boyutpedia Chapter 32
Chapter 32
Chen Zheng put the copper whistle in his mouth, his tongue pressing against the mouthpiece, and the metallic taste of copper spread in his mouth.
He took a deep breath, his chest bulged, and then slowly deflated.
After repeating this three times, my heartbeat went from rapid to steady.
This is something I learned on a construction site in my past life.
One of his coworkers was a veteran who taught him the tricks of going into the water.
Before going into the water, regulate your breathing. If your heart rate is too fast, you won't be able to stay underwater for long.
"Ah Zheng, I'm holding the rope." Zhang Jianguo squatted at the bow of the boat, gripping the hemp rope with both hands.
Chen Zheng nodded, braced himself against the gunwale, and leaned back.
thump.
Water rushed in from all directions, and the coolness permeated my whole body.
He opened his eyes; the water was pale green.
Sunlight shone down from above, casting shimmering beams of light across the water.
Aquatic plants grow up from the bottom of the lake, swaying back and forth with the undercurrent, with tiny bubbles hanging on their leaves.
He rolled over, head down and feet up, and plunged into the water.
The hemp rope around her waist followed her downwards, sinking into the water section by section.
Chen Zheng paddled with one hand, gripped the iron hook with the other, and stared at the bottom of the water.
The further down you go, the dimmer the light becomes, and the water color changes from light green to dark green, and then to blackish green.
More than two zhang deep, the pressure at the bottom of the water made my eardrums swell.
He pinched his nose and took a deep breath.
boo.
The eardrum is open.
The bottom of the water was a muddy, dark area with a few clumps of aquatic plants.
He saw the hard object.
It rose up from the silt, its surface covered with a layer of slippery algae, making it impossible to see what lay beneath.
Chen Zheng swam over and reached out to touch it.
The surface algae was wiped away, revealing the underlying texture.
It's black and hard, with wood grain.
It's wood.
My heart skipped a beat.
He reached along the edge of the hard object from east to west, but couldn't reach it even with his arms outstretched.
My fingers traced the wood grain and touched a sharp edge, like the seam of a ship's plank.
Something was stuck in the seam. He picked at it and found his fingernails filled with black mud mixed with hemp fibers.
Twisted hemp fibers.
The old boatmen on Baiyang Lake used hemp fibers mixed with tung oil and lime to sew their seams.
His father also knew this craft; when he was a child, he would squat in the yard and watch his father work on it.
The hemp fibers were pounded until soft, then mixed with tung oil and lime. They were then chiseled into the seams of the ship's planks, making them so solid that water couldn't seep in.
Chen Zheng felt his way forward along the seam.
When I reached about an arm's length away, my fingers touched a dent.
The dent wasn't large, about the thickness of a fist, with irregular edges, like wood that had naturally collapsed after rotting.
He stuck his finger in and touched a layer of soft, splintered wood.
My finger continued to probe deeper and encountered something hard.
It's cool and slippery; it's not wood.
He pried the thing out.
The silt seeped through his fingers, revealing the shape of the thing.
It is a copper coin, round on the outside and square on the inside, with a layer of green rust on the surface, making the characters on it illegible.
He clutched the copper coin in his palm, feeling as if something had struck his heart.
Shipwreck.
Copper coins.
Right.
He stuffed the copper coins into the bamboo basket and continued feeling around.
The area of the hard object was larger than he had imagined, stretching more than two zhang from east to west and more than one zhang from south to north.
Its shape does indeed resemble a boat, with the east end higher than the west end.
The highest point of the part that rises above the silt is about one and a half feet, while the lowest point is almost level with the silt.
Most of the ship's hull was buried in silt, with only the section above the gunwale visible.
He then felt several dents, reached in with his fingers, and pulled out clumps of hemp fibers and wood chips.
There was no second copper coin.
There wasn't much air left in my lungs, and my chest started to feel stuffy.
He tugged at the rope around his waist, and pulled it slightly.
The rope slipped out of his hand.
Zhang Jianguo loosened the rope by one foot on the boat.
Chen Zheng continued to feel along the bottom of the boat. His fingers touched a protrusion, the shape of which was different from the ones he had touched before.
It is square, with edges and corners, about a foot square, and protrudes from the side of the ship.
He removed the surface mud.
The water suddenly became murky, and after the muddy mist dissipated, he could see the thing clearly.
It was an iron box, badly rusted, with rust bubbles bulging on its surface.
The box was embedded in the wood of the ship's side, stuck in the planks, with only one corner showing.
My heart started racing.
He gripped the edge of the metal box and tried to pull it outwards. He couldn't budge it.
After fifty years of rusting, the iron box and the ship planks have grown together, remaining completely undisturbed.
He tugged again, but it still wouldn't budge.
The air in my lungs is almost gone.
He loosened the iron box and tugged at the rope around his waist.
Pull it twice.
The rope suddenly tightened, and a force pulled him upwards.
He took one last look at the metal box.
It was embedded in the ship's planks, covered in silt and algae, quietly resting at the bottom of the water.
Splash!
Its head broke the surface of the water, and the sunlight stung its eyes.
He gasped for breath, lake water dripping from his hair and into his mouth, tasting of muddy, fishy air.
"Ah Zheng!" Zhang Jianguo pulled the rope back. "How's that?"
Chen Zheng grabbed the gunwale and climbed aboard.
Water gushed down from my body, pooling on the deck.
He opened his palm, and there lay the copper coin, covered in green rust, with half of the square hole in the middle blocked by rust.
Three people gathered around.
Zhang Jianguo's eyes were wide open, and his mouth was agape, unable to close for a long time.
Chen Rong squatted down, stretched out his finger and touched the edge of the copper coin, where it was covered with a layer of green rust.
Liu Jiawang took off his glasses, wiped them with the corner of his clothes, put them back on, and looked closely.
"This...this was fished out from underwater?"
Chen Zheng turned the copper coin over. The back was also covered in a layer of green rust, and a few words could be vaguely seen, but they were blurry.
He handed the copper coin to Liu Jiawang: "Jiawang, take a look, can you recognize the characters on it?"
Liu Jiawang took the copper coin, held it up to his eyes, and squinted at it for a long time.
He turned the copper coin around in his hand, his brow furrowed in a frown:
"Guangxu... Yuanbao... I can't see the character clearly, it's rusted too badly."
"A Guangxu Yuanbao coin?" Zhang Jianguo scratched his head. "When was that issued?"
"Guangxu was the reign title of an emperor in the Qing Dynasty."
Liu Jiawang weighed the copper coin in his palm.
"It was probably during the Guangxu era... Let me think, this copper coin is at least seventy or eighty years old."
Seventy or eighty years.
Chen Zheng did some mental calculations.
The shipwreck his grandfather mentioned sank decades ago, which matches the timeline.
"What else is down there?" Zhang Jianguo asked impatiently.
Chen Zheng explained the underwater situation.
The wooden boat was over two zhang long and over one zhang wide, and most of it was buried in silt.
The east end is higher than the west end.
Twisted hemp fibers, rotten ship planks.
And that iron box, embedded in the ship's side, can't be pulled out.
"An iron box?" Zhang Jianguo jumped to his feet, but the boat rocked, so he quickly squatted down again. "What's inside?"
"I don't know. It's rusted and can't be pulled out."
"Then let's go down again and bring the box back up!"
Chen Zheng shook his head: "I can't pull it."
The metal box is rusted together with the ship's planks; you couldn't pull it out by hand even next year. You'd need tools.
"What tool?"
"A crowbar. The iron box is embedded in the wood; we need to use a crowbar to pry it out."
Alternatively, hook an iron hook onto the side of the box and pull it down from above with a rope.
Zhang Jianguo rubbed his hands together, pacing back and forth in the cabin like an ant on a hot pan.
After circling around twice, he stopped and asked, "Shall we go back and get the crowbar now?"
"No rush." Chen Zheng took the copper coin from Liu Jiawang's hand, examined it from all angles.
"This copper coin was pulled out from a rotten hole in the ship's plank, not from an iron box."
This indicates that the items scattered from the shipwreck were not limited to those in the iron boxes.
There might be something else buried in the silt at the bottom of the water.
He said that, but he was thinking something else entirely.
The iron box was embedded in the ship's side, indicating that the box was in that position when the ship sank.
The gunwale is the most stable part of a ship, so it's illogical to put valuables there.
Unless the box was placed there by someone else on the ship.
When the ship sank, everyone on board fled for their lives.
Some people took advantage of the chaos to hide valuables on the side of the ship, thinking they would come back to retrieve them later.
The ship sank too quickly; everyone perished, but the boxes remained.
If that's the case, then the contents of the iron box might be more valuable than the ship owner's batch of gold.
"Brother, I'll go down and take a look," Chen Rong suddenly said.
Chen Zheng glanced at him.
Chen Rong squatted at the bow of the boat, his hands gripping the thin bamboo pole, the tip of which was sharpened to a point and still covered with wood shavings from the last bottom exploration.
He looked at Chen Zheng with unwavering eyes.
"Can you swim?"
"Yes. I practiced in the shallow waters of Nanwan this spring and can hold my breath for more than a minute."
"It's over two zhang (approximately 6.6 meters) deep underwater, the pressure is immense, it hurts my eardrums. There are undercurrents; if you get caught, you can't come back up. Do you dare go down?"
"I dare." Chen Rong said just that one word.
Chen Zheng looked at him for a while, then nodded: "Okay. You can get off. I'll pull you off the boat."
He untied the hemp rope from his waist, tied it around Chen Rong's waist, made a sailor's knot, and tugged at it, but it didn't budge.
Then he took the glass bottle containing pig's blood out of the bamboo basket and put it into Chen Rong's hand.
"Hold onto this bottle. If you encounter any trouble underwater, crush it."
The pig's blood spread out, and I could see the red on the water's surface; that's when I knew where you were.
Chen Rong took the bottle, looked at it, and put it in his pocket.
He took off his clothes, leaving him only in his underwear.
The fourteen-year-old boy was so thin that his ribs bulged out, his shoulders were narrow, and his arms were as thin as two hemp stalks.
But his eyes didn't look like a child's.
"Rongzi, after you go down, follow the route I just explored."
The east end is higher than the west end, and the iron box is on the west side of the ship's side.
Don't rush to pry it open; first, feel around in the mud to see what's inside.
Copper coins, silver dollars, jewelry—anything is fine. Put whatever you find in the bamboo basket.
Chen Rong nodded and slung the bamboo basket over his shoulder. The basket looked particularly large on his back, like a tortoise shell.
He took a mouthful of water, rinsed it in his mouth, and then spat it out.
Take a deep breath, let your chest expand, and your thin ribs stretch out.
Then he braced himself against the gunwale, flipped over, and slid into the water.
The splash was much smaller than Chen Zheng's earlier.
Chen Zheng gripped the hemp rope, his eyes fixed on the water.
Chen Rong's shadow grew smaller and smaller underwater, turning into a blurry black shape as it sank to the bottom.
The hemp rope slipped from Chen Zheng's hands section by section, making a hissing sound.
"Can Rongzi manage?" Zhang Jianguo squatted down beside him, gripping the gunwale with both hands.
"It can be done," Chen Zheng said.
He said that, but his palms were sweaty.
The hemp rope slid through his palm.
He stared intently at the water, his eyes unblinking.
Liu Jiawang sat at the bow of the boat, his ear facing the water, completely still.
He listened for a while, then suddenly spoke up: "Rongzi is heading west. The sound of water is going west."
"How did you figure that out?" Zhang Jianguo asked.
"The sound of him paddling. The direction of the splash is different when he paddles east versus west."
Paddle westward, water splashes eastward, the sound muffled.
Zhang Jianguo opened his mouth as if to say something, but then swallowed it back.
The rope stopped. Chen Zheng felt the force on the rope had changed.
It moves horizontally.
Rongzi has reached the end.
He closed his eyes, placed his fingers on the hemp rope, and felt every vibration transmitted through it.
Underwater, Chen Rong was feeling for something.
The rope tightened and loosened repeatedly.
About a minute later.
Chen Zheng opened his eyes and began to pull in the rope, one pull at a time.
The weight at the other end of the rope is moving upwards.
The dark shadow underwater grew larger and larger, transforming from a blurry outline into the shape of a person.
Splash!
Chen Rong's head broke the surface of the water. His face was purple and his lips were bluish, but his eyes were full of light.
He clung to the gunwale, and Chen Zheng and Zhang Jianguo each grabbed one of his arms and dragged him onto the boat.
Chen Rong lay on the deck, panting heavily, water dripping from his mouth and nose.
After catching his breath, he finally recovered, sat up, took the bamboo basket off his back, and dumped it onto the boat deck.
Splash!
A pile of things rolled out of the bamboo basket and spread out on the boat plank.
There were a dozen or so copper coins, of various sizes, rusted and clumped together, some stuck together and impossible to separate.
A silver coin, its surface blackened, but the serrations on the edge are still clearly visible.
A snuff bottle, about the size of a palm, made of porcelain, with a white background and blue flowers depicting a landscape; a small piece is missing from the mouth of the bottle.
A copper lock, rusted to death, with a piece of rotten wood still hanging on the lock beam.
There are also a few broken pieces of porcelain, white with blue decorations, which cannot be pieced together.
Zhang Jianguo squatted down, his hands trembling as he picked up the silver coin and turned it over to look at it.
The reverse side of the silver dollar features a dragon with its body coiled in a circle and its claws outstretched. Although it has turned black, the dragon's scales are still clearly visible.
"This...this is silver?" His voice trembled.
Liu Jiawang took it, weighed it in his hand, blew on it, and then listened to it by his ear.
He handed the silver dollar back, nodding: "Silver. Guangxu Yuanbao, 7.2 mace. I've seen it in a book."
"How much is it worth?"
"It's hard to say. The silver dollar itself is worth the price of silver, but this one is in good condition with a clear dragon design, so someone might be willing to pay a high price for it."
I'd estimate it'd cost at least ten or twenty yuan.
Zhang Jianguo gasped. A dozen or twenty yuan, a silver dollar.
On the deck were a pile of things: a dozen copper coins, a silver dollar, and a snuff bottle.
Added together, it's at least several tens of yuan.
"Rongzi, is there any more down there?" Zhang Jianguo's eyes were red.
Chen Rong caught his breath and wiped the water off his face with his sleeve: "Yes. There are quite a few things buried in the mud."
Copper coins were the most numerous, scattered in the cracks of the ship's planks and on the surface of the silt. These were all I could find; I couldn't reach anything deeper.
"What about the metal box?"
"I saw it. It was embedded in the hull, badly rusted. I tugged at it, but it wouldn't budge."
Just like my brother said, we need a crowbar.
Chen Zheng gathered the items on the boat plank and put them back into the bamboo basket.
He picked up the silver coin and examined it from all angles. The dragon design on the coin was indeed clear, and it was in good condition.
Liu Jiawang is right. If you take a silver dollar of this quality to the county and find someone who knows its value, it will fetch more than twenty yuan.