Chapter 2: The Star-Plate Art

Lin Qian had his men dispose of the bodies and the bloodstains on the deck, and ordered the Fujian junk to turn due south and sail away from these waters.

The crew went about their assigned tasks, weighing anchor and raising sail; before long, the sound of waves slapping against the bow drifted back.

Suddenly, a muffled, rumbling voice said: "Brother Lin, Macao's to the west — why are we heading south?"

The speaker was a man with a Shandong accent, wearing only a pair of thin trousers against the biting sea wind, his lean, powerful torso bare — a striking sight.

This man was Lei Sanxiang, third in age among the seven sworn brothers.

Seeing Lei Sanxiang crowd close to Lin Qian, Bailangzai also drew nearer, his right hand resting on the knife hilt behind his back, watching him closely.

"We're not going to Macao," Lin Qian said calmly.

Lei Sanxiang frowned, took a step forward, and blurted: "What do you mean? The ship permit says Macao."

"Third Brother, rest easy. From here due south, at most twenty days' sail brings us to Luzon — that's Frankish territory. I've been there before; selling this cargo there will more than double our profit."

Lei Sanxiang's brow relaxed at this, but he still pressed uneasily: "But the ship permit..."

Lin Qian stared at Lei Sanxiang for a moment, then smiled: "Third Brother, men like us — do we care about a ship permit?"

Lei Sanxiang was taken aback by these words, then remembered they'd just seized the ship, and scratched his head with a laugh: "True enough... Brother Lin's head's the sharp one. I'll get back to work."

Lin Qian grabbed his arm: "During the standoff just now, thirteen men hesitated badly — they were forced into this. Third Brother, keep a close eye on them..."

Then Lin Qian recited the names of those thirteen.

In just a few days aboard, Lin Qian had already memorized every man's name and face — a skill he'd honed in his previous life, building himself up from nothing.

Lei Sanxiang committed the names to memory, acknowledged with a grunt, and went below.

After he left, Bailangzai also released his grip on the knife hilt and stepped back a pace.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lin Qian had taken in every move of both Lei Sanxiang and Bailangzai.

The seven of them hadn't known one another before boarding the ship, and even now hadn't fully sounded out each other's backgrounds. Though they'd sworn brotherhood, they still kept their guards up against one another at every turn.

The human heart is a den of demons.

Lin Qian shook his head, cut off his wandering thoughts, and ordered that all the crewmen who'd taken up knives be promoted to work gang leaders.

These men had thrown in with Lin Qian the fastest — whether out of fury at the shipmaster's exploitation or greed for silver, they were at least more loyal than the ordinary crew, and could serve to keep watch over them.

At the same time, the knife-armed crewmen were scattered across every part of the ship, which made it inconvenient for them to gather and scheme about overthrowing him.

The Fujian junk sailed south for four hours, then Lin Qian ordered the sails lowered and the anchor dropped. The crew returned to their berths to rest, and he distributed the shipmaster's liquor among the men.

The crewmen collected their liquor and headed back to their cabins, overjoyed. They'd just lived through a bloody night, nerves stretched taut — alcohol was the finest anesthetic.

Besides, sailing at night with poor visibility made it all too easy to lose one's bearings, so in these times, ships at sea generally anchored to rest at night and sailed only by day.

After watching the crew return to their quarters, Lin Qian turned and entered the shipmaster's stern cabin.

Seizing the ship had only completed the first step of his plan — he was still far from being able to breathe easy.

Compared with the crew berth, where a dozen-plus men squeezed into three tiers of bunks, the stern cabin was lavishly spacious to the point of absurdity — not only vast in size, but furnished with every sort of fixture, no different from the bedchamber of a wealthy man on land.

Lin Qian searched through the chests and wardrobes.

He found a chest of silver, roughly a hundred taels — the shipmaster's private hoard.

Beneath the silver chest lay a ship permit, recording the vessel's dimensions, crew, cargo, and other details, with the port of destination — "Macao" — standing out starkly.

Compared with Macao, heading to Luzon was risky, but for Lin Qian, the benefits went far beyond simply earning a bit more silver.

Though Lin Qian had said that after the silver was divided, everyone was free to stay or go, Luzon was an island isolated beyond the seas — if the crew wanted to return to the Great Ming, they'd have to sail back on the ship.

And once they were back aboard, refusing to let them leave wouldn't count as breaking his word.

Unfortunately, to reach Luzon, there was still one crucial item he hadn't found — the star plates.

Unlike the Great Ming captains who navigated by rhumb-line sea chants, Lin Qian didn't have the skill to sail to Luzon on a few verses and experience alone. Without star plates to fix the latitude, once he entered the open sea, he'd be a headless fly.

So Lin Qian went through the room again, searching inch by inch.

An hour later, he indeed discovered a hollow cavity beneath a section of deck planking.

Lin Qian pried up the plank with his dagger and looked by candlelight — and found himself caught between laughter and tears.

Beneath the plank lay a staggering quantity of "small implements" — the dildos alone came in straight, curved, spiral, wooden, and jade varieties.

Besides these, there were all sorts of singing balls, sulfur rings, sheep-eye rings, and many more things Lin Qian couldn't even name.

The few dildos lying on top still bore faint, damp stains.

Lin Qian cursed his luck inwardly and replaced the plank.

Now, the shipmaster's room had been thoroughly searched — only the navigator's cabin remained.

The navigator was what later ages would call a pilot; his cabin was also below deck, near the bow.

The ship's navigator had been the shipmaster's trusted man and carried a knife at all times, so at the very start of the mutiny, Lei Sanxiang had killed him. In Lei Sanxiang's view, Macao lay due west and could be reached by hugging the coastline — no need to keep the navigator alive.

Lin Qian took his knife and went out. The moment he pushed open the door, he spotted a figure outside and immediately stepped back, holding the blade crosswise before him.

"It's me," the figure said.

By the moonlight, Lin Qian saw that it was Bailangzai.

Lin Qian lowered his knife, keeping a safe distance, and softened his tone: "Why aren't you asleep?"

Bailangzai's face was expressionless: "Watching your back. These men can't be trusted."

Lin Qian smiled: "Much obliged."

"Don't misunderstand. It's only for the silver. If you die, things get troublesome."

Though the tone was icy, in Lin Qian's eyes, this kind of blunt, silver-driven loyalty was far more trustworthy than the brotherly posturing of the others.

"Good, then come keep me company to the navigator's cabin."

Bailangzai said nothing, silently following behind Lin Qian.

At the bow, Lin Qian went below to search the cabin while Bailangzai stood guard on deck.

In the time it takes an incense stick to burn, Lin Qian emerged from the cabin carrying a stack of wooden boards, with a yellowed booklet tucked at his waist — this was the star plates he'd been looking for.

Lin Qian carried the star plates to the bow and stacked the boards from largest to smallest, like a pyramid.

He picked up one of the wooden boards, stretched both arms straight out, aligned the bottom edge of the board with the sea horizon, and then searched for the North Star.

Seeing that the North Star was still some distance above the top edge of the board, Lin Qian switched to a larger board, until the North Star appeared perfectly at the top edge.

Then, Lin Qian took down that yellowed booklet and looked up the data.

Bailangzai was one of the Tanka boat people and was very curious about the art of navigation. Unable to contain himself, he asked, "You know how to use the star-plate art for ocean crossings?"

"Mm." Lin Qian replied casually as he flipped through the booklet.

A flash of shock passed through Bailangzai's eyes.

In the Great Ming, the star-plate art for ocean crossings was a secret navigational technique. It was said that when the eunuch of the Seven Treasures sailed to the Western Ocean, it was precisely this art he used to navigate.

The Tanka boat people made their living on ships—if anyone needed the star-plate art for ocean crossings, it was them.

But this art was kept strictly secret and never passed on to outsiders. On top of that, the Tanka boat people were registered as a debased class in the Great Ming, so they had even less chance of ever learning it.

Lin Qian flipped through the small booklet and, based on the star plate he had used, determined that this location corresponded to a polar altitude of twelve fingers plus one notch, while the polar altitude at the port of Macao was twelve fingers. From this he could infer that this place was approximately at 23 degrees north latitude.

After a simple verification calculation, he confirmed the result was essentially accurate.

Compared to a sextant, the precision of the star-plate art was still somewhat lower, but it was already sufficient for sailing to Luzon.

Lin Qian raised his head and happened to meet Bailangzai's gaze. His mind stirred, and he roughly guessed what the other was thinking. He smiled and said, "You want to learn?"

The star-plate art, which seemed utterly mysterious in the eyes of the people of the Great Ming, was in Lin Qian's view nothing more than a simple application of trigonometric functions.

Specifically, given the lengths of the two legs of a right triangle, one uses the arctangent function to find the angle. The formula is θ = arctan(b/a), and then one uses a Taylor series to obtain an approximate value.

Because the North Star lies on the extension of the Earth's axis of rotation, there is no need to consider influencing factors such as the seasons. The approximate angle calculated is the current latitude.

And what was recorded in the navigator's small booklet were the board models used for observing the North Star at different latitudes.

Most sailors of the Great Ming did not understand trigonometric functions, so they simply matched the board model against the small booklet and could still roughly determine their latitude.

Yahei

Fenyuan

Pen