Chapter 382.
Chapter 382 – The Sound of Cannon
After seeing the scribbled and sharp letters on that line, Lawrence froze together with the first mate beside him.
“Humans have and only have two eyes …… Why is there such a sentence engraved here?” The first mate opened his eyes wide and stared at the line for a long time before turning his head in confusion, “Isn’t that perfectly normal-except for a very few congenital deformities, who doesn’t have two eyes?”
Lawrence, however, didn’t speak first, but broke the silence only after a long silence, “Who do you think left this line?”
“The natives of the …… island?” The first mate said with less certainty, “There were once people on this island?”
“It’s hard to say about this island, but there were definitely people on Dagger Island in the real world,” Lawrence said slowly, reaching out to gently touch those engravings on the wall, the rough and genuine touch coming from his fingertips as if conveying the strong emotion and intention of the words as they were etched, “Humans have and only have two eyes, and the fact that someone dedicated this phrase to carving it into the wall perhaps says one thing ……”
“Says one thing?”
“There have been things on this island that were not ‘with and only two eyes’ that looked like humans,” Lawrence slowly raised his head and looked out into the thick fog around him and the shadowed vistas in it, “And they blend in amongst the humans, yet cannot be easily detected.”
The first mate inhaled softly and spoke hesitantly, “And where did …… the man who left that message go?”
“I don’t know,” Lawrence shook his head, for some reason he was reminded of all the black mud he had seen along the way, and the empty dock area, but he quickly put those extraneous associations aside for the moment, and placed his hand on the doorknob of the harbor office, “Be on guard. ”
The sound of a gun unscrewing its safety came from behind him, and Lawrence settled back and pushed that door open with a slight force in his hand.
He quickly dodged aside to avoid exposing his body to anything that might be hiding inside the building, as the first mate to his side took a half step forward and pointed the muzzle of his rifle inside the door of the room in a semi-crouching position, followed by the sailors who raised their guns and pointed them at the door from all angles.
There was no movement within the building.
The first mate standing in the doorway settled himself and cautiously probed the room.
“There’s no one in there,” he looked back, “it’s an empty office with a light on inside.”
Lawrence waved his hand to the sailors and led the way into the room with the first mate.
It was an empty office, with a couple of desks taking up almost half of the space inside, and a couple of chairs placed casually in front of the desks as if someone had been sitting on them a second before, the electric lights on the roof and the gas lamps on the walls were on, making the room extraordinarily bright, and on the floor …… there was that weird and suspicious black slime everywhere .
“This place is also full of this kind of disgusting stuff …… “The first mate frowned and looked at the black substance in the room, his disgust overflowing, he carefully bypassed the mud on the floor and came to those desks, his eyes swept over the messy piles of documents on them and the various office supplies, “Are these things …… Captain you want to come and take a look?”
“They are all forms and reports that the port needs to deal with on a daily basis, supplies coming in and out, personnel transfers, facility inspections, and inspection reports for machinery and equipment …… “Lawrence came to those desks and looked at a few documents on them, his brows slowly furrowing, the “Dated …… just a few days ago?”
“It’s as if there were people working here not too long ago,” one of the sailors gulped nervously and muttered in a low voice, “and then everyone was evacuated in such a hurry that they didn’t have time to pack their things …… “
“Hasty evacuation?” Lawrence mumbled in a low voice, his eyes swept over the table, half a cup of unfinished coffee was placed on the table, a thin layer of dust floated on it, and beside this table, a puddle of black mud had already dried up, and a small amount of black substance was still left on top of the seat, his expression gradually stared, “Was it really an evacuation… …”
The first mate noticed the change in the old captain’s tone, “Captain, are you thinking of something?”
Lawrence thought for a moment, and was just about to open his mouth to say something when an ear-piercing noise suddenly came from outside the room – it sounded like the direction of the harbor plaza, the current noise of the radio speakers when they suddenly activated!
“Buzz–“
The piercing noise took everyone by surprise, and the sailors scrambled to cast their eyes out of the window, while in the next instant an intermittent, distorted and mixed with disturbances radio sound resounded throughout the harbor area, which sounded like a slightly older voice: “Notice …… we have been contaminated …… This island …… is beyond salvage …… will initiate process twenty-two …… It has been an honor to work with you all …… We shall meet again behind the gates of Bartok.”
With a shrill noise, the announcement from the plaza came to an abrupt halt, and the first mate, his eyes wide with shock, turned to Lawrence, “Captain, what’s ……”
Before his words fell, a loud noise like thunder suddenly came from the distance!
And accompanying that burst of thunderous loud noise was more thunderous noise, like the sky collapsing, like the earth collapsing and the mountains destroying!
One after another, the loud explosions instantly swept across the entire Dagger Island, shaking everyone’s mind, and Lawrence reacted almost instantly to what was happening-
It wasn’t thunder, it was explosives, it was the self-destruct device of some facilities on the island blowing everything up!
“Get out of the building!” Lawrence suddenly shouted, raising his pistol he fired a shot towards the ceiling, “There’s explosives!”
The captain’s shout was almost drowned out by the explosion, yet the pistol’s burst more or less woke up the surrounding sailors, and a group of people immediately rushed towards the door.
A dozen people rushed out of the gate, rushed down the ramp, and ran wildly towards the open area, while the dense explosions still continued to come from all directions, as if the whole island was being torn into pieces in a big explosion, however, halfway through the wild run, Lawrence suddenly felt as if something was wrong.
“Stop!” He stopped suddenly, and shouted as he fired his gun in the air, “Stop!”
The sailors stopped again in a panic, and immediately afterward, they too sensed that something was wrong.
There was only the sound of an explosion coming from all around them – yet neither smoke nor flashes of light could be seen in the direction from which the explosion had rung out, nor could any tremor even be felt.
There was only a thunderous sound echoing throughout the island.
Immediately after a while, the sound of the explosions gradually stopped, and the surrounding area returned to the silence of the fog, as if the previous big explosions like the sky and earth were just the collective hearing of all the people. “Only sound?” The first mate looked around in disbelief.
“It’s a piece of residual sound,” Lawrence’s heartbeat gradually calmed down as well, making a quick judgment – even though he didn’t know if his judgment was right or not, as the captain of the ship, he had to give a judgment to everyone right now, “That just now should just be something that happened on this island once before, replayed again in our ears in the form of a residual sound, not a real explosion.”
“I was scared to death just now,” muttered one of the sailors, “I thought there was a real big explosion ……”
“The closest explosion to here just now was in that direction,” the first mate looked up, confirming the bearings, and finally raised his hand to point to the other end of the harbor plaza, “Should we go over there and take a look?”
“Go over there and see what’s going on,” Lawrence quickly decided, “If something really did happen here once, there should still be traces left there.”
The exploring party immediately headed towards that thick fog, and this time, they advanced more cautiously than earlier.
After an unknown amount of time, a large collapsed building appeared in front of Lawrence.
This building is located in the inner edge of a small bay, backed by a solid rocky cliff, and from the traces of destruction of the building …… it was obviously completely destroyed by a large explosion from the inside out.
The first mate stood high above, staring at the ruins in amazement.
“What kind of facility did this have to be …… It’s amazing ……”
“All the more reason to wonder what terrible thing happened here that a facility like this would be blown up without a second thought,” Lawrence murmured, taking two slow steps forward, “If the people on this island …… “
“Stop.”
A voice suddenly came from the side, and Lawrence stopped instantly.
“Martha?!”
He looked sharply in the direction from which the voice had come, and uttered a startled and nervous cry.
But there was only a slowly undulating fog, and the familiar figure was nowhere to be seen.
“Captain?” The first mate noticed the captain’s abnormal reaction and immediately jumped down from the rock, nervously coming to Lawrence’s side, “What happened?”
“…… hallucinations,” Lawrence immediately said, his expression extraordinarily serious, “You guys didn’t hear the voice, did you?”
“We did not hear it.” The sailors looked at each other, and one of them said.
“We probably shouldn’t go any further,” Lawrence frowned, “back to the harbor first, then ……”
Martha’s voice reached him again, this time it was closer, “Back to the ship, now.”
Lawrence was stunned for a moment, restraining himself from looking in the direction from which the voice had come, and he tried to continue talking, yet the next second Martha’s voice came again, this time almost to his ear, and with a hint of urgency in its tone, “Get back to the White Oak, right away – Lawrence, they’re coming! ”
Lawrence’s eyes widened slightly as he subconsciously spoke, “Who? Who’s coming?”
The first mate beside him worriedly held Lawrence’s arm, “Captain, who are you talking to?”
Lawrence did not open his mouth, but only jerked his head up to look in the direction of the White Oak’s docking.
A wave of unease surged through his heart.
And the next second, as if to confirm this uneasiness, a dull clap of thunder suddenly came vaguely from that direction.
It was the sound of a cannon.
“Somebody’s firing ……” The first mate reacted instantly, “There’s an enemy!”
“Back to the ship!” Lawrence gave a shout, and with his party drew up his legs and ran for the harbor, while Martha’s voice brushed against his ear like a soft whisper in the wind that was rapidly rattling beside it:
“Here comes the Petrel ……”
(end of chapter)