At dusk, the Earl walked out of the study and asked the coachman to hitch up the carriage and go out for a walk before dinner. He still went out wearing the same outfit as in the morning, but added a large dark cloak with a hood. The carriage went smoothly.
He drove into the south gate of Manila City along the seaside avenue, passed through the castle from the other side of the city gate, and sprinted all the way to a forest of banana trees and coconut trees beside the village before stopping. Weiss got out of the carriage and told the carriage to wait.
Here, he wrapped his cloak tightly to cover himself, hiding a dagger, a telescope and the cz75 pistol that he had kept with him throughout his mercenary career.
He walked through the forest, and then trudged into a dense bush of leucaena, catalpa and holly. From behind the bush, a large bamboo forest had been cut down, and only the bamboo roots could be seen on the ground.
, extending out into an open wilderness. It must have been a wasteland before, but now many of the original waist-high wild plants have been cut down and lie on a carpet of young grasses and wild flowers; however, this natural carpet has obviously also been affected by
There was damage in many places, and a lot of green grass lay beside the deep ruts, and crushed flower petals were scattered in all directions, just like the carpet had its hair ripped off, revealing the hemp base. Apart from the artillery car, Weiss could not think of anything else.
What kind of heavily loaded vehicle would deliberately come to this wasteland and crush it repeatedly?
These ruts overlapped and intertwined, stretching out to form a temporary road. The barracks with yellow roofs and green walls that he had seen on the road earlier stood behind the road. The tops of the bamboo fence walls were covered with a thick layer of straw and banana leaves.
The few barracks are as simple as the farmhouses in nearby villages, only larger. They are incomparable to the sturdy stone barracks in the Santiago Fortress, and they were obviously built in a hurry.
It was dinner time, and the open space around the barracks was noisy like a beehive. The short East Indian soldiers were wearing shirts and fat-legged bloomers, and all of them were barefoot-the colony did not have enough shoes for the soldiers.
There were soups and stews like taro in wooden barrels, and people were sitting or standing on the grass and eating by the sidewalk. Weiss adjusted the focus of the telescope and slowly moved it to observe. There were several long poles standing against the wall outside the gate.
Spear, but did not see the cannon or other firearms he expected. Beside the trail, two Spanish sergeants dressed in fancy clothes were standing there drinking. A group of Tagalog children were also playing on the playground. They were milling around the soldiers and the barracks. They should
He came from a nearby village and wanted to get some leftovers. The Spanish sergeant was half drunk. He kicked a child over in the mud, and wild laughter broke out all around.
There are several low hills at the end of the playground. Through the telescope, they all show strange and lopsided shapes. They are surrounded by potholes; some have wooden poles stuck in them. The red cloth hanging on them has been broken into strips.
One of the buildings had half collapsed, with clods of earth and gravel flying far away. Weiss was very excited. The new artillery training ground opened outside Manila must have a great relationship with "Mr. Salamanca's new baby"
Relationship. The sky gradually darkened, and lights were lit inside and outside the barracks. Under the orders of the sergeant, the soldiers formed small square formations and began to train. Weiss never saw them pull out the cannon, so he put away his binoculars.
Quietly he slipped back through the bushes.
Relying on the impression from the morning, Lando found the village next to the road, which was very close to the barracks and training ground. He walked through the muddy path between the farmhouses. From those who enthusiastically sold taro, bananas and home-brewed Tuba wine,
The Tagalog village woman broke free from the encirclement, waved to the two children who were playing in the mud in front of the house, and handed each of them a small biscuit. The effect was unexpected. After taking the biscuits, the two children disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Five minutes later, he was surrounded by a dozen children of different heights and dirty bodies. Weiss asked the children repeatedly in Spanish and the newly learned Tagalog, and the answers satisfied him.
: A child who looked to be the oldest said that he saw Spanish soldiers firing cannons on the training ground every morning. The cannons were short and thick, the child gestured with his muddy fingers, and they were "as shiny as a brand new peso."
”.
The former mercenary took out a bunch of "lead pieces": this is the local daily currency, but it is actually low-quality privately minted money such as Ming Dynasty's Shakeguang Pian. It is called copper coins, but it actually contains almost no copper, and the main component is lead.
——The Spaniards and the Dutch aptly called it "lead sheet" - not only is it thin and small, but it also has so many impurities that it will break if dropped on the ground.
Even though it is such a bad currency, it is the most widely circulated small-denomination currency in Southeast Asia. Whether it is the Spanish or the Dutch, they ship a large amount of silver. The small-denomination currency in the colonies is completely dependent on Chinese copper coins. In the market
It is rare to see silver pesos shipped from New Spain in the world. Europeans, including Europeans, basically use this low-quality currency for daily consumption and circulation.
Therefore, Chinese maritime merchants transported large quantities of this low-quality copper coins to various parts of Southeast Asia to make huge profits. As the trade wind season is approaching, the price of peso exchange for "lead sheets" will continue to fall. When the first Chinese maritime merchant ship sails into the port
Sometimes, the market may even plummet, and when the trade wind season is about to end and Chinese ships begin to leave one by one, the market for lead sheets will continue to rise. In various European colonies in Southeast Asia, there are merchants engaged in this kind of business.
Speculation in currency exchange.
Facing greedy eyes, he announced that whoever can go to the training ground to pick up the copper and iron fragments left after the bombardment will get a string of "lead pieces." After saying this for the second time, the children were already stunned.
And San. Weiss felt that the deal was a good deal. There were a lot of shrapnel in exchange for a few hundred pennies. He had to buy another rattan basket in the village and hired two villagers to put the basket of broken copper and scrap iron into it.
Transported onto the carriage.
The servants hired locally were surprised that the Count was uncharacteristically ignoring a sumptuous dinner of roast duck and sherry tonight. Returning to Marat's villa, he ordered Guimede to bring a basket of dark
The things were moved from the carriage to the study on the second floor, and he ordered the kitchen to bring him coffee and a few chicken pies. Finally, Mimi followed the instructions and sent in a candlestick with 6 Australian candles. The study door slammed behind her.
It was closed, indicating that the count did not wish to be disturbed.
Weiss put on cotton gauze gloves, lifted the bed sheet to the floor, and spread the broken metal pieces taken out of the rattan basket on it and counted them one by one. Many of the things the children picked up were authentic scrap iron and rusty horseshoes.
, the fallen horseshoe nails, the iron sheets that fell from the axle, the lead bullets fired from the muskets, these wastes were pushed aside. He was very interested in a small tubular fragment. It was made of brass and looked like a forced labor force.
He hit the trigger tube on the cannon shell, but unfortunately the rest was gone. The most valuable harvest was concentrated in the large fragments at the bottom of the basket. He found that he could almost use the fragments picked out to assemble a complete cone-shaped cannonball. All of them
Among the fragments, the bottom surface of the shell shell was completely preserved. Weiss moved closer to the candle and looked over it, and suddenly discovered that this round metal piece the size of a pot lid was actually composed of a set of sandwich-like structures - thick cast iron.
A circular plate of the same caliber made of copper is attached to the bottom of the bullet. Under the copper plate is a thin iron plate with a slightly smaller diameter. Under candlelight, the edges of the copper plate clearly show the traces of rifling. In the seventeenth century, it was found on the cannonball that
The structure of the expanding belt really surprised Weiss. As a former member of the U.S. Army, he was no stranger to 4.2-inch chemical mortar shells with similar designs.
The rattan basket was turned upside down. Weiss checked everything carefully, hoping to find a complete fuse, but found nothing. He began to re-examine the broken shrapnel. The broken shrapnel walls were very thick and adhered.
There is a lot of residue after being burned by black powder, but both the inner and outer surfaces are very smooth, and it may have been processed by a lathe after casting. The fragments vary in size, and overall the fragmentation rate of the projectile is not too high. There is a particularly large fragment.
What caught his attention was that it was about the size of a quarter of a cannonball and thinner than other explosive shrapnel. The curved part and the bottom of the projectile had been blown away, and two grape-like shells were attached to the inner wall near the bottom.
Weiss used tweezers to pull out the projectile. The projectile was made of iron, with a diameter about the same as a No. 12 shotgun bullet, and its surface was very rough. He approached the candlestick, and the rough surface was a layer of dense black glue-like substance.
There was a little pungent smell coming from the side of the flame, like a mixture of asphalt and tar. This mixture stuck the spherical iron bullet to the wall of the bullet, or it was accidental that the heat of the gunpowder did not completely melt it. He then started from
More than thirty iron bullets were found in the pile of scrap iron and garbage. They were easily distinguished from the lead bullets fired from muskets. They were all about the size of No. 12 shotgun bullets and had a black mixture more or less stuck to their surfaces.
Weiss pondered for a while, then suddenly jumped up and opened the door. "Mimi!" he shouted downstairs, and saw his intelligence agent and maid running up the stairs holding up her skirt, "Go and prepare the secret code.
Ink and code pad," he ordered softly.
"Sir, the monsoon season has passed," Mimi reminded him. All the Chinese merchant ships in Manila Port have returned, and only one Fujian ship with unloaded cargo is stranded here. It will be at least five months before it returns.
thing.
"I will give the letter to the San Bento for delivery." The San Bento is just a small caravel, but it has traveled between Macau and Manila many times. Weiss was talking to her in the tavern not long ago.
The Portuguese captain chatted happily and learned that the ship was loaded with fresh sappan wood and Palawan bird's nests, and would return home within the next two days.
"Don't even think about sleeping tonight. As long as the report can be sent to the Macau Intelligence Station, neither Jiang nor God can criticize our work." (To be continued...)