What filled the air was not sand, but dust much finer than sand grains. Dust as fine as flour was suspended in the air. With every breath, it filled the nostrils and mouth. Jonah immediately understood the meaning of sand fog. The origin is that in the Sand Falls with a height of 700 yards, tens of thousands of tons of heavy yellow sand fall to the bottom of the valley every second. The fine particles in the sand are raised high by the huge impact, forming an earth-yellow color that blocks the sky and the sun. The clouds and fog, although the northeast wind is very strong, cannot be blown away, like sand and fog frozen in the air.
"Lower all sails," Hannah's voice came. The visibility dropped quickly, and Jonah could no longer see her figure clearly from her position.
"Understood,... Captain," Danny replied angrily, but without delay, his hands swung dexterously between the sails and cables. As the sails were lowered one after another, "The Bactrian Wind" The speed of the ship dropped rapidly until all propulsion was lost, and only the chirping slowly squirmed in the dim fog.
"Ahem..." Danny came to Yona's side, coughed a few times, and complained: "Damn shabu, it wasn't so large in previous years. We are still 2 to 3 miles away from the Great Sand Falls. "
The apprentice astrologer opened his eyes with difficulty, "It makes sense to judge the slope through shabu. Danny, if there are data from previous years to compare with, I should be able to calculate the average slope this year. And if we can add the contour map, With wind data, it is also possible to find the area with the gentlest slope. Hannah is right. If even a layman like me can understand it, these should be the basic skills of a navigator,"
"I'm not a damn navigator. I'm a sailor. I can do the job of mainsailer and spinnaker at most. Apart from being able to use a telescope, I haven't received a day's training in navigation and mapping. There are only two people on this boat. Is it possible? Why do I have to do all the work except steering," the Stewart man yelled innocently, then choked and coughed.
Jonah felt that he had said the wrong thing, and he didn't know how to comfort the other person. Suddenly, the regular trembling came from his feet again, this time the amplitude was larger, making his whole body shake.
"No, Hannah," Danny raised his head suddenly, his face turned pale: "Chicha sent out a signal of fear again, the second time, this is unprecedented in previous years, right?"
"Never," Hannah replied in a calm voice.
Danny silently untied the belt of his robe, tied himself to the ship's railing, and fastened the buckle. Jonah couldn't help but imitate him in taking off his belt, trapping his waist firmly on the mainmast, and tying a tight knot.
For a moment, no one spoke, and the three-masted sailing ship sailed slowly in the sand and fog. The surroundings were as dim as a cloudy dusk, and the visibility was less than ten yards. Strangely, the strong northeast wind that had been blowing all the way seemed to have suddenly disappeared. The tips of Na's hair did not tremble at all, and there was a low whistling wind sound in front of him. It must be the sound of the rolling sand of the large sand waterfall. When I thought of the abyss 700 yards high, somewhere in front of me that I couldn't see clearly, the next step In an instant, he might fall off the cliff. Jonah felt that all the muscles in his body were tense, his bladder was being compressed, and he had a strong feeling of wanting to urinate. He grabbed the cable on the main mast with his fingers and tightened his legs.
"You want to pee, do you?" Danny glanced at him.
The astrologer's apprentice lowered his head in shame. After waking up from a hangover, he had not had time to go to the toilet.
"Me too," Danny said frankly, almost shamelessly.
Unknown horror is the scariest kind of horror, and the feeling of falling is one of the psychological factors that most easily make people feel scared. Jonah gritted his teeth tightly, knowing that it was impossible to see anything through the thick fog, but he still tried his best. Look ahead and try your best to give yourself some psychological comfort.
Time passed very slowly, and he felt that he had been waiting for too long. The sound of quicksand was neither loud nor quiet, and kept flowing in front of him.
The third tremor spread through the hull like ripples, and Jonah deeply felt the fear of the sand-eating insects chirping through the deck. "The third time..." Danny patted the side of the ship, "Chirping, do you remember, my dad? When I was still alive, one year the slope of the Great Sand Falls was particularly gentle. The entire quicksand surface was nearly 5,000 yards long. We used the northeast wind to sail through it at a speed so fast that we almost flew. Hannah, which year was that? of,"
"The year before daddy died," my sister answered.
Suddenly, the sound of quicksand disappeared, and there was an eerie silence all around. Jonah looked around at a loss, and the knuckles holding on to the cable turned white from excessive exertion.
"Here we go," Danny said.
The deck tilted, and the apprentice astrologer felt his center of gravity shift sharply, and the blood all over his body began to flow backwards to his head. The "Bactrian Wind" first tilted the bow slightly, then fell into the quicksand waterfall, and began to go downward at an extremely steep angle. Dive, deafening roars were heard all around, thousands of tons of yellow sand rolled down, the whole world was wrapped in sand and dust, only the violent shaking of the deck showed that the sailboat was in the torrent of surging sand waves.
Jonah's feet floated off the ground, and he grabbed the cable in horror. The bow of the Lord God Luta pointed to the void, and the front turned into the bottom. Although there was still a hazy sand mist, every organ in the body was telling the owner: He began to fall.
"Sure enough, this slope... poof," the man from the Stewart family only said half a sentence, because an unfixed wooden basin flew up and slapped him in the face, almost flattening the bridge of his nose.
All the items on the deck were suspended, and the ropes that fixed them were tightened. Even the heavy anchors were raised in the air. The steel anchor chains creaked, and Jonah could feel it from the frequency of dust particles hitting his face. As their speed increased dramatically, his back was pressed hard against the main mast by the feeling of acceleration, and the copper rivets dug into his muscles. However, the astrologer's apprentice felt no pain. Fear had overcome all other feelings, of course, even the hangover. The headache was completely conquered.
A wooden basin and a few red beads slowly floated past Jonah's eyes. They were nosebleeds spurting from Danny's nostrils. "Hannah, the slope is over 100%, right?" After wiping away the nosebleeds, Danny yelled. He said, "How fast will the terminal speed be? Do you need to raise the sail to slow down?"
"You are crazy. Raising the sail will change the force angle of Chi Chi. If we are blown away from the quicksand, we will fall," Hannah immediately rejected her brother's suggestion.
"But if the speed is higher than the sand-eating worm can withstand...she will die," Danny shouted.
After a few seconds of silence, "I hope Dad can lend us good luck," Hannah said.
"Lord Luta..." Danny began to close his eyes and pray, and small crystal red water drops continued to float out of his nostrils.
Jonah opened his mouth wide and wanted to scream, but his throat seemed to be blocked by the ubiquitous sand and dust, and no sound came out. The speed of the three-masted ship was getting faster and faster, and the shaking of the hull intensified, "Bucktree "The strong wind of Asia" made twisted groans everywhere, and the simply reinforced places rattled. A copper nail flew out, whirled into the sand, and was instantly swallowed by the quicksand. The astrologer's apprentice stuck his whole body to the main mast, I feel like I'm being squashed bit by bit.
With a drop of 700 yards and a slope of more than 120%, with a simple calculation, Jonah can calculate how long it will take for the sailboat to land at the bottom of the valley and how fast the final speed will be. But at this moment, he can't think at all, his brain is like Being squeezed out of his skull, his consciousness became completely blank.
That's enough, it's almost time to reach the ground, he kept thinking, but the long sand waterfall seemed to have no end. Whenever he thought that the speed had reached the limit, the feeling of ischemia in his body reminded him that the acceleration was not over yet. .
The violently swaying three-masted sailing ship was like fallen leaves fluttering in a hurricane. It could break into pieces with a bang at any time, and then be submerged in the yellow sand. Every screw was shaking and struggling to escape from the deck. Suddenly, a huge breaking sound was heard from the bow of the ship. "Be careful," Danny exclaimed. Hannah, who had her hands tied to the steering wheel, suddenly twisted her body to avoid it. A dark giant rolled past her hair and hit the foremast with a clang. It split into two pieces, penetrated the mainmast rope net like a bullet, and flew behind it.
When the thing flew past, Jonah saw the head of Luta, the god of fertility, with his mouth open, as if making a silent protest, "The brand new bow statue, a full 65 silver coins, although it has not been paid yet, but the debt is still there." Increased, my God..." Danny's screams sounded.
The Stewart family's misfortune was not over yet. A few seconds later, the foremast, which had been hit hard, heard the sound of wood fibers breaking, then broke in half from the center, and collapsed with countless sail ropes. Jonah watched helplessly. He saw the black shadow enlarging in front of his eyes, but there was no way to avoid it.
"Boom," half of the mast rubbed his left arm and hit the deck hard, knocking a large piece of wooden plank into pieces. Then it bounced up and rotated with the wind. The fiber bundles that were not completely disconnected at the crack creaked. It was tightened, then crackled, and finally the last link was severed. The broken mast immediately flew into the air, but the messy ropes were tangled together, and the main mast was tightened under the force, holding half of the foremast like a kite. in the air.
"Hannah, are you okay," Danny yelled.
"It doesn't matter to me." In the sand and fog, he vaguely saw the current head of Stewart's family covering his forehead. He should have been slightly injured, but Hannah looked back and immediately shouted: "cut the rope, otherwise the main mast will not be able to hold up." "
Jonah used all his strength to raise his head and saw that the mainmast was bent like a big bow again, and the iron sheets that had been repaired last time were cracking. He wanted to leave this dangerous place, but then he realized that he had tied himself too tightly. , there is no way to break free; and when falling at high speed, untying the rope is tantamount to suicide.
"Danny," Hannah saw Jonah's condition and immediately called her brother. Danny gritted his teeth, pulled out a dagger and cut off his belt. His body immediately levitated, his feet swaying in the hurricane, "Wait a minute. , I'll go right away." He inserted the dagger into the deck, stabilized his body, and tried to approach the main mast.
"It's too late," Hannah watched helplessly as the mast bent beyond its limit. Soon, the mainmast would break completely like the foremast, uprooting the tangled sail cables and the stunned cargo friend. , fell into the quicksand, she bit her lips and made a move that no one expected.
"Catch it, please..."
Thirteen red crystals emitted light in the sand mist. Jonah saw the ivory-white magic pistol zooming in front of his eyes. Hannah threw the "Summer White Cherry", her most cherished weapon, towards a person she A person she is not yet familiar with, a piece of goods that she has not yet had time to become familiar with,