The "Snow Dragon" was at full speed, struggling to push out a gap between the big ship that hit it and the shore, and it passed through it, and the hull and the big ship made a loud noise because of the friction.

The speed was raised to 17.9 knots, which was also the limit of the speed of the "Snow Dragon", and at this moment all the equipment on board that could provide energy to the power system began to operate.

The ship's searchlights had been turned on, and the crew in the bridge saw through the cabin windows that the guy who had "attacked" them earlier was a huge ship.

The length of this huge ship should be close to three hundred meters long, and its size far exceeds that of the Snow Dragon, and at this moment there are fires in many parts of the ship's hull.

Wang Puhong's decision was wise, and he immediately judged from the factors that caused the fire after the collision that the ship might be an oil tanker, that is, a cargo ship transporting oil. In addition to the fact that such ships are prone to fire in the event of a collision, they can also cause accidents such as violent combustion and even explosions, and the fuel will also produce thick smoke during combustion, which can cause suffocation and toxicity.

Wang Puhong asked the "Snow Dragon" to get rid of the constraints of this oil tanker at full speed, and quickly widened the distance between it and it.

The "Snow Dragon" sailed upwind, and at this moment, more than ten minutes had passed since the collision just now, and the fire on the oil tanker gradually became larger, and the flames spread from several places where the fire had started, and some disconnected places were even about to burn together.

The crew was only allowed to go up to the deck at this time, some remained in the cabin, some went outside. In the dark night, the oil tanker burned like a fire, and the nearby sea was red.

The first explosion was heard half an hour later, and the black smoke rose from the firelight, and the bow of the huge ship seemed to have collapsed, and the hull of the ship was slightly tilted.

The "Snow Dragon" always kept a safe distance from it, and stayed on the distant sea and watched quietly. It had no rescue equipment to extinguish the fire, and there seemed to be no living person on the ship that caught fire.

Then there were explosions one after another, and the fire began to spread to the surface of the nearby sea, which was a leak of oil from the ship and spread into the sea, and the flames ignited the oil, making it burn more violently.

The accident happened a little strangely, and everyone didn't have time to explore the cause at the moment, and everyone was looking at the shocking and helpless scene in the distance.

In the command room, Wang Puhong finally breathed a sigh of relief, his face had been tense just now. The heart is still hanging, because this collision accident has also had a certain impact on the "Snow Dragon", and it is not yet known to the extent of the impact, everything can only wait for dawn to be checked.

Tonight was destined to be a sleepless night, no one on board was still sleepy, and everyone's eyes were focused on the burning oil tanker.

Time passed minute by minute, and the day dawned slowly, but it was still bright after all.

Wang Puhong divided the shipping crew into two groups, one group took the Yellow River boat to monitor and monitor the vicinity of the burning boat, and the other group re-overhauled the "Snow Dragon".

It took several hours for the damage to the "Snow Dragon" to finally come out. Although the fire on the oil tanker did not affect the "Snow Dragon," some of the scientific research equipment on the "Snow Dragon" was seriously damaged. Fortunately, because the bow and stern of the "Snow Dragon" have the ability to break ice, and the hull is stiffer than that of ordinary commercial freighters, the main structure of the hull was not damaged when the collision occurred, nor did it cause a water leakage accident on the hull.

"Luck in misfortune," Wang Puhong's hanging heart was finally put into his stomach. Most of the damaged instruments are oceanographic surveying and meteorological instruments, and the task of this trip is to cooperate with Professor Zhang Dada to do investigations, so these instruments may not be of use value. The vessel's power system is intact and the hull is not excessively damaged, so it will not have much impact on the operation.

The Yellow River Boat brought back the latest news of the accident vessel, a large Panamanian-flagged oil tanker that appeared here for unknown reasons and was loaded with condensate.

In the previous collision, the condensate continued to leak and burn to explode. After half the night, a kilometer-long oily belt appeared on the surface of the sea, which ran east-west, enveloping the coast of Gamber.

Wang Puhong looked at the black oil strip near the coast and sighed, he had just made an analysis of this collision accident in his heart based on his previous sailing experience. Gamber is a protruding horn at the northwest tip of St. Lawrence Island, and the oil tanker was not found when the "Snow Dragon" docked yesterday, and the ship obviously did not enter the "Snow Dragon's" field of vision, and the reason why it was able to suddenly appear was due to the influence of the terrain.

At that time, the two ships were probably on the north side of Gamber and the other on the west side of Gamber, and the oil tanker was drifting along the coast due to the direction of the wind, so it happened to hit the "Snow Dragon" docked on the shore in the middle of the night.

"It seems that although there are fewer ships at sea after the disaster, the danger has not decreased much," thinking of the Shirane-class destroyer "Kurama" and this oil tanker encountered in the Tsushima Strait, Wang Puhong thinks that he may encounter similar "iron coffins at sea" in the future, and ships need to be more vigilant during sailing, especially at night.

After dawn, the "Snow Dragon" began to continue its journey north, and although the fire on the oil tanker near Gamber was much smaller, the oil pollution zone on the sea surface continued to spread, which had a great impact on the local marine environmental pollution, but the "Snow Dragon" was powerless at the moment.

More than 200 kilometers to the north is the Bering Strait, in the middle of the strait there are two islands called Big and Small Diomede Island, both of which are rocky islands, and belong to the United States and Jiplos respectively.

The sea between the two islands is only a few kilometers wide, with the island of Diomed da belonging to Gipros and the island of Petit Diomede belonging to the country of Rice. Interestingly, the two islands are separated by two days because of the International Date Line, with the Greater Diomede Island 23 hours earlier than the Little Diomede Island, so some people call them "Tomorrow Island" and "Yesterday Island".

Wang Puhong had been to Little Diomede Island before, which was shaped like a flat-topped rock and was about 300 meters high above the sea. It was formed due to volcanic activity and is a remnant of the Bering Road Bridge. The island's protruding flat roof is surrounded by a steep 40-degree slope towards the sea, and only on the west side of the island is a slightly gentle piece of land by the sea, where there used to be a small town, where Wang Puhong looked out over the "tomorrow" Jeplos.

"Arrange an event for the crew to suppress the shock," Wang Puhong thought about it, and planned to arrange for the "Snow Dragon" to stay for a few hours between Little Diomede Island and Big Diomede Island, so that everyone could feel the scenery of "yesterday" and "tomorrow" with today's eyes respectively.

The itinerary at sea is relatively dull, and the people on board have just experienced the danger of being hit by an oil tanker, so it is very necessary to find something meaningful and new to adjust the nervousness.

After the announcement of the decompression plan of the captain of the "Snow Dragon", it was well received by the crew, and although many of the people on board had experience in ocean voyages, very few had visited the island of Diomed, a small one. Everyone was excited to have the opportunity to experience the opportunity to travel on the International Date Change Line.

"It's so cool," Da Fei couldn't wait to feel the feeling of "traveling through time".

"Actually, it's not that magical," Chen Bin was also very excited, but his concept was not as mysterious as Da Fei's understanding of this matter, "This date change line seems to be something that everyone in the world has formulated in order to unify time in the past, that is, 'artificial date line', and 'shuttle time' is more like a metaphor or a meaning given to it." I still remember watching a movie called "Around the World in 80 Days" when I was a child, in which the protagonist almost didn't get the money because he traveled the world from west to east, and the time was 24 hours faster. “

"I also have an impression of the story you said," Da Fei nodded, "I know that of course there is no possibility of traveling through time in this world, but this meaning is different, and when I return to Chongming, I can blow a wave with them." ”

Wales and Nome are located in the eastern part of the Greater and Lesser Diomede Islands, and these two towns have long been popular with polar expeditions and explorers as supply ports. This trip to the polar regions Wang Puhong did not choose any of them as a supply transfer station, because the outbreak of the disaster has made these two supply ports lose their original functions, relying on the "Snow Dragon" on the shore of their own crew to operate the supply work is very difficult and dangerous, so this time in the itinerary also directly decided to wait for the Yellow River station on Spitsbergen Island to do resupply.

The Yellow River Station is located in New Ålsund, on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, which was once a hotspot for Arctic scientific research, and in addition to the Yellow River Station, there are also research stations in Norway, Olrank, Britton, Vikingman, Sakura and Bagan.

The station building of the Yellow River Station is a two-story single-story red building with a slope roof, not far from the scientific research stations of several other countries, this small building was built in the forties of the last century, is a concrete structure, very strong. It was originally a dormitory building for a Norwegian company, and later the Chinese side rented the building from this company and renovated it. After the completion of the renovation project, the scientific research station has been in a state of trial operation, the total area of the two-story small building of the Yellow River Station is about 500 square meters, which has laboratories, offices, reading lounges, dormitories, storage rooms, etc., and there are five small "attics" at the top, which are important facilities in the scientific research station - optical observation platform.

In the Arctic, the Yellow River Station also has the largest space physics observation point in the world's polar scientific expeditions.