Chapter 1

After shouting out the first toast,

Fang Senyan raised his glass again and shouted:

"May God bless his wife and daughter with health."

This toast was unheard of by these people, and the content seemed to contradict the previous curses? However, Fang Senyan claimed to be from the distant East. To Europe, no matter what the impression of the East was, it had always been shrouded in a veil of mystery. So they speculated that it should be a unique Eastern custom to show his broad mind, but no one echoed this sentence.

But Fang Senyan took a big gulp of wine and then raised his glass and shouted:

"May God take me to his house!"

As soon as Fang Senyan shouted this sentence, most people were stunned for a moment, and then they realized the deep meaning and laughed wildly/smirked. They raised their glasses and shouted:

"May God bless his wife and daughter with health! May God take me to his house!"

After Fang Senyan's performance, he smoothly integrated into the atmosphere of the bar. However, when he seriously asked these people how to go to the three big ships in the port to be a sailor, he was ruthlessly ridiculed.

It turned out that these three ships had already become legends at sea. Every time they went out, they returned fully loaded. In simple terms, it was a superb job that worked from ten to four, guaranteed income regardless of drought or flood, with a two-hour lunch break, and could have their eating, drinking, whoring, and gambling expenses reimbursed after work. It could be said that those who wanted to work there as sailors flocked to it, and the competition was extremely fierce, even fiercer than taking the exam to become a glorious worker-peasant-soldier college student thirty years ago, and even more exaggerated than taking the national civil service exam thirty years later. For Fang Senyan, a sailor who only had potential but was unknown, it was simply an impossible task.

After paying the price of five glasses of rum, Fang Senyan finally understood that he still had two paths to take. The first was to find an obscure pirate ship to work on and slowly plot to get onto those three legendary pirate ships after making some achievements. The second path was to reform.

The reform here, of course, does not refer to a sex worker earning enough money and then going to a famous gynecology hospital to have a xxx repair surgery and then finding a naive fool to marry, but refers to joining the official fleet - to be precise, it means going to the two British [***] warships docked on the south side of Tortuga to be a sailor. If Fang Senyan could have looked back when he first entered this world, he would have seen the flags of these two warships fluttering in the sea breeze.

Choosing the first path was undoubtedly full of dangers and challenges, and of course, there would inevitably be more opportunities. As for the second path, Fang Senyan could guess from these pirates' descriptions: fixed salary, monotonous life, relatively small risks, but equally scarce opportunities.

Fang Senyan was not a person who was content with the status quo. More importantly, from a small perspective, the British national fleet has always appeared as a tragic character in the world of *Pirates of the Caribbean*. In *Pirates 4*, it was even completely suppressed by the Spanish Armada. From a larger perspective, if this first step was a mistake, then it was likely that he would be even more passive in the future, and he would have to put in ten or a hundred times more effort to enter the core plot. So, from a short-term perspective, choosing the national fleet was a low-risk, good-return behavior, but from a long-term perspective, it was relatively disadvantageous.

After making up his mind, he no longer hesitated. The scarred Henry in front of him also seemed quite generous, so Fang Senyan directly asked him to recommend a ship that was short of manpower, saying that he was willing to slowly earn some travel expenses, and then think about how to go home. After hearing Fang Senyan's request, Scarred Henry laughed and said:

"Sailor Rock? Do you really want to work on a ship?"

Fang Senyan smiled bitterly:

"I have no way to go now. What else can I do except do my old job?"

Scarred Henry took a deep look at Fang Senyan, stroked his chin, and pondered:

"Our ship is short of a handyman, but he has to raise and lower the sails, and scrub the deck. Of course, he can't drop his knife when he needs to pick it up. But although the work is a bit hard, our Captain Armand is quite generous. I don't know if you want to try it--but even if I nod, it doesn't count. Anyone who gets on the ship has to pass the test according to the old rules."

When Fang Senyan heard the three words "Armand," his heart moved. This guy seemed to have appeared in the movie plot of *Pirates of the Caribbean 3*, and he appeared as the Black Sea Pirate King, one of the Seven Sea Lords, specializing in activities on the Black Sea, commanding Islamic pirates to plunder Christian merchant ships, and successfully uniting with the Ottoman Empire to control all areas from Morocco to Turkey.

At this time, this guy probably hasn't shown any signs of success yet. But without a doubt, being able to go to sea with a guy who will be equal to Jack Sparrow/Barbossa in the future will of course offer many more opportunities.

"I am willing to try to pass the test." Fang Senyan stood up and said decisively. In fact, he also knew very well in his heart that if he hadn't gained Scarred Henry's favor in the arm wrestling and drinking, then with his meager charm, he really wouldn't have had the opportunity to join the "Bell and Goblet" pirate ship.

Scarred Henry and Mader behind him looked at each other, with a mysterious smile on their faces. Several unemployed pirates in the bar saw that Fang Senyan had "applied" successfully, and they also came over to strike up a conversation, but were ruthlessly rejected.

Half an hour later, Fang Senyan stood on the deck of the "Bell and Goblet."

This was a North Sea three-masted square-sailed ship between medium and large size. The slender hull was painted with wide stripes of gray and dark blue. The tall masts were hung with Latin sails carefully sewn with awning cloth warp and weft. Dozens of gray and thick hawsers were intertwined in the afterglow of the setting sun, like a spider web with a feeling of wanting to capture everything. Several white seagulls with ruffled feathers and picking claws stayed on the empty watchtower. The ram of the ship stood out high, inexplicably reminiscent of the tip protruding from the head of a unicorn.

The deck was pieced together with planks of *坡垒* wood that had grown for at least thirty years, which could provide considerable protection while reducing the chance of being ignited by fire. The surface was scrubbed quite clean, which showed that Scarred Henry was at least a qualified first mate. Because a clean deck is not only pleasing to the eye and the feeling, but more importantly, details determine success or failure. When sailing in the sea, violent bumps and swaying are inevitable. A dirty deck surface will double the chance of you falling, which is definitely a nightmare-like start, and the consequences can be serious, even leading to a serious accident of falling headfirst into the sea.

Undoubtedly, Scarred Henry bringing Fang Senyan back to the ship caused a small sensation. This made everyone on the pirate ship lazily get up and welcome the stranger on board in a way of onlookers. These guys in ragged and variegated clothes, with cutlasses and knives around their waists, were lazily scattered everywhere on the deck, with their arms folded in front of their chests, looking up and down with a meaningful look.

"God! You actually let a damn stranger defile our deck without the captain's permission. Mader, you idiot, if you kneel down immediately and apologize and offer me your axe, then I can pretend that this never happened."

The person who spoke had just walked out of the cabin. He was a guy wearing a sun hat, with two white feathers inserted in the hat. If it weren't for his swarthy skin and deep wrinkles, he would really look a bit like an aristocrat. And Fang Senyan also noticed that Mader, who he spoke to very rudely, couldn't help but shrink back. Obviously, this person had considerable power on the ship.

Scarred Henry stood up at this time and said in a loud voice:

"Mr. Charles, as the first mate of the Bell and Goblet, I think I have the right to adjust the improper things on the ship. Your duty is to accurately take everyone to where they should go, nothing more."

Charles was choked by Scarred Henry, but he insisted:

"Only the great Captain Armand has the right to directly appoint crew members. You can only recommend, unless he can pass the customary test, otherwise I will never recognize such a stranger on board! The Bell and Goblet will also suffer an inexplicable curse!"

The last sentence drew a large number of exclamations. As a senior crew member, Fang Senyan had already made things very clear by watching coldly at this time. He was obviously caught in a whirlpool of power struggle. Here, we have to talk about the main composition of pirate ships in this era:

The captain is the commander-in-chief of the entire ship, the main decision-maker, the highest risk, and can manage everything in an emergency, but usually doesn't manage much.

The first mate can be understood as a butler: in charge of internal affairs, assigning personnel, managing eating, drinking, shitting, and sleeping, and in charge of cargo (calculating the center of gravity of the cargo, the stability of the ship, and also allocating the cargo. A simple explanation is that you can't load the goods that arrive at the port first to the bottom, and there are also the types of goods, you can't load tea and fruit together, once the fruit breathes back to moisture, the tea is finished; rubber and oil drums are also not possible, in case of oil leakage... If it is a general cargo ship, loading dozens or hundreds of kinds of goods at a time, of course, it won't work without a good first mate.

Finally, there is the characteristic figure of this era: the navigator: at this time, there is no radar, and they can only rely on the stars, compass, and weather to locate the ship at sea. Drawing routes and charts requires very rich experience and professional knowledge. Navigators are like the eyes of the ship, guiding the correct direction. At the same time, because they are highly educated and have to draw charts, they also serve as pastors and missionaries, talking to pirates who feel lonely and afraid, solving their mental problems, and spreading the faith to the primitive residents. In simple and straightforward terms, on the vast sea, the navigator combines the functions of radar/Playboy magazine/mobile phone.