Chapter 34: The Captain's Cabin

Scholar Zhou nodded and said, "Understood."

Lin Qian stood up after speaking and looked around: "I happen to be free this morning, I'll do the inventory with you."

The captain's cabin was a suite design — the outer area served as study, sitting room, and dining room, while the inner area was the bedroom; the two rooms together came to roughly twenty square meters.

Since coming aboard, Lin Qian had only ever moved about in the outer room and had never set foot in the bedroom, so he said, "Let's start with the bedroom."

The bedroom was smaller, with a walnut four-poster double bed in the center, dressed in ornately embroidered deep-red silk bedding, curtains hanging down on all sides, and no nightstands.

A walnut wardrobe stood against the wall, filled with a large number of Spanish garments with ruff collars — the fabrics were fine and costly, but they simply didn't match Ming aesthetics and certainly couldn't be worn; they could be considered for sale to the Portuguese once they reached port.

In the center of the wardrobe hung a rapier, its hilt and scabbard set with several red and blue gemstones — clearly this sword served far more decorative than practical purpose.

Leaving the bedroom, the outer cabin was considerably more spacious with more furniture — an Ottoman divan sat in the center, a hand-woven Turkish carpet laid before it, and on the carpet stood a small table the size of a tea table.

To the left of the divan, by the window, stood a chart table, piled with candlesticks, an astrolabe, sea charts, and Lin Qian's navigation log.

He had already been using this chart table all morning and liked it very much — table and chair were both of ebony, the height matched perfectly, and the surface was extremely flat, without a single pit or hollow.

When he grew tired of bending over the desk, a single turn brought a whole row of glass portholes, the vast open sea spread out before his eyes.

To the right of the divan was a small oval dining table surrounded by six chairs; both table and chairs were of walnut, thick in material and exquisite in craftsmanship, with intricate carved floral patterns adorning the chair backs and armrests.

The finely carved dining environment formed an utterly jarring contrast with hard biscuits and salted meat.

Around the furniture, cabinets and cupboards had been wedged into every available gap — storage space was extremely ample, yet the placement and sizing of the cabinets had also been carefully designed so that the cabin never felt crowded.

The cabin walls were hung thick with oil paintings — a rough count put them at over a dozen in various sizes, leaving hardly any teak hull visible.

Directly facing the divan hung a Renaissance-style Madonna painting, before which stood a low cabinet topped with an arm-sized crucifix, the cross carved with a figure of Jesus with arms outstretched.

The crucifix was pure white and lustrous throughout, apparently carved from ivory with superb workmanship — every strand of beard and hair rendered with perfect detail.

Lin Qian clicked his tongue inwardly — the extravagance of the captain's cabin exceeded his imagination; the Spanish treasure galleon truly lived up to its name.

"This ivory carving, the paintings on the walls, the sword and clothes in the wardrobe — sell them once we reach port, and don't deduct them from my share."

Lin Qian was afraid that if he bought out the entire captain's cabin, his share would be whittled away before it ever reached his hands, and he'd end up owing the common accounts...

Scholar Zhou followed behind Lin Qian, his brush flying like a dragon and snake, recording rapidly in the ledger.

Next, Lin Qian opened and inspected every cabinet and chest in the captain's cabin, finding a number of exquisitely crafted porcelain tableware sets — these items fetched high prices in Europe but seemed far less luxurious in the Ming.

There were twelve books written in Spanish, all on parchment, handwritten with pure quill pens, accompanied by beautifully hand-painted color illustrations.

By the craftsmanship standards of parchment-making, one sheet of parchment required one sheepskin, and a single book needed at least two hundred sheep — plus the labor cost of copying — making the production cost extremely high, truly heirloom-grade treasures of Europe.

As for these books, Lin Qian decided to read through them first before deciding what to do with them.

In the cabinet there was also a small gold ornament of extremely fine workmanship, its artistic style utterly different from that of Europe.

Lin Qian picked it up casually and turned it in his hand — it was a disc-shaped object the size of a button, pure gold by its weight, carved with extremely intricate patterns that roughly depicted the sun.

From the feathered headdress and totemic patterns, it was clearly Inca in style.

The Inca Empire was known as the gold civilization — their craftsmanship in working gold was supremely advanced and their realm held countless gold — yet now they had fallen to become a Spanish colony, so it was hardly surprising that Inca gold objects should appear on this ship.

Compared with the value of the gold itself, the cultural, artistic, and historical value carried by this gold ornament was clearly far greater.

As for the colonizers, they didn't think that way — every gold object they seized was melted down and recast for money, truly "butchers of human history."

This "gold button" had most likely survived only because it was too small to catch the colonizers' eye.

Lin Qian placed it on the chart table, resolving to treasure it well on behalf of the Inca people.

Besides the Inca gold button, the cabinet also held several hundred silver pesos, several dozen reales, and a number of gold and silver coins from other countries.

All of the above were recorded into the accounts one by one by Scholar Zhou.

Lin Qian inventoried with great care, rummaging through boxes and cabinets in the captain's cabin with a kind of beachcombing joy.

And the captain's cabin happened to hold a great many things — big cabinets nested around small chests, stacked layer upon layer — so that this joy could go on and on.

Before long, Lin Qian turned up another arm-sized wooden box, carefully wrapped on the outside in oiled paper.

Opening the box, he found two more layers of oiled paper inside — the galleon's former captain hadn't shown even this much care for those parchment books, which could not help but kindle Lin Qian's curiosity.

But once the oiled paper was peeled away, Lin Qian couldn't help feeling greatly disappointed — inside lay neatly arranged cigarettes, already very similar in form to the cigars of later ages.

Lin Qian had no interest in tobacco; in his previous life he had only occasionally smoked cigars for social obligations.

So he had Scholar Zhou record the cigarettes in the accounts and set them aside.

After that, most of what Lin Qian inventoried was miscellaneous odds and ends.

"What is this?" Scholar Zhou suddenly said.

Lin Qian hurried over to look and immediately widened his eyes — what appeared before him was unmistakably a pendulum clock.

This clock stood as tall as a man, placed against the wall and cleverly hidden inside a cabinet — had one not opened the cabinet door, one would never have imagined a clock was concealed within.

The clock face used Roman numerals, indicating the time as 4:34.

It was not yet noon, so clearly the time was wildly wrong.

Of course, this clock couldn't possibly be showing the local time of Madrid, or any other European country either.

Because for a clock using a pendulum as its escapement mechanism, the pendulum's motion was greatly affected by the rolling of the sea — in principle, no clock of this era could keep accurate time once aboard a ship.

For the former captain, the greatest function this pendulum clock served in the captain's cabin was to display his wealth.

The principle being that only top-tier nobles were willing to waste money on meaningless things.

But for Lin Qian, the value of this clock far exceeded the sum of all the luxuries in the room combined.

As early as when he had seen the clocks in the churches of Manila, he had conceived the idea of building a marine chronometer.

Now this was truly a case of bread arriving when hungry, a pillow appearing when sleepy.

If he could successfully build a marine chronometer, it would be equivalent to using GPS in an age when people navigated by maps.

When that day came, other fleets would have to obediently zigzag along their routes.

Lin Qian could freely sail the shortest distance between two points — the great-circle route — without needing to take conservative right-angle courses, and never again fear losing his way at sea.

At this thought, Lin Qian's to-do list could not help but gain one more item.

Yahei

Pink Round

Pen