Moreover, as a man who loved playing with swords and sticks from a young age, a man who graduated in mechanical manufacturing and automation, Chen Zhou simply could not refuse owning such a weapon that fused mechanical beauty and practicality.
If he weren't worried about shooting arrows into the sea on the ship, he'd wish to carry this crossbow with him all the time and shoot down those seabirds circling in the sky.
After all, in modern society, there's hardly any chance to experience cold weapons hunting. At most, one could go to a shooting club and shoot at non-bloody targets to satisfy one's craving.
Like a child sketching an imaginary enemy in his mind, Chen Zhou used the winding mechanism to pull back the string, aimed with the crossbow pretending to aim, and dry-fired once.
The bowstring snapped open with a continuous buzzing sound, and the force that erupted instantly almost made Chen Zhou lose his grip on the crossbow limbs.
Based on this, he judged that the draw strength of this crossbow was at least 200 pounds.
This was a terrifying number, even though the energy storage rate of 17th-century smelted steel wasn't as good as tendon horn composite materials or yew wood. Yet, as long as the poundage was large enough, the pulled bowstring could impart the crossbow arrow with significant lethal power, easily piercing the strongest skulls of medium-sized herbivores.
After playing with the crossbow for a while, Chen Zhou finally put it down reluctantly, without winding the bowstring again.
There would be plenty of opportunities to showcase the crossbow's prowess later; right now, important matters took precedence.
In fact, the moment he pulled the trigger, he already regretted his reckless behavior—the force generated by frequent dry-firing would act on the bow body, compromising the structural integrity.
Unfortunately, once the bow fired, the arrow couldn't be taken back. After dry-firing, there was no turning back.
Luckily, this crossbow was very well maintained, and when the steel-armed crossbow was designed and manufactured, the excessive tension issue had been considered, taking into account the load on the bowstring. At least presently, this dry fire did not cause significant damage to the crossbow.
Returning to Robinson's room, Chen Zhou moved four empty wooden boxes to the door and lined them up, planning to use them to store clothes, bedding, and tools separately.
During the pauses in moving the boxes, he casually took down the lantern hanging by the window.
The mass replacement of wooden sailing ships by iron-structured ocean-going ships would occur two hundred years later; in this era, slaver ships were filled with combustibles.
Not to mention the walls made from pure wooden skeletons and thin wooden boards, just the adhesive made from a mix of tar and pitch was enough to turn the entire ship to ashes, hence there were stringent precautions against any open flames on board.
The identity of the fire starter, the time of lighting, and the location were all restricted, and using fire in harsh sea conditions was strictly forbidden, even when traversing cold seas, when sailors were unable to eat hot food and died from cold and hunger, the Captain would not relax these rules.
Given these requirements, the lanterns on board were made in a special style.
The metal framework was spherical, with movable glass surrounding it, able to enclose the entire lantern completely, and at the center, a candle was inserted in a bowl-shaped recess.
The candle was already half-used, its color different from the commonly seen smokeless candles of modern times, with a warm milky yellow on the surface instead of white.
Chen Zhou didn't know that the unspectacular candle used beeswax rather than animal fat or paraffin wax.
In the 17th century, such candles were typically used by the Royal Family, nobility, or in monasteries. If not for Robinson's plantation owner friend frequently sending him rare things from Europe, Chen Zhou wouldn't have been able to get his hands on this lantern.
However, the extensive use of glass decorations, while beautiful, also made the entire lantern more fragile, so to protect it from damage during transport, Chen Zhou especially brought the ship doctor's bedding to fill the wooden box, wrapping the lantern within.
The craftsmanship combining metal and glass reminded Chen Zhou of the brass hourglass placed in the cabinet in the middle of the ship.
Worried he might forget about the hourglass while getting busy later, after ensuring the lantern was safely secured, he quickly left Robinson's room to fetch the hourglass, planning to test how long it took for the fine sand to flow completely from one end to the other.