, Lear sailed off the coast of East Africa in May, the beginning of summer.

Unfortunately, the theory of atmospheric circulation is not yet perfect, and it encounters the only seasonal current in the legend - the Somali cold current. The fleet of ships heading south met headwinds, and the speed of cars suddenly changed to bicycles, and the speed of bicycles suddenly changed to walking speed, and the speed of navigation dropped from 20 kilometers per hour to 2 kilometers per hour. It was not until the end of May that the fleet sailed to the supply port at the northern end of Xiaoxuanzhou.

This large island in the southern hemisphere became a sailor's paradise for everyone, and a young man from the Imperial University of Geosciences discovered the island's extraordinary, biodiverse caste and geo-climatic all-round caste, a mecca for researchers. Since graduating from the Department of Geology, he has wanted to find a place overseas where he can put his skills to good use, whether it is prospecting or doing plantation planning, but unfortunately the seniors do not give him the opportunity, and the lucrative positions are almost all carved up. It's normal for me to be too withdrawn and unable to find a job without the help of my friends. However, he had great perseverance to surpass the many powers that had left sculptures in the academy, and the only way to do so was to come up with the results of the pioneering work.

In order to obtain first-hand information and on-the-spot observation and collect specimens, he had to mix with the ocean-going fleet, the first time he went to Yueben to study the seasonal migration patterns of cetaceans, the second time he went to Lear's fleet to the Great Barrier Reef to study the tropical marine ecosystem, and the third time he went to East Africa.

As a cook, he worked relatively leisurely, and when he was resting, he hid in the sweltering bottom of the barn to write his sailing observations and specimen analysis reports. When going ashore to purchase and work, it is common to dissect specimens of local flora and fauna at various docking sites.

When he entered the kitchen with a large bag of animal and plant specimens, he thought that many sailors who wanted to add vegetables were looking forward to fresh meat in the canteen, and the result was still ordinary sausages and canned meat. When the angry sailor broke into the kitchen and questioned him, he explained unhurriedly that these animals and plants were personal items and native products that he bought with his salary, most of them were poisonous and seedlings, unpalatable but had medicinal value, and were not ingredients purchased with public funds.

The ingredients purchased with public funds are all accounted for, and the chef stands up to put the human and material evidence on the table, and everyone has nothing to say.

This unprofessional sailor caught the attention of the boss Lear, and after some investigation, he realized that he had hidden a great god in addition to the professional skills of the officers. After an in-depth conversation with this family, the two who cherished each other became New Year's friends. In his twenties, Li Wen became a regular visitor to the captain's room. On a ship with a strict hierarchy, it can be regarded as a special case.

Because of the caste of the expedition and Lear's eagerness to complete the goal of circumnavigating the world, the fleet was very tight every time it docked at the coast, and there was simply not enough time for Li Wen to go inland to investigate and collect specimens. Therefore, Li Wen had no choice but to wait until he completed this round-the-world voyage to conduct a round-the-world scientific expedition that would last at least three years.

Levine was assigned a separate cabin to study and live in, leaving the crowded sailor's bunk in the galley. Large and small packets of specimens were also kept by Lear's men in a dry, sealed warehouse at a constant temperature.

A month later, the fleet reached Cape of the Storm, and it was early July in the Southern Hemisphere, officially winter. Storms are extremely common at this time, with storm surges hitting this hopeful shore (Cape Agulhas) almost every day. Every year, it is the summer of the southern hemisphere that there is a good opportunity for peers to successfully pass through this ghost gate where the southeast Xuanzhou** (Mozambique**) and the southwest Xuanzhou cold current (Benguela cold current) meet. The reason for this is that the summer monsoon belt will move southward, the westerly wind belt will weaken slightly, and the storms will decrease a lot.

Lear didn't know anything about it, but luckily the highly-hired guide had been to the newest colony in the southwest Xuanzhou, and knew about the fish-rich desert coast. Northward currents and strong winds can smoothly carry them to lower latitudes in the trade wind belt.

They could not have made it past Cape Storm without losses, and after losing three supply ships, only a fleet of nine ships remained to sail to Walvis Bay Harbor with their broken hulls in tow. This uninhabited desert coast is uninhabited, and it is almost killed by the cooling and humidifying effects of the cold current in the southwest Xuanzhou. But the abundance of fish brought by the nutrient-rich cold snap fed several of the empire's newest settlements and countless marine mammals along the coast. Shocked by the sight of herds of seals and fur seals, at least 100,000 of them, basking on the red-and-yellow sands, the crew begged to come ashore to catch some of the seals for boiled oil and meat.

The guide, however, demanded that the crew be forbidden to kill seals, and that the cost of disembarking was extremely high, and that meat should be eaten instead of going to the nearby Walvis Bay Harbor, where seafood and seal products are plentiful. The time wasted by the crew as soon as they went ashore was simply not enough to catch a few seals, so it was better to go directly to Walvis Bay Harbor to buy them. Lear, who was eager to use it for two days a day, naturally followed the guide's advice and headed straight for Walvis Bay Harbor.

When the fleet arrived at this port, which was similar to the lobster port on Abalone Island, they were shocked by the sight. More than 200 tusks are purchased each month from the surrounding nomads, and the fishermen's catch is processed into large quantities of dried fish and fishmeal, and the simple docks by the sea are stacked with mountains of seal meat and barrels of seal oil, and the open space outside every house is covered with seal skins and fur seal skins.

As soon as they disembarked, the exhausted crew (the physical strength exerted in battling the storm surge at Storm Point did not recover within a few days, plus the exertion of not having a port call since the continuous voyage) fell asleep.

After Lear and Li Wen got off the ship, they learned that this is the farthest colony from the empire, and it is also the most difficult to expand, and it is impossible for the southwest Xuanzhou, which lacks fresh water, to feed many people, let alone develop agriculture, and even the living water of hundreds of people is a little difficult now, if it were not for the merchant ships selling grain, fruits and vegetables every month to buy local fishing products and indigenous trade goods, these hundreds of people would not have survived in Walvis Bay Harbor.

The huge amount of 'commodity' piled up in the port simply has no capacity to move away, and the trade in East Africa is profitable enough that only a handful of ships will come to the remote Walvis Bay port. Therefore, after some deliberation with Lear, Levine decided to exchange half of the coins and the rest of the arms (after transporting the arms to Aqaba, the governor of Socotra gave Lear more than 200 steel longbows and 2,000 recyclable steel arrows for more than 200 steel longbows produced by the empire and 2,000 recyclable steel arrows) in exchange for half of the deadweight tonnage of the fleet.

After the sailors rested for a few days, Lear and the others began to repair some of the damaged parts of the ship's hull, although this tangled port had many specialties, but there was almost no industry, even iron products were extremely scarce. Because of its desert location, timber was scarce, so it was not until a month later, when merchant ships brought in enough industrial goods and building materials, that the fleet regained its ability to sail across the oceans. (To be continued.) )