Chapter 195: Give Before You Take

Everyone aboard the Alicante was visiting Dayuan for the first time.

Because the wind was against them, the escort party moved very slowly, only returning to Dayuan by noon of the second day.

Originally they had planned to travel through the night — the method was simple: send a navigator with a walkie-talkie onto the Spanish ship, then have the lead vessel display its running lights. As long as weather conditions permitted and there was no storm, this approach could be carried out.

In the end, they considered that doing so risked exposing their night-fighting capability, so the destroyer captain, who had not been authorized on this matter, decided to wait until after daybreak to move on.

Ever since the Spanish established a foothold in Taipei, they had been constantly harassed by Dutch armed sailing ships. The Dutch not only sent ships to Jilong Bay to harass and fire upon them, probing for landings, but also intercepted all Spanish vessels near Dayuan.

Eventually, Spanish transport ships took to passing only along the outer coast of Taiwan, so they were not very clear on the situation within the strait, let alone the nature of that axis of evil, Dayuan Island.

Although Ensign Sandoval had previously heard scattered, fragmentary reports from the Philippines about the Dutch withdrawing from Dayuan, it was all unconfirmed information, insufficient for him to draw any conclusions.

In fact, when the ensign first saw those two streamlined, soft-sailed destroyers, he even believed for a time that Dayuan was still in Dutch hands: the earliest two-masted schooners had been invented by the Dutch, after all.

Looking out, the crisscrossing crowds on Chikan Wharf held not a single red-haired or blond head. The entire pier district was filled exclusively with short-haired Ming people.

At this moment, the pitiable Spaniards finally recognized one fact: the Dutch had been driven out by these heretics.

... Dear God, we have fallen into the hands of heretics. This terrifying news spread through the entire ship in an instant.

One must understand that Spaniards of this period were all faithful believers of the Catholic Church.

The Thirty Years' War, which had begun a decade ago, was now raging fiercely across the lands of Europe, impossible to stop.

And the Habsburg Dynasty's loyal partners — the Spanish Royal Family, the nobility, and the Spanish people — were the very mainstay of the Catholic Alliance.

Thus, those round, flat faces understood the terror of heretics better than anyone: for centuries, it was they themselves who had invented all manner of gruesome tortures to deal with heretics.

This terror of the unknown even overwhelmed all the astonishment they had felt along the journey. The crew watched in silence the bizarre and fantastical sights within Taijiang; no one cried out in alarm.

The Alicante, moored in solitude at one pier, soon received the heretics' disposition.

Several wharf officials, dressed in earth-yellow linen shirts, linen trousers, and straw sandals on their feet, boarded the galleon.

Among these black-haired, yellow-skinned people was a translator who spoke Spanish, so the four-man group — including Ensign Sandoval himself, the first mate, the navigator, and the ship's pastor, Josep — was ordered from the very start to disembark, board a handsome little boat nearby, and head toward the opposite shore of Taijiang.

The other crewmen were ordered to remain on deck, forbidden to disembark and forbidden to return to the ship's hold.

No one dared disobey the commands of these heretics.

Setting aside the squad of soldiers on the wharf holding redwood firearms, the newly built red-brick concrete blockhouse in the Chikan Pier District had also stripped any power that had ever had close contact with a heavy machine gun of the will to resist: as the Spanish rounded the bend into the harbor, they had finally seen, up close, the great killer aboard the Yuan Dou.

The only person on the ship allowed to go below deck was the purser, Gomez. His task was to work with the black-haired port officials to inventory the modest cargo in the hold.

After all the goods were registered, the officials casually nailed shut the gunports of several cannons. Once back on deck, everyone departed, leaving only the translator to inform the purser: the sulfur in the hold was now being requisitioned.

Upon hearing this, the three highest-ranking officers remaining on deck — the second mate, the purser, and the boatswain — exchanged a glance, then immediately began driving the crew to haul out all twenty bags of sulfur from the hold and stack them neatly on the wharf beside the ship.

The crew-cut translator was very satisfied. A smile now appeared on his face, and then, under the watchful eyes of the crowd, he pulled out a pouch of tobacco shreds and a crude oak pipe, clearly turned by an apprentice on a wood lathe, leaned against the starboard side of the Alicante, and began smoking.

Seeing this, the purser somewhat anxiously bowed and approached the translator. "Honored sir, I believe we have the right to know what we face next."

The translator gazed into the distance at the forest of derricks in the shipyard while leisurely exhaling a puff of secondhand smoke, then said with a teasing expression, "Next, naturally, is hard labor — or did you expect rum?"

"Oh, God!" the crewmen cried out in misery. In that moment, they recalled the heretic slaves who labored their entire lives in Christian sugarcane plantations.

Fortunately, the translator was only frightening them for a moment. Soon, he pointed at a string of wooden-wheeled carts approaching from afar on the wharf and said with a smile, "The labor has arrived. Move the cargo, gentlemen."

... The crew began, with faces full of astonishment, to carry the red bricks from the carts into the lower hold. The round, flat faces were now in a state of extreme confusion; they could not understand who the cargo was for, and many even believed these heretics had already confiscated the ship and that they were now experiencing the first labor of their lives as slaves...

The several hundred red bricks from the ten carts were soon moved, and then wharf workers wearing moon-white cloth vests carted away the sulfur.

These single-person carts were no different in appearance from the sheet-metal pushcarts used on later-generation construction sites — all had a square hopper, a pair of large wheels, and two support struts at the rear. The only difference was that apart from the axle and a layer of iron sheathing on the outer rim of the wheels, all other parts were made of wood.

Without rubber available, the wheel material could only be wood for now. The quality of the wheels produced in the Kiln District was quite good: two semicircular wooden rims, shaped and set by steam fumigation, were first riveted together with spokes, then the outer rim was fitted with a red-hot iron hoop. After rapid cooling, the iron hoop shrank, and a wheel employing the principle of "autofrettage" was born.

At present, aside from a small number of imported solid tires, all wheels used by the entire Crossing Faction were manufactured through this process. As for the results — at least on the concrete paving of the pier district, the iron-hooped pushcarts were quite practical and could move at a flying speed.

Thus, the crew of the Alicante had not rested long before the carts came again. This time, they were loaded with "boxed cement," a product greatly welcomed by Hangzhou's commercial circles: camphor wood chests containing cement sacks.

In the Age of Sail, leaks in a ship's hold were an almost unavoidable problem, so valuable cargo in this era required layer upon layer of wrapping. The elaborately nested gift boxes seen in later Japanese comics originated from this: without such packaging, precious silk fabrics would arrive waterlogged and ruined by seawater.

"Boxed cement" was born from the same necessity. However, the wooden chests delivered today were finished camphor wood chests with iron-sheathed corners, produced in the Kiln District.

In Hangzhou City, highly skilled lacquerers, coppersmiths, and carpenters would transform these semi-finished wooden chests into superior furniture with copper-sheathed corners, brass beast-head handles, and exquisitely polished lacquer finishes. However, Manila in 1628 was a backwater where even sundry goods had to be imported from the Great Ming, so the chests delivered today were finished products in a minimalist style.

The bewildered men once again began bewilderedly carrying the wooden chests into the hold.

After this, the carts brought exquisite porcelain, fine cotton cloth, beautiful silk, and some glass tableware.

By this time, the translator comrade had long since transformed into an accountant, standing at the hatch and constantly checking the goods against the manifest with the purser.

When everything was finished, the translator had the purser sign the triplicate cargo manifest, then smiled and loudly revealed the truth: "These goods are all samples to be taken to Manila. Gentlemen, you may leave here tomorrow."

Paying no heed to the crewmen weeping with joy, the translator, just before departing, took one more man from among them: "Has anyone here ever learned the craft of mixing mud and laying bricks?"

"Sir, my father is a mason."

"Very good. What is your name?"

"Andres Iniesta, sir."

"Come with me to the wharf construction site right now. Before tomorrow morning, you must learn how to use cement. Young man, you are in luck — the important figures of Manila will soon be inviting you to visit."

At the same time the crewmen were laboriously moving cargo, Sandoval's team, brought to the temporary office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Dayuan Island, was arguing vigorously with Cai Feiming.

Comrade Cai Feiming had once sold bags and luggage in Barcelona, so his Spanish was very fluent.

Once Ensign Sandoval and the other senior staff arrived at the office, Cai Feiming quickly made the Crossing Faction's intentions clear to these captives.

First: trading rights in exchange for a fortress.

Effective immediately, Dayuan Port was open to the Philippines; the Spanish could freely select and purchase goods here.

While handing the ensign a product catalog, Cai Feiming told him that a batch of goods was currently being loaded into the galleon's cargo hold. These goods would serve as trade samples, to be taken back to Manila by the ensign and presented to the Salamanca Governor, as a gesture of Dayuan's sincerity.

At the same time, Cai Feiming informed the ensign: as the price for obtaining trading rights, the Spanish side must, in the shortest possible time, transfer to the Dayuan power the San Salvador City built within Jilong Bay in Taipei.

As for Santo Domingo, still under construction at the mouth of the Tamsui River, Cai Feiming magnanimously stated: we have no interest in that place. If you wish, you are entirely free to relocate your soldiers and belongings there, and from now on we can be good neighbors.

Furthermore, Cai Feiming also promised: if an agreement was reached, in the future Spanish ships could depart directly from Dayuan, take the shortcut through the strait, and complete their supply missions at the mouth of the Tamsui River. The Spanish could even outsource their supply missions to the Dayuan side — all of this was open to negotiation.