Chapter 226: "The Witch's" Revenge

The fleet first arrived at the waters off Tayouan Isle, where they linked up with the allied forces of Chican and Mattauw.

Aboard the Tianyuan, Chen Jiao boarded carrying a Siraya war knife, shouting: "Old Seven, set sail quickly, don't let the Franks escape!" From the stern deck, Zheng Zhilong poked his head out.

"Brother Yiguan?" Chen Jiao was taken aback. "Where's Old Seven?"

Zheng Zhilong pointed at the distant sea: "The Zhulong hasn't finished her sea trials yet, so I'm afraid Brother Chen will have to make do aboard the Tianyuan."

"I used to be the helmsman of the Tianyuan—what's there to make do about?" Chen Jiao gritted his teeth, murderous intent radiating from him. "As long as I can weed out those bastards, even if I have to row a sampan, I'll row my way over!"

While the two were talking, over two hundred red barbarian soldiers came aboard.

Leading them were the brothers Zhang Haisheng and Zhang Ganchao, white cloth tied around their arms, eyes staring straight ahead, jaws clenched, not saying a word. In the harbor, a large number of Siraya warriors were also boarding Fujian junks, numbering a full four hundred by the look of it, led by Aban and Anya.

Xilin was with child and could not come along.

Within half a day, everyone had boarded, and the fleet set off northward along the Dongning coastline.

Two days later, they arrived off the coast of Zhuqian.

By then the Spanish had already withdrawn, and the villagers had returned to their settlement, rebuilding their homes on a patch of scorched earth.

Chen Jiao led men ashore in a small boat and found an old man hauling timber. He asked: "Uncle, which direction did the Frank warships go?" The old man looked despondent and pointed north: "They left the day after they finished looting... Those goddamned bastards—stealing was one thing, but what they couldn't carry away, they smashed and burned. More than twenty head of cattle in the village, all stabbed to death..."

Chen Jiao's fists clenched tight, every muscle in his body tensed. Gritting his teeth, he asked again: "What about the soldiers on those two big Fujian junks—did any survive?" The old man shook his head: "Boats and men, none of them came back..."

Chen Jiao led his men back to the Tianyuan. Gazing at the vast, boundless sea to the west, he swore in his heart: "Brothers, this blood debt—I, Chen, swear I will repay it for you!"

Evening, two days later.

In the city of San Salvador, the Commodore was raging at Diego.

"Who told you to attack the Sengli village?"

"They took Spaniards captive without authorization, and one of them was a priest." Diego said flatly.

Commodore Carreño fumed: "We could have negotiated, we could have held talks—but you? You chose the stupidest option! Opening fire directly! My God! Do you take the Sengli for primitive savages?"

"We came to Formosa Isle to establish trade with the Sengli—and you burned their village and drove the villagers away!"

"Now we've not only lost our source of goods, we have to live in constant fear of retaliation from the Sengli army!"

"Hah." Diego let out a light laugh. "Those sheep-like wastes—do they even deserve to be called an army?"

Carreño's anger grew: "The Sengli Emperor is weak, but the Sengli are born craftsmen—we need their raw silk and porcelain." Diego said: "If Your Excellency requires them, I would be delighted to take the Santiago for a cruise along the southeastern coast of the Great Ming and 'trade' for the goods we need."

Carreño slammed the table: "We came to trade and spread the glory of God, not to be pirates!"

Diego shot back: "Plunder and conquest can accomplish trade and evangelism just as well—sometimes even better."

A cannon shot rang out abruptly, cutting off their conversation.

Judging by the direction and the sound, it came from the fort on the west side of the island—only a single shot, likely a warning.

Carreño and Diego left the room together.

A soldier came running to report: "Commodore, three small schooners have been spotted on the sea to the northwest; the fort fired a warning shot."

Carreño's heart sank. He thought to himself: "They're here this fast?"

The soldier said: "Sir, they're only small boats—nothing to worry about."

Ever since the Eagle Ships had appeared, the Tartars, the wokou pirates, and the red barbarians had all learned how deadly they were—every one of them changed color at the sight—but the Spanish had never seen them and didn't know what they were capable of.

Judging by hull size, an Eagle Ship was about the same as an ordinary fishing boat, carrying at most ten soldiers—no threat to the city of San Salvador. Diego sneered: "The Sengli want to take revenge with fishing boats? How foolish..."

"Fleet! Enemy fleet!" Suddenly, a great shout came from the fort.

Diego's smile froze.

Carreño rushed toward the fort at a run, Diego following behind.

The sun was setting in the west, dyeing the sea and sky a mournful red.

Amid the shimmering light on the water, a fleet was slowly sailing in from west to east, the setting sun casting the ships as pitch-black silhouettes.

From the fort, all that could be seen were countless masts densely overlapping and crisscrossing, slowly rising above the horizon.

Carreño stared, lost in thought; Diego too fell into a brief stupor.

The Sengli reinforcements—surely they hadn't come this fast?

The Battle of Zhuqian had only been a few days ago—not even half a month!

After his stupor passed, murderous intent flared in Diego's brown eyes, an excited grin spreading across his face: "Your Excellency, please let the Santiago sortie—before nightfall, I'll have dealt with this fleet!"

If the Ming warships were all like the two ships from that night at Zhuqian, then an entire fleet was nothing to fear.

It would simply mean the Santiago burned through a few more cannonballs.

Besides, from the silhouettes, the enemy fleet was mostly small craft with few large ships—their firepower was probably weaker than the two ships they'd fought before. Carreño pondered a moment, then said: "Fine. Try to take prisoners—captives are our bargaining chips with the Sengli!"

To be cautious, Carreño also ordered the Nuestra Señora de la Victoria to sortie alongside.

The Nuestra Señora de la Victoria was also a forty-gun galleon. With these two ships going out together, Carreño was confident no one in the Great Ming could stand against them. The sky grew ever darker; the mournful red rapidly receded between sea and sky, and the entire eastern sky was already shrouded in darkness.

Before the fort, Carreño shielded his eyes from the blinding sunset and gazed toward the enemy fleet.

He watched the Santiago and the Nuestra Señora de la Victoria sail out of the harbor, charging straight at the enemy ships like brave knights charging a dragon. Before battle had even begun, the enemy fleet fell into obvious disarray—swarms of small boats scattering in every direction.

"Boom boom boom!"

The rumbling of cannon fire soon rolled across the sea. The two sides were too far apart, and with the light against them, Carreño couldn't make out the results.

All he could hear was that the cannon fire was extremely loud.

Even with eighty guns between the two Spanish warships, the firing sounded far too dense.

A bad premonition rose in Carreño's heart.

Soon the sun sank beneath the sea, leaving only a sliver of light between sea and sky. Through the gunsmoke, the muzzle flashes of the warships grew ever clearer.

Carreño took out his telescope and peered at the battlefield.

All he could see was pitch darkness, with four ship-shapes faintly visible maneuvering—four shadows, all of them enormous, tangled together like sea monsters locked in combat.

Cold sweat beaded on Carreño's forehead.

By appearance, the Ming warships were abnormally large... even larger than the Spanish galleons!

As far as he knew, the Ming people had no such shipbuilding technology — could it be one of the Dutchmen's great homeward-bound galleons?

"Boom! Boom! Boom…"

On the sea, a dense string of cannon fire interrupted Calinio's thoughts.

A massive shadow belched fire and light — so many guns firing at once that for an instant nearly half the battlefield was lit up.

The rumbling thunder of cannon rolled between sea and sky, truly like the roar of a sea beast.

Then came the sound of cannonballs smashing through wooden planks, mingled with the screams of sailors.

The wind shifted, carrying the stench of sulfur and blood — suffocating.

Calinio lowered his telescope; the clothes on his back were soaked through. He asked himself: what in God's name was that?

That broadside could never have come from a Spanish warship…

The dread in his heart grew heavier and heavier, until at last he gave the order: "San Felipe, prepare to set sail!"

Standing on the shore, Calinio could not yet see clearly.

Aboard the Santiago's rail, Diego — who had watched the Zhulong's bombardment at close range — was now too stunned to speak.

The Tianyuan alone, a single ship, already outmatched the Santiago in firepower.

And the larger Zhulong — one broadside from her was terrifying beyond measure.

Red muzzle-flash spread from her long bow all the way to her stern, illuminating a dozen or more paces of sea around her; her vast hull, her intricate sterncastle carvings, and her rigging dense as a spider's web all flickered in and out of view within the light.

Her entire side roared in fury; the gray-black gun smoke rose like a city wall, shrouding the whole of the Zhulong in haze. "Incoming fire, port side!" the first mate bellowed at the top of his lungs.

The next second, the shriek of cannonballs and the crack of splintering planks drowned out his shout.

The Santiago's port side was struck by a dozen or more shells in an instant, wood splinters flying inside and outside the gun deck.

The eighteen-pounder heavy guns tore through the Santiago's port hull with ease; the balls, their momentum undiminished, smashed everything in their path across the gun deck — sweeping all before them.

The Santiago had just fought the Yunfan and the Changfeng only days before; her port hull was riddled with shot-holes that had not yet been repaired.

Now, facing the Zhulong's furious bombardment, those holes became weak points in her hull.

One broadside shattered whole sections of her planking into fragments.

When the barrage ended, the Santiago's gun deck was a floor of blood and severed limbs.

Blood streamed down through hatchways and deck seams into the holds below.

"Save me! Help!"

Sailors lay collapsed in pools of blood, clutching their mangled wounds, faces deathly pale, lips trembling as they begged for rescue.

"Oh God! Forgive my sins, let my soul be saved…"

The surviving sailors looked upon the scene before them, gripped their crucifixes, and began to pray.

The gunner's mate roared: "Quick — carry the wounded to the surgeon! No, not that one, he won't last… Anyone still breathing, load the guns, damn it — back to your stations, return fire!"

"Boom boom boom!"

Amid the gunner's mate's curses, the surviving gunners fired back; the thunder of the guns left ears ringing and chests numb.

So much so that the gunner's mate's own shouts could barely be heard: "Get down, get do—"

A fresh volley from the Zhulong came in; on the gun deck, splinters flew so thick one could scarcely see.

A man screaming one moment was a pulp of flesh the next.

The air grew so heavy with blood it was like fog, condensing into red droplets on men's bodies.

The dull crunch of cannonballs striking flesh, of bones shattering inch by inch, rang out with terrible clarity through the hold.

At last one barrage was endured. The gunner's mate rose, shook his head to scatter the sawdust from his hair and face, and looked around.

The deck was strewn with groaning sailors; blood covered the whole deck, so slick one could barely stand.

One cannon had been hit — its barrel badly dented, it had torn free of its recoil tackle and lay tilted on the deck.

"Sand! Spread sand, quick!" the gunner's mate screamed with all his strength.

His ears rang without cease, so loud he could barely hear his own shouts; his heart pounded violently in his chest, nearly ready to burst. "Carry the wounded below! Stop crouching there — if you want to live, keep loading!"

From the gun deck down to the lowest cargo hold, the ladders and decks were drenched into a trail of blood.

The closer one got to the lowest hold, the clearer the screams became.

"Spread the sand! You — help me hold him down. Damn it, no time for laudanum — find a stick for him to bite on!" The ship shuddered violently; everything in the lower hold toppled this way and that, the lanterns swaying as if they might go out at any moment.

The ship's surgeon, holding a great saw borrowed from the carpenter, was shouting orders to the sailors around him in a voice already hoarse.

In the middle of the lower hold stood a large table, upon which lay a sailor — a splinter had pierced his calf, nearly stabbing clean through the whole lower leg.

The surgeon found strips of cloth, bound them tight around the wounded man's thigh with all his might, then, without a word, took up the saw and began cutting below the knee. The man's flesh split open, blood spraying straight up to the hold's ceiling and splattering across the surgeon's face.

The surgeon paused, wiped the blood from his face, and went on sawing the leg.

The wounded man's screams nearly drowned out the cannon fire; after two cries, his throat went completely hoarse.

Then he fainted from the pain — and soon was jolted awake by it again.

When the saw reached the bone, it grated against it with a teeth-grinding screech.

The crewmen holding the patient down could bear it no longer; they turned away and vomited.

The surgeon roared: "Damn it — don't throw up into the wound!"

On the ladder, more wounded were still being carried down in an endless stream; there was nothing to do but prop them against the bulkheads.

Those lightly wounded could still manage piercing wails.

The gravely wounded had already stopped breathing — they were corpses.

The surgeon, sawing away at a leg, shouted at the "powder monkeys" running back and forth through the hold: "Tell the men above — only send the lightly wounded down! There are too many corpses down here, we can't stack any more!"

The so-called powder monkeys were all teenage crewmen — small and wiry, quick on their feet — whose job was to haul powder from the lower hold up to the gun deck. They never slowed their steps, and whether they heard him at all was anyone's guess.

The surgeon was nearly through the bone when the crewman holding the arm suddenly went pale and whispered: "Surgeon… I think he's stopped breathing…" "Damn it!" the surgeon cursed, setting down his saw to press the man's carotid artery, then said: "Quick — next one!" On the Santiago's quarterdeck, Diego lowered his telescope; his face was streaming with sweat.

Could these truly be the war vessels of the men of Shengli?

"Captain, the enemy is still closing!" the first mate shouted over the sea wind and cannon fire.

The lookout shouted: "Fifty paces!"

Diego forced a smile onto his face: "Those damned Shengli people seem very confident in their warship!"

Even as he spoke, the Candle Dragon fired another full broadside.

The Santiago took more than twenty hits in a single breath — both port and starboard sides were pierced through, and the solid iron shot, its momentum undiminished, flew more than twenty paces past the Santiago's hull before splashing into the water.

Cannonballs, splinters, and chunks of flesh pounded the sea on both sides of the Santiago into great sheets of white spray.

"Captain... we are no match for the Shengli warship!" the first mate said in utter despair, his tone almost pleading, "Let us withdraw to port!" By this time, the Ming vessels and the Spanish warships were not arrayed in line, but fighting in pairs, locked in close combat.

Diego's hands trembled with excitement as he raised his telescope and glanced at the distant battle between the Tianyuan and the Nuestra Señora de la Victoria.

Seeing that the two sides were still locked in yin-yang fish combat with neither gaining the upper hand, and that the San Felipe was racing toward the harbor at full speed...

A gambler's red light gleamed in Diego's eyes as he commanded: "No retreat! Keep firing back!"

The San Felipe was a large ship of the line carrying fifty guns — as long as they held out until she arrived, the two ships would catch the Shengli warship in a pincer, and it would surely be defeated!

Diego had no idea what sorcery the Shengli people had used to conjure up such a giant vessel out of thin air.

But he firmly believed that the Spanish Navy was the strongest in the world, and the honor of the empire on which the sun never set would not permit anyone to defile it!

The first mate gritted his teeth: "Aye!"

Then he shouted down to the gun deck: "Keep returning fire!"

"Thirty paces!" The lookout's voice was beginning to tremble.

Point-blank exchange of fire was the most brutal, most bloody tactic in naval warfare — and the bigger the ship against the smaller, the greater the advantage.

At a distance of over a hundred paces, the Santiago had already been beaten until she could not fight back at all. What would happen at thirty paces?

On the gun deck, the gun captain, his throat hoarse beyond recognition, screamed: "Quick, reload — prepare to fire!"

"Boom! Boom! Boom..."

The Candle Dragon's gunners fired first — at such close range, the cannon thunder might as well have been exploding right beside their ears.

The Spanish gunners could even feel the scorching blast of heat from the Candle Dragon's muzzles.

In the moonlight, the sailors saw a dark cloud surging toward them at speed.

"Grapeshot!" the gun captain cried out in terror, his eyes nearly splitting with rage.

The next second, a deadly storm woven from countless solid iron balls poured in through every breach in the Santiago's hull.

Nearly every inch of her hull was precisely blanketed by the grapeshot.

Her crew heard nothing but a whistling hiss at their ears — from every direction, the sound of iron shot slamming into wooden planks.

It seemed the whole world was engulfed in grapeshot.

Facing this storm of death, the crew had no recourse but to curl up their bodies and wait quietly for death.

On the gun deck, surviving gunners let out the occasional muffled grunt, leaving a puff of blood mist in the air before toppling over, still.

By the time the metal storm ended, there was hardly a man left standing on the entire gun deck.

On the quarterdeck, the first mate, struck by three grapeshot rounds, lay with his flesh spread across the deck, eyes open in death.

Seeing this, the boatswain took the first mate's place and said to Diego: "Captain, sir, we need orders!"

Diego's face was deathly pale, his left hand dripping with blood — a grapeshot round had blown off half his palm.

"Return fire!"

The boatswain glanced down through a hole in the deck toward the gun deck, then reported: "Our gun crews are nearly all dead, sir!" "What?" Diego's body trembled, "That's impossible — anyone, anyone still alive, get down there and man the guns at once!"

"Aye!" The boatswain ordered the sail handlers to go down into the hold.

But it was plainly suicide to go below — who would dare?

Some men had already lost their minds to terror and jumped over the starboard side into the sea. The shore was not far off — a man could easily swim to land and find a chance to live. Watching his crew leap into the water one after another to beg for survival, Diego stood stunned, then roared in bloody fury: "Cowards, craven dogs! The shame of the Spanish army! May Satan curse you all!"

Even as he cursed, the Candle Dragon fired another round, and a dense hail of grapeshot flooded every corner of the ship.

In the midst of the storm, Diego's ceaseless cursing came to an abrupt halt — a grapeshot round tore into his left chest, punched through two ribs and a lung, and exited through his back.

Diego instantly coughed up blood; the frothy blood ran down his chin and stained his chest deep red.

Then seven or eight more grapeshot rounds pierced through his thigh, his arm, his lower abdomen, his shoulder...

The butcher of Havana, wreathed in spurting blood mist from the grapeshot, knelt down amid shock, terror, shame, and unwillingness — and sank into eternal darkness.

The Candle Dragon's gunners worked their cannons with extreme skill, and soon the third round of grapeshot was fired, then the fourth, the fifth, the sixth...

The Santiago was like an oyster struck by a giant hammer — its brittle shell of calcium carbonate was smashed to pieces flying in every direction by the heavy steel blow, while the oyster meat within was pounded to pulp, its juices splattering everywhere.

On the distant San Felipe, Carreño could not believe his eyes at all — he wished he could gouge them out and wash them.

From first contact to now, in less than three hours, the Santiago had completely lost her ability to fight.

The hull planking on her port side had been almost entirely eaten away by cannonballs; her deck structure was starkly visible in the moonlight, and every level was streaming dark red blood down into the sea.

This defied all logic!

Even with the facts right before his eyes, Carreño could not believe it.

Farther away, the battle of the Nuestra Señora de la Victoria was not yet over, but she was clearly at a disadvantage.

Every crewman aboard the San Felipe, from the Commodore on down, stared at the scene before them, dumbfounded.

The first mate murmured: "Commodore, sir... do we... do we still go in?"

In the darkness, the enemy ship was only a vague silhouette.

Carreño could not make out the enemy's damage. Logically speaking, after three hours of ship-to-ship bombardment, the enemy must have suffered terrible damage as well — it could not possibly be a match for the San Felipe.

But that mysterious warship, like a sea monster, upon sighting the San Felipe, not only failed to retreat — it instead voluntarily ceased fire and vanished into the shadows. The San Felipe's crew all tensed up.

Carreño said in a low voice: "Keep watch on the enemy ship — be on alert all around!"

The first mate bellowed his orders up to the lookout in the rigging.

A moment later, the lookout shouted: "One thousand paces!"

"My God! It's coming closer!" On the deck, sailors clutched their crucifixes, praying without cease.

"Eight hundred paces!"

It was now certain—the enemy ship was coming to engage.

Carinio gritted his teeth and drove the wild thoughts from his mind. The honor of the Spanish Navy must not be defiled.

Whether it was a ghost ship, a sea serpent, or a giant octopus—since it dared to come close, they would blast it to pieces!

Carinio gave the order: "Charge forward, engage the enemy on the starboard side!"

The first mate shouted, "Raise the sails, starboard engagement! The wind has shifted... a southeast wind! We're upwind—haha, thank God!" But soon, his smile froze on his face, because he realized the wind shift had little effect on the enemy ship.

By the moonlight, he could see the enemy vessel's bow, its great soft sails spread wide.

Yet in that silhouette, the lateen sails and staysails at the stern—which provided tremendous thrust for sailing against the wind—were completely hidden from view.

"That's impossible!" a sailor stammered, his lips trembling. "My God! It doesn't sail by the wind! That's a false-form ship!"

The false-form ship was a legend that circulated among the Dutch.

According to those who had served as sailors on Dutch vessels, in the East Indies there existed a kind of ship whose exterior matched that of a normal sailing vessel, but which in truth did not rely on the wind to sail at all.

Beneath its hull, the tentacles of a monster dragged it along!

Only when sailing against the wind could the truth be discerned.

Upon sighting such a ship, one had to keep far away at once, lest misfortune cling to you.

Out on the vast sea, there were too many legends of every sort—this story had originally drawn no one's attention.

But now, seeing a false-form ship with their own eyes, the crew realized with a shock that the legend was actually true!

"My God!" Many sailors pulled out their crucifixes, clutching them in both hands as they prayed.

Even Carinio was momentarily stunned. He forced himself to suppress his fear and shouted loudly, "Ready the cannons! Even if the Kraken itself came today, we'd blast a few holes through it!"

As he spoke, a scorched, burnt smell suddenly drifted through the air.

A sailor's voice came from behind.

"Look! Our camp!"

Carinio's heart gave a jolt. He turned his head woodenly, and saw that as if by sorcery, flames had suddenly erupted from within San Salvador—and not from just one spot. In no time, the fire had engulfed most of the fort-town.

"Woo—woo—"

On the open ground of the shore, flute sounds rose abruptly. The notes were low, mournful, and extremely short, yet they rose and fell in waves, spreading across the mountains and fields—like a host of women weeping, or countless mountain spirits shrieking at the moon.

It raised goosebumps all over anyone who heard it!

Some sailors were already scared out of their wits, collapsing limp to the deck, faces deathly pale, muttering under their breath: "It's ghosts—the ghosts of those witches! They've come for revenge!"

Yahei

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