Chapter 16: Setting Sail

Catherine was soaked through, her white linen shirt clinging to her body, faintly revealing the color of her skin.

The curves of her entire upper body were indistinctly visible, and the most striking thing was that there was nothing else underneath—it was truly hard to resist the urge to let one's gaze wander toward the important places.

Combined with the coarse rope coiled tightly around her waist, the scene was extremely alluring.

"Damn pirates, let me go!" Seeing Lin Qian arrive, Catherine shouted.

Lin Qian remained silent, merely staring at her.

Catherine glanced at herself and immediately panicked, shouting loudly: "Bastard, look away, don't look! I'll have my father hang you all and gouge out your eyes to feed to the seagulls!"

Lin Qian stepped forward until he was only a fist's distance away, their breaths mingling.

Catherine felt her face burning hot, and averting her gaze from his, she cursed: "Damn bastard, murderer, you'll all be hanged!"

"Have you forgotten what I told you when you came aboard?" Lin Qian said softly by her ear, reaching out his hand as he spoke.

Catherine was both ashamed and frightened, and quickly said: "No! Don't... I was wrong, spare me..."

But Lin Qian's movements did not pause in the slightest.

Catherine closed her eyes in resignation, tears streaming down her face as she begged in a small voice: "Let me go, I beg you, sir..."

Lin Qian drew closer and closer, and Catherine felt her heart pounding harder and harder, as if it would leap out of her chest.

But after waiting a long while, she only felt the rope binding her body loosen, and her whole frame went soft as she collapsed to sit on the ground.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Lin Qian looking at her coldly.

"This is east of Manila, surrounded by open ocean on all sides. Jumping overboard would be suicide—I advise you not to entertain that thought. If you behave yourself, once your father pays the ransom, I'll let you go. But if you try to be clever, your fate will be very grim."

Catherine curled up, wrapping her arms protectively over her chest, and said in a small voice: "I understand."

Lin Qian turned to leave after speaking, but Catherine called out to him: "You... please give me some clothes, and I also need to go to the small room..."

Small room? Though Lin Qian had never heard that word before, judging from Catherine's demeanor, he could roughly guess it meant the toilet.

"Follow me." Lin Qian walked toward the sterncastle, and Catherine followed, clutching her chest.

Lin Qian led her into the cabin and picked out a black silk straight robe from the wardrobe for her. This was the previous shipmaster's garment, with wide sleeves that made moving about the ship inconvenient, so Lin Qian only wore it occasionally when going ashore.

The clothes of the former shipmaster's mistress had long since been thrown away by Lin Qian, and there were no women's clothes on the ship, so Catherine had no choice but to wear this.

"The toilet is over there." Lin Qian pointed at a chamber pot and said, "Let me make this clear in advance—when you use it, find a private spot yourself, and don't dirty my room."

Catherine felt humiliated and indignant inside, but dared not argue, so she could only clutch the straight robe with both hands and stay silent, which counted as acquiescence.

Lin Qian had no mind to care what she thought, and after speaking, he took his sextant and walked out of the room.

Yesterday's course had first gone south, then east, then south again, and they had also run into a storm.

After breaking through the storm, there was open ocean in every direction, and they couldn't tell where they were at all—they could only roughly guess they were east of Luzon Island.

This stretch of sea was close to the middle of the Pacific, with few islands, and for Ming Dynasty ships it was forbidden territory that had never been trodden.

In fact, as far as all of humanity was concerned, perhaps only Spanish navigators had ever visited it.

The most pressing task now was to determine the latitude.

Today was the twenty-sixth day of the third month.

He had just measured the sun's declination angle yesterday—it was 18.9 degrees. Using that data directly for the calculation, the discrepancy shouldn't be too great.

Lin Qian picked up a small wooden stick and stood it upright on the ship, waiting for the moment when its shadow was shortest—that would be local noon.

At that time, he observed with the sextant and calculated the sun's altitude angle to be 85 degrees.

Plugging this into the latitude calculation formula, the latitude of this place was either 23.9 degrees north or 13.9 degrees north.

But the latitude when Lin Qian set sail was 15 degrees north, and they had sailed south for an entire night—there was no way they were now at 23.9 degrees north.

At local noon here, the sun was in the northern sky, which further indicated that this place was south of the sun's direct point.

So the final calculated result was 13.9 degrees north.

Combined with the estimate of the Fujian junk's speed of about four knots, this result was also basically reasonable.

Now Lin Qian had two choices.

One was to sail southwest; within a day or two at most, they could reach the islands at the southern end of the Luzon archipelago, such as Samar Island or Mindanao Island.

This route was technically the safest, but it was still too close to Luzon Island, which remained within the Spanish sphere of influence.

Combined with their track from yesterday, the Spanish Governor-General would also guess that Lin Qian would sail west, and would surely station warships patrolling around Luzon Island.

The other choice was to sail southeast; in about seven or eight days, they could reach the Caroline Islands.

This archipelago lay between 1 and 10 degrees north latitude, southeast of the Luzon archipelago, and even in later ages, few people knew of it.

Based on the Spanish charts and navigation logs he had purchased before, they did not have much understanding of this archipelago.

Taking this route could effectively avoid the Spanish, but the difficulty of navigation was very high.

After all, Lin Qian's current level of skill could only determine latitude—if he sailed too far east by mistake, finding land again would be difficult.

After some deliberation, Lin Qian still decided to head for the Caroline Islands.

Using a rhumb-line course, he would first sail south to 10 degrees north latitude, then sail east.

This way the voyage might take more than ten days, but it was the most secure.

For this voyage, Lin Qian had prepared a large quantity of water and provisions on the ship, enough to support forty days of consumption. Even if he couldn't find the Caroline Islands, he would still have ample supplies to sail back to the Luzon archipelago.

"What instrument is that?"

Just as Lin Qian was thinking, a woman's voice came over.

Following the sound, Lin Qian saw Catherine standing on the stern deck, looking at him curiously.

The black silk straight robe worn on her actually looked like a black silk nightgown, not loose at all—especially with the tightly cinched sash making her waist seem slender enough to encircle with one hand, her long, toned legs faintly visible, her curves tantalizing.

"These are star plates." Lin Qian put the sextant away in its box and brushed her off casually.

As far as he knew, the Spanish probably hadn't yet invented the sextant—such an important instrument naturally couldn't be revealed to Catherine.

"Star plates?" Catherine repeated. Lin Qian had spoken in Chinese, so she couldn't understand what it meant.

Combined with the way Lin Qian had been observing the sun, she could roughly guess the purpose of the device.

But compared to the astrolabe commonly used by the Spanish, this so-called "star plates" instrument of the Great Ming appeared far more refined—perhaps its angular measurements were even more accurate.

Still, having only caught a fleeting glimpse, she couldn't figure out how the instrument worked; she merely thought to herself that Lin Qian had grown a bit more mysterious.

"I'm hungry." Catherine changed the subject.

At her words, Lin Qian realized his own stomach was aching with emptiness—from yesterday afternoon until now, neither he nor anyone else on the ship had taken a single drop of water or grain.

"Bailangzai." Lin Qian called out.

"Sixth Brother." Bailangzai answered from the deck.

"Tell the cook to serve the meal."

"Right." Bailangzai acknowledged.

Lin Qian carried the box holding the sextant back to the cabin. The moment he stepped through the door, he saw two soaking-wet garments spread across the floor—Catherine's shirt and breeches, which she had taken off.

In this era, there were no undergarments of that sort; Spanish women's underclothing typically consisted of a corset and a petticoat.

Catherine, dressed in men's clothing, naturally wouldn't have been wearing those.

Didn't that mean she was now, from head to toe, wearing nothing but a single black silk straight robe?

Yahei

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