Whew! Whew!
In front of Lorraine was a grassy arete, short and small, with broad blades of grass.
He took the torch and repeatedly prairied a few times on it, driving out some messy little insects, then changed to a long wooden pole, stood far away, pursed his lips and poked one by one.
The party had traveled less than two kilometers in three hours deep into the jungle, slower than even the Buttercup had traveled in the middle of the fog zone.
But no opposition was born in the ranks.
Caution is a virtue when traveling in the middle of a strange jungle.
For example, the sailors had originally had a problem with the coarse cloth smocks that covered their bodies, because the weather on the island was stifling, and the men of the sea preferred the exposure of the sun and the caress of the sea breeze.
But after a spider-on-the-face mishap, the sound went completely silent.
It was a beautiful spider, dark brown in color on its body, adorned with camouflage-style light-colored markings on its foot joints and body in complementary symmetry, lying all over the tree, holding its silk as it floated up and looked no different than a withered fallen leaf.
It has a pair of huge fangs.
Some knowledgeable sailors recognized that this is a lace bird spider produced in the tropics, although not too aggressive, but the toxicity is amazing, can make people unconscious.
And it happened to plop down on a sailor's facecloth ...
After that, the complaints and objections died down, and Lorraine, who was leading the group, became more and more cautious, the torch blazing through almost every tree and leaf.
But even so, a sailor was bitten by a venomous snake that scurried down from a tree, and it took almost half a pound of flesh chipped away by Hina's quick knife to get the crimson blood flowing again.
Solely this hellish experience has finally come to an end ...
Crossing the last grassy arete, they stepped out onto a vast, flat field of volcanic rock.
The dark slopes are traces of past lava flows, dense, not easily weathered, and containing a large amount of metal making it not only an excellent natural stone, but also difficult to form vegetation.
The bare rocky ground was synonymous with safety in the eyes of the sailors, and Lorraine breathed a long sigh of relief and waved her hand, "Five hundred meters forward, half an hour's rest, water allowed."
A soft cheer went up from the group.
They marched onward, choosing a resting place on the exposed rocky outcrops, and the sweltering sailors could not wait to undo their smocks and expose their sweat-stained bodies to the sea breeze.
Lorraine picked a higher boulder and stood side by side with Hina, surveying the island's coastline from afar.
"Have you found a more suitable passage?" Hina's voice was hardly worried, "It's too long a day's journey, and even if we do find a source of water, we can't guarantee that the sailors will be able to load it safely."
Lorraine shook her head helplessly.
He squatted down and drew white marks on the jagged volcanic rock with his machete and said softly, "Generally speaking, the windward side of an island is the most gentle and the windward side is the steepest. Herbasi Island's windward side is to the north, and we both landed on the west side, while the Buttercup was on the east side."
"If that's the case, why don't we go north when we're looking for a boat?"
"Because of proximity." Lorraine sighed, "And I'm worried about finding the wreckage of the Buttercup's collision on the southern cliffs. If they landed on the beach to the windward, they would at least be safe, even if the encounter was later."
Hina nodded in agreement.
Lorraine continued to draw lines on the ground, "Bypassing the mountains, we'll reach the windward side, where the vegetation will be sparser and most likely to accumulate a source of fresh water in the form of small lakes and deep pools, and when we find it, we'll be able to delineate the shortest route toward the beach and open up a safe passage for the shipment of fresh water."
"What if it doesn't?"
"If there's no ... then we'll have to go to the leeward side. The rock formations there are the most intact and prone to caverns,** except that the fresh water reservoirs will be much smaller, and finding only one or two will probably not be enough for what we need."
Hina looked down and thought for a moment, remembering that during the search for the ship they had indeed found a few very small pools of water, barely enough to fill a few barrels, and not only difficult to transport, but not enough storage cubes to consume an entire ship's worth of people for a few days.
It was like Lorraine's concern that the water storage on the leeward side could only be used for replenishment and could not fundamentally solve the problem of water shortage for hundreds of people.
"It would be nice to have a heavy rain ..."
"Yeah. If there's a big rain, we won't have to worry about water headaches."
The party continued its march, following a gentle slope of volcanic rock, skirting to the north, and in a short time came to the windward side of the island, where, amidst a sea of turquoise and silver sand, and a scattering of starry, green, dwarfed trees, a glimpse of two pools of water, one high and the other low, was made out!
The taller one is smaller, gourd-shaped, about five or six meters on the long side and two or three meters on the short side, positioned right where the volcanic rocky ground meets the sparse forest, jasper in color and slightly rippling in the wind.
The shorter one is huge, round, about 60 or 70 meters so far, positioned right along the upper edge of the beach, forest on one side, sand on the other, with transparent and beautiful colors.
The sailors perked up, and the sexier ones directly thanked their Lord for rushing down the hill, and Lorraine was unable to stop them for a moment, but could only watch as four or five of them rushed into the forest, and in a few moments fled from it with screams of anguish.
Following them ... were majestic boars with open tusks.
"Power!" There were six boars in total, and one ran the fastest, charging extremely hard.
It lowered its head to catch up with the slowest running sailor and arched its head with a strange cry.
Sharp tusks stabbed out of the sailor's back and pierced through his chest, the sailor's eyes widened and he opened his hands helplessly, and was quickly flung away again by the boar.
His body fell onto the volcanic rock and tumbled over, leaving behind a trail of stinging bloodstains along the way.
Lorraine drew her twin swords with a clank and lowered her body, "Fight!"
Hina rushed out ahead of him.
She leaned forward and darted, running a few steps before four red velvet flying daggers came out of her hand, one of them hitting the murderous boar squarely in the eye, socket and in, straight into the hilt.
The boar fell pouncing out with a miserable howl, and the rest of the boars crossed over and charged at Hina.
But Haina was by no means alone.
She shot out flying daggers and Lorraine's figure chased after them.
Behind Lorraine were a dozen other brave sailors who crossed over to Haina, avoiding their running companions, and met the ferocious beasts in twos and threes.
Two sailors were knocked out on the spot.
Lorraine dodged to avoid the surprise attack, her body spinning lightly, her long blade guarding her body into the petals of a stretching flower, slicing gently through the back legs of the two boars from between them.
Bright red animal blood splashed out, and the two boars wailed and fell to the ground.
Hina got her breath back and leapt up to avoid the hog's bulge, and four more flying daggers left her hand, three of them hitting, and one more sticking in the hindquarters, ripping open huge wounds as the boar ran.
This means that the fourth boar is out of action.
Lorraine and Hina's powerful kills reduced the pressure on the sailors, who fought the boars in groups of five or six, and their running companions rolled back, further widening the difference in numbers between the two sides.
After paying the price of two people being knocked away and one person being seriously injured, the left side of the battle group finally had a stabbing sword pierced through the boar's eyes, the stabbing sword was immediately broken, and the boar's soul also returned to the West.
On the right side of the battle group it was Lorraine who ended the battle.
He flipped and killed his way back into the fray, picking up his opponent from the sailors, two long, sharp Finnish knives flying up and down, circling the lumbering boar.
The boar couldn't arch Lorraine, and the most threatening Pig Suddenly couldn't be activated due to the suppression of the peripheral sailors, and after taking fourteen slashes, it was finally slashed in the center of the eyebrow by Lorraine, completely losing its life.
The sudden encounter lasted but a few minutes.
One of the sailors was killed, three were seriously injured, and four others were knocked off their feet, each resulting in bruises and contusions of varying degrees of severity, and what a terrible price to pay.
Eyeing the misery of the party, Lorraine sheathed her sword and stared angrily at the unauthorized sailors.
"Run and howl without orders. Gentlemen, is that all it takes to jump shipboard?"