Chapter 71: Scattered Sand

The moment they hit the beach, the transmigrators standing at the bow all shared one thought: today was going smoothly.

The wind cooperated, bringing the fleet to the waters off Dayuan before noon. The Dutch cooperated by sending out ships, and those ships cooperated by getting sunk in the narrow channel, bottling up every Dutch ship, Chinese-style ship, Japanese ship, and fishing boat inside the Taijiang Inner Sea all at once. After this, the tide cooperated by rising, so in the coming battle, the troops would have to walk two fewer steps.

Everything went so smoothly that the transmigrators, who had originally expected to run into endless mishaps, now felt oddly like they had thrown a punch into thin air.

The Ming crewmen were equally high in morale at this moment. The "Rapid Fire Cannon," belching flame and thunder, had needed only half a minute to shred a ship and the men on it from over a li away. In its very first real-world battle, this new-model great killer had already won itself a crowd of cheering, whooping Ming fanatics.

Of course, after the cheering came the work. The two ships each detached forty crewmen to go ashore. After this, Liu Zhe, the overall landing commander, led a few Navy Faction men off the ship. The beach soon rang with the bright bark of an electric megaphone: "All of you, watch your front and back! One step between men, one step between men!"

"One step" meant the combined distance of stepping forward once with the left foot and once with the right. In the Ming dynasty, where people were generally not tall, one step was about 110 centimeters. Five or six transmigrators spent ten minutes kicking and shoving until they finally arranged the eighty crewmen into an Eight Gates Unlocked Formation — like sesame seeds on a glutinous rice ball, a scattered mess of sesame seeds struggling to maintain about one meter of distance from each other.

The next moment, the great formation was activated.

The fleet had charged the beach from the open sea, heading west to east, landing at the upper-left corner of the Dayuan tadpole. At this time, Dayuan Island covered less than five square kilometers, and all the Dutch buildings were clustered at the tadpole's upper-right corner. This meant the Sesame Formation — or Brownian Motion Formation, as the transmigrators had deployed — would have to advance over a li from west to east before entering the cannon range of the Shang Hall.

The sesame cluster slowly shifted forward, crossing low shrubs and weeds along the way. Every hundred meters or so, the megaphone behind them would sound, directing the troop to halt, adjust the spacing between each other, and then continue advancing.

After the main force began to move, the landing beach remained bustling with activity. Both sand ships had extra gangplanks added, pieced together into a gentle slope a full two meters wide. The ten laborers in the best condition were organized into one crew, hauling several crates down from the ships.

Some of these crates were military-green ammunition boxes for the machine gun; others were gleaming, black-edged, mysterious aluminum alloy flight cases. After that, Wei Yuan, Han Bo, and a few others personally carried a machine gun down from the Dog Eye. They then ordered the laborer crew to hoist the crates and lead the way. Just before leaving, Han Bo turned back and grinned at Xia Xianze's group, who were standing at the bow craning their necks to watch the excitement. He waved the Motorola walkie-talkie in his hand: "Seal the channel. If anything happens, ALLE."

"Kill fewer people, capture more prisoners!"

"Understood, understood."

At the exact same moment the transmigrators and their ragtag followers were forming a pincer movement, the Ming scouts that the Dayuan Governor had sent out earlier came running back to report on the enemy.

Van der Hagen now knew that the invading pirates had two leaders, surnamed "Xia" and "Liu." After a few more exchanges with that spy surnamed Xu, the fat translator offered a supplement: according to the banner-hanging rules of Ming Nation pirates, the opposing force's main leader was surnamed "Xia," and the leader surnamed Liu was likely a "Shopkeeper."

Although the Dutch had very clear intelligence on every faction operating in the Fujian-Guangdong Waters, that only referred to the major powers. Small-time pirates like this, with just two ships, were as numerous as hairs on an ox along the Great Ming coast — fishermen today, pirates tomorrow, shareholders in some Great Gang the day after.

"So, as usual, this is just a gang of damned scattered pirates, not representatives of some power base?" Van der Hagen asked finally.

"Even if they have a larger group behind them, it would have to be from the north of Great Ming, my lord." The translator spent a long time this round communicating with the scout. The dark, wiry man spoke rapidly, jabbing his finger wildly in some direction the entire time.

"I need an explanation."

"Those two ships are sand — ah — 'flat-bottomed junks' from the north of Great Ming. This ship type is only found north of Fujian." The translator paused, then coined a new term on the spot.

"Very well, I believe I understand." Van der Hagen pieced together all the information in that moment — wandering pirates from the northern Ming nation, a gang of stupid and reckless pirates who had no idea that the great East India Company's employees and property existed on Dayuan Island.

The Brownian Formation slowly closing in from the distance seemed to confirm Van der Hagen's assessment.

There were about seventy or eighty Ming people, dressed in traditional blue homespun short jackets. Perhaps to make themselves look more numerous, these pirates had comically scattered their ranks, like a flock of sheep spreading out to graze.

Even at this great distance — so far that the corner bastion's eight-pounder cannons could not reach — the people at the Shang Hall could still hear the raucous shouts these pirates were making. "Good God, those fools have loud voices," more than one person was thinking.

William Jans carefully observed the slowly approaching enemy through his monocular. At this range, he could now clearly make out the spears and short knives in the pirates' hands, along with a few Ming-native guns called "bird blunderbusses," being fired into the air now and then in a show of bravado. He saw not a single copper cannon, nor any matchlocks.

After a second sweep of observation, William Jans set aside his earlier caution and delivered the following professional judgment to Van der Hagen: "Sir, the enemy is scattered and lacks training. I believe fifty soldiers should suffice. Furthermore, we won't need concentrated cannon fire — that way we can capture as many prisoners as possible. We will soon know what secrets those two junks hold."

"Excellent, finally something to do. Carry out your plan, Lieutenant."

The authorized lieutenant quickly mustered fifty firearm soldiers. The soldiers formed a column, their upper bodies wrapped with match cord, each man armed with a matchlock. After marching out through the Shang Hall's thick wooden gate, the soldiers expertly transitioned into a square formation of four horizontal ranks. By this time, the chaotic-looking pirates had already advanced to a spot only 00 meters from the Shang Hall.

"Boom — Boom!" Two reports sounded, white smoke billowed, and the two corner bastions at the northwest and southwest of the Shang Hall fired simultaneously. One cannonball smashed straight into the sand; the other had better luck, plowing into the pirate mob.

At this moment, the advantage of the Sesame Formation revealed itself: the eight-pounder cannonball did not carve a bloody alley through the crowd. After killing two unlucky souls, it burrowed into the sand.

A wave of turmoil swept through the pirate gang. Some stopped in their tracks, some quietly edged backward. The formation, which had been moving at a uniform pace, instantly fell apart. People, their true colors exposed, shoved each other as they prepared to turn tail — exactly like a flock of startled sheep.