Chapter 231: The Shipyard's Secret

No one noticed when the man in black on the third tier of seats left. The crowd was immersed in a fanatical clamor, which then erupted into a small riot. The white captain, in his excessive excitement, had broken the seat board and rolled down from the stands. He was lucky to have escaped physical injury, but he lay on the ground, groaning in pain along with those he had crushed.

An hour later, the captain staggered into a tavern in the Pasig River dock area and ordered a large glass of tuba, a wine made from coconut sap, which was about the cheapest alcoholic beverage in the Philippines. He drank and cursed the cruelty of fate.

“Captain Fernando,” someone greeted him. The captain saw a young Chinese man standing before him, wearing a straw hat, a common Chinese short-sleeved jacket, and a pair of European-style sailor’s trousers. He seemed to deliberately push his ceramic wine cup in front of the captain. Fernando’s eyes widened, his nose twitched, greedily inhaling the aroma of chartreuse. An unremarkable Chinese man was actually drinking the expensive “Great Tang Princess” liqueur in Manila!

“My master is in the private room next door. He would like to invite Mr. Fernando for a few good drinks. Please follow me.” The Chinese man turned and walked away, picking up his wine cup very slowly.

The captain’s eyelid twitched. Under the Chinese man’s ordinary ceramic cup, something golden gleamed. The man had already turned away. Fernando reached out, covered the gold coin, and slowly slid it into his sleeve.

“What the hell,” the captain muttered to himself, “I’ve already lost everything anyway.” He dropped his wine cup, grabbed his hat, and followed the Chinese man’s back towards the rear of the tavern.

Fernando squinted. The transition from the bright outer room of the tavern to the dark private room behind made his eyes very uncomfortable. The private room had no windows, and the door closed behind him. The only source of light was a simple coconut oil lamp on the dining table. The flame flickered as if struggling, illuminating only half the table. As the captain’s eyes gradually adjusted to the dim, flickering light of the private room, he saw a somewhat stooped man sitting behind the table. His seat seemed to deliberately avoid the faint light of the oil lamp.

“Please sit, de Fernando.” The stooped man, most of his body hidden in the darkness, spoke in a deliberately altered, hoarse voice. Captain Fernando sat down in the opposite chair, slightly surprised. Not many people in Manila knew his home country, but this mysterious figure was speaking French.

The Chinese man brought Fernando a cup and plate, filled his glass with sweet wine, and then retreated to the doorway, seemingly uninterested in the conversation.

“De Fernando, there’s a question about you that has been bothering me,” the mysterious figure said. If anything could stop Fernando from guzzling the sweet wine, it was this question. “Which God do you believe in? The one in the Vatican, or the one of the Huguenots?”

The captain’s hand trembled, and he didn’t notice that he had spilled his wine on the table. Breaking out of La Rochelle, risking his life for the Muslim pashas in the Barbary Islands, and nearly being killed by Portuguese cannonballs; transporting goods for the English in Surat only to be attacked by the Dutch East India Company, losing both ship and cargo. He had never spoken of these experiences to anyone, at least not when he was sober. In Spanish-controlled territory, a Huguenot would have no other end than the stake.

“God is the one true God,” the captain said slowly.

The body in the darkness shifted in its chair. The captain now saw that the man before him was mostly wrapped in a black cloak, wearing a black half-mask that revealed a meticulously trimmed beard.

“Captain Fernando, I know you are a businessman,” the man in black switched to Spanish. “And a businessman has only one God.”

He raised his right hand. The black leather glove made Fernando shudder. It was as if he were sitting in front of a non-human creature wrapped in a black shell. The black hand opened, and a handful of ducats clattered onto the table. A few of them hit the captain’s wine glass before falling, making the crisp sound of gold. “The gospel of God is indispensable, my friend, especially after a big gamble.”

Fernando’s eager eyes were fixed on the few gold coins. Under the flickering, dim light, the entire tabletop seemed to dance with a golden glow.

“Sir, you wouldn’t be compensating me for my losses for free, would you?” He desperately tried to swallow some saliva to lubricate his dry throat, even forgetting the fine wine in front of him.

“Under the shed at the Manila shipyard, what kind of ship is there, and why does His Excellency the Governor value it so much, Mr. de Fernando?”

The private room suddenly fell silent, with only Fernando’s heavy, gasping breaths audible. “That is His Excellency the Governor’s secret—”

“Mr. Salamanca hired you to command that small ship under construction because you are a brave enough captain, and also because you are always short of money,” the man in black squeezed out a light laugh from between his teeth. “I want to know, what kind of ship is this? What kind of ship requires a captain like you, who dares to risk his life, to command it?”

The “brave captain,” Mr. de Fernando, broke out in a sweat. This was the Governor’s great secret. In all of Manila, only four people knew the true situation of this ship. If it were to be leaked, the consequences would be unimaginable.

“You need money, my friend. I have no dealings with Mr. Salamanca or those priests in Manila, and I don’t like their fanatical zeal. I want to know what’s going on with that ship and the shipyard now,” the man in black placed a money pouch on the table, untied the ribbon, and took out a handful of gold coins, letting them fall one by one from between his fingers. With each crisp clink, Fernando’s pupils contracted. “I am also a businessman, my dear Fernando. This is just a business deal, just a business deal.”

When the man in black and his Chinese attendant left the tavern, the sun was almost setting. They got into an oxcart with a cloth canopy as soon as they left the tavern. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of such oxcarts in and around Manila. The oxcart finally stopped in front of a warehouse surrounded by a courtyard wall. After the two men got off, it drove away. There were many such simple warehouses with log frames and thatched roofs in the dock area by the Pasig River. The man in black passed through the back gate of the courtyard, took out a key, opened the padlock, and walked into the warehouse with the Chinese man. The warehouse door closed behind them. When it opened again fifteen minutes later, the black cloak and mask were gone, the beard stuck to his chin had been torn off, and the doublet, padded with a large amount of cotton to feign a hunchback, had been removed. Count Fannanuova mounted a horse tied in the courtyard and left through the front gate. A moment later, Ji Mide, now wearing a Chinese long gown and a skullcap instead of his sailor’s straw hat, hurried towards the next contact point in the Parián district.

Mr. Genolino Panio had been suffering from severe headaches recently. It felt as if all the foul humors in his body had rushed to his head. But even if his skull were to burst, he had no desire to see a doctor. Those doctors only knew how to bleed people, and he had no intention of letting that drunken barber cut open his arm.

The medically skilled priests were not keen on bleeding people, or he could try a Chinese doctor. However, Genolino Panio knew that his headache was not within the scope of medicine. As the head of the royal shipyard, his suffering stemmed from a damned contract: to build 12 new fast patrol boats for the East India colony.

In the end, it was all the fault of that bastard Japanese, the evil Paul Takayama. The drawings and models for that single-masted lateen-sailed fast boat were said to have come from his hand. He had also persuaded the Governor to use them to replace the old-fashioned galleys and simple rowboats, which would give the colonial fleet a new look. Of course, one look at Takayama’s own boat and you would know that this so-called fast patrol boat was based on his vessel.

Genolino Panio had been one of the most enthusiastic supporters at the time. No one could be indifferent to the money that such a large order would bring, and the rewards that could be obtained upon completion. It was only after he had taken on all the shipbuilding orders and eagerly started work that he found himself in a big hole.

Paul Takayama’s requirements for this seemingly simple small boat were nothing short of incredible. The peculiar rigging and the finicky demands on the quality and dimensions of the ship’s timber were one thing, but he even demanded that the entire bottom of the ship below the waterline be sheathed in copper. Genolino, who had been a shipwright for over twenty years, had never heard of such an absurd thing. Even the great galleons that crossed the Pacific only had their bottoms covered with a layer of tarred canvas and a little lead sheathing. Genolino decided to give the new patrol boats two coats of wood tar, which would at least ensure they were durable enough. As for the copper sheathing, to hell with it. All the copper in Manila had been collected to supply that Japanese genius for his precious cannons.

And that wasn’t the most outrageous part. Mr. Salamanca, for some reason, had believed the Japanese bastard’s nonsense and had even personally asked Genolino Panio if the keel and ribs of the new ships could be made of iron. If it weren’t for the Governor’s noble status, Genolino Panio would have probably laughed his head off. No one in the world had the ability to bend pig iron into the shape of a ship’s rib. Besides, even if it could be cast, its brittleness made it unsuitable for a keel or ribs. As for wrought iron, not to mention where to get so much of it in Manila, just processing such large forgings would be a huge problem.

The head of the shipyard interpreted this as the Governor’s concern about the strength of his products. He had no choice but to double the materials used in the key parts of the ship. Fortunately, there was no shortage of high-quality shipbuilding hardwood here. But now, the stock of seasoned timber that had been stored for many years was about to be depleted, and not even a third of the project was completed.