Chapter 262: The Most Unlucky Day

When the whole country was crazy about the second gold rush (the first time was smaller, mainly to develop gold mines in Southeast Asia and Australia), it has been a month since I crossed the dragon lizard islands, the food reserves have been eaten, the leaky ship has not been repaired, the cracks near the keel at the bottom of the ship are always leaking, no matter how to repair it, it is leaking, although it can withstand a smaller wind and waves.

How can such a long distance be guaranteed that there will be no wind and waves? Although the name of the Pacific Ocean is very secure, it is not peaceful at all, and a tropical storm or even the equator with a high typhoon has caused the highs of Southeast Asia to rise countless times. If you are not afraid of 10,000, you are afraid of what if, if you encounter strong winds and waves, the people of the two ships will die.

As soon as the ship's telegram was repaired, a distress radio was sent to the country, and theoretically it would take a month for the fastest sailing ship to be transferred from the port of Chizhou. In other words, Li Ji and others will stay on this desert island for 1 month.

The consumption of a few hundred people has become a top priority. Everything on board was moved to the island, and although the ship had plenty of salt and fire primers, the rice and vegetables had been eaten, and the island's fresh water was plentiful, but the rainforest could provide very little food. Every day, at least 90 per cent of the population is sent out to sea to fish and harvest shellfish, while the rest are hunted in the rainforest.

Although the island was formed after a volcanic eruption and has a history of millions of years, the tropical volcanic archipelago is still volcanic in nature, and it is also an active volcano. Coincidentally, just as the Travelers had just repaired their radio transmitters and were about to send a distress telegram to the Imperial mainland, the archipelago's largest active volcano erupted.

At about 7 o'clock local time in the morning, the largest volcano on the main island suddenly erupted, the height of the summit first increased by dozens of meters, and then disappeared like a broken balloon. The high-temperature and high-pressure gas of several thousand degrees is instantly transferred to a vast space at room temperature and pressure, which will naturally produce violent expansion, and this instantaneous equilibrium of matter and energy is expressed in physical forms such as huge explosions and shock waves. In a matter of seconds, tens of thousands of tons of solid matter become suspended matter in the atmosphere, and particles and debris larger than the diameter visible to the naked eye fall from the sky along the speed and slope of the eruption out of the crater. The high temperature of the gas carried a large amount of ash and debris, forming a volcanic cloud several kilometers high. In an instant, the tremors and shockwaves reached the makeshift camp where the traversers were.

When Richey saw the eruption, he immediately ran towards the sea, and it was clear that this eruption was a typical burst eruption, the exact opposite of a quiet eruption that slowly releases pressure, and this violent eruption is a very rapid pressure release. (When a volcano erupts, a violent explosion is produced and a large amount of gas and pyroclastic material is spewed out at the same time, and the molten slurry ejected is mainly medium acid molten lava.) Generally speaking, the violence of the central eruption is mainly related to the viscosity of the magma and the volatile elements contained in it.

A large amount of volcanic debris hit, volcanic blocks larger than eggs, volcanic gravel smaller than eggs, volcanic sand smaller than soybeans and very fine particles of volcanic ash continued to fall down to baptize everyone, and several unlucky eggs were smashed to the ground. The strong rising grey clouds led to a rare strong convection, and the black muddy rainstorms were so bad that the sulphides dissolved in the water could easily turn into strong acids. The embarrassed traversers had just dodged a wave of debris falling from the sky, and soon ushered in a hot pyroclastic flow. Strong winds of several hundred degrees swept through the crater, and it was still more than 100 degrees Celsius at the temporary camp on the beach a few kilometers away. All the tents and wooden items in the camp and the two ships docked on the surface of the sea were badly damaged, and were either completely destroyed to pieces or the hot sparks were set to ashes. The traversers floated out of the sea after the Foehn had ended, and the nearly suffocated crowd looked at the set fire ships and camps in despair. All the food and stuff was in the boats and tents, and the vegetation-covered areas of the island were burned to the ground.

Half a day later, when the earthquake and heavy rain had weakened to the point that they were about to stop, everyone returned to the beach, looking at the ruins and burnt scum all over the ground, the tired and hungry people counted them, and 122 people were killed by the poisonous gas, debris, high temperature, fire, and suffocating environment produced by the volcanic eruption, and even Sun Chang, who was in the crowd, was smashed by a piece of high-temperature debris and broke his head. Although none of the Li Ji and other crossers and their families died, almost half of the bodyguards and sailors died.

A few sailors who had escaped from the ship arrived at the camp, and as soon as they sat down and kicked their breath, Li Ji asked if he had sent a telegram after the telegraph was repaired, and he was relieved to learn that the telegram had been sent.

"Everyone is holding on for a month, and next month a boat will come to pick us up, and now that this area has been destroyed, we must quickly move to the island to the east of the island where there is no active volcano, otherwise we will all die here, and now there are only more than 130 people alive, hurry up and find something useful to evacuate, the few small lifeboats and the rafts that have just been tied up on the beach are our hope of escape, and it can be just right to squeeze it." In addition to knives and axes, find as many barrels and containers as possible. "Richey, whose face was covered in volcanic ash, began to mobilize. The crowd dragged the mud and began to search for the remnants of the object that could be used.

Except for some non-burning metal objects, there was nothing left of the camp and the boats, and the people sitting on a few small lifeboats and rafts could only row east with some metal pots and pans and weapons to survive in the rainforest of the second largest island with fewer volcanoes dozens of kilometers away from the main island. The dead bodyguards and sailors were all cremated and buried in a deep pit by the beach, and the injured were all burns and skin injuries.

In order not to inhale the volcanic ash, the people braved the pain and exhaustion after a whole night of rowing and fighting to the east upwind, and the survivors all arrived on the beach of the second largest island before dawn, the environment of this island and the main island is very different, almost all covered by rainforest, fire activity is extremely rare, and the environment of the main island is full of large and small active volcanoes. The main island is all volcanic rock and bare bedrock, a little soil and vegetation are difficult to see, if it were not for the abundance of fish and all kinds of crustacean seafood hiding in the reef and crevices, the traverser would not have camped on this bare island, but I didn't expect a volcanic eruption to go back to before liberation. In the evening, the tired and hungry people gathered the last bit of food, and after eating, a few bodyguards on night patrol fell asleep on the tropical beach.

Before the sun went down in the afternoon, the people fled to the new island, and without fishing nets or tools, they had to build primitive huts out of wooden sticks and wet mud, and the few remaining swords and axes were all harpoons and logging axes. The hungry crowd dispersed in the background of the volcanic eruption after a lunch of grilled fish without oil and salt, and in the evening, the tired and hungry crowd gathered the last bit of food, and after eating, a few bodyguards on night patrol collapsed on the tropical beach and fell asleep. And so the unfortunate day passed. (To be continued.) )