NCCnovel Chapter 221 Sneak Attack on Zhongzuosuo (2)
Chapter 221 Sneak Attack on Zhongzuosuo (2)
??
Of course, given Zheng Hongkui's status in the Zheng family, he wasn't someone to be marginalized. Zheng Zhilong kept him around and even went to great lengths to appease him, fearing he might have some ulterior motives. Zheng Hongkui also knew that he had encountered such bad luck, and that keeping a low profile for a while was a good choice, so he stayed at Zhongzuo Police Station without worry. However, he never expected that such a one-in-a-million chance would happen to him—the port was attacked by the enemy!
His subordinate stumbled in with the news: "Fourth Master, something terrible has happened! A lot of large barges have stormed in, and they're firing at every ship they see. They've already sunk several..."
Zheng Hongkui, his face grim, shouted, "I heard it without you reporting it. Even a deaf person could hear such loud cannon fire. Quickly wake up the brothers, grab your weapons, and head to the harbor to meet the enemy!"
"Yes!"
After his men hurriedly left, Zheng Hongkui suddenly remembered that many of the short heavy cannons delivered by the Qiongzhou camp after the first month of the lunar calendar were stored on his own Daqingtou. These cannons were precious items that cost a full 300,000 taels of silver. His elder brother was reluctant to take them with him when he went to Fuzhou to suppress bandits and left them at home. If they were destroyed in a sudden attack, he would probably be in deep trouble.
The more he thought about it, the more frightened he became, and cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He took his knife from the bedside, went out into the yard and shouted, "Everyone get up! Stop lying there like corpses! Get to the dock and protect our ship!"
Ship owners and merchants arrived at the dock one after another. They were stunned by what they saw and almost fainted: amidst the booming cannon fire, nearly ten large, never-before-seen barges were sailing in the harbor, merrily spewing flames. Cannonballs flew towards their own ships, and they could only watch helplessly as their ships were smashed, flooded, and sunk.
Some people, worried about their boat, wanted to take their crew aboard a sampan to escape the gunfire, but were stopped by acquaintances: "Are you out of your mind? The cannons don't have eyes."
"What can we do? Just watch my ship sink?"
"What good is it if you're unwilling? You'll risk your life now and still be unable to steer your boat away from the cannon fire of these big ships."
Just then, someone with sharp eyes spotted Zheng Hongkui leading his men to the dock in a fit of rage and quickly surrounded him: "Fourth Master, you need to make a decision quickly and drive away these plank boats that have appeared out of nowhere!"
Zheng Hongkui took a closer look and his heart sank. The flag flying on this large ship belonged to the Red Hairs, and the double-deck gun deck was also unique to the barbarians. Could it be that his elder brother was trying his best to avoid fighting on two fronts with Liu Xiang and the Red Hairs, but the Red Hairs were ungrateful and took the initiative to attack Zhongzuosuo?
He waved his hand, and his subordinate handed him a telescope—this thing was bought from Macau for over a hundred taels of silver. It was expensive, but indispensable for naval warfare. He took it, placed it in front of his eyes, and looked at the enemy ship.
Many of the ships were filled with Chinese faces, but that wasn't unusual; even foreigners could hire Chinese sailors, and the Zheng family had also employed a black musketeer squad. Zheng Hongkui used his telescope to look around and finally locked onto the enemy flagship—and the person commanding it at the bow was indeed a blond-eyed foreigner!
Liu Ye and his men naturally hid in the cabin and did not show themselves, but this foreigner not only did not hide, but stood in the most conspicuous position at the bow of the ship—this was a foreigner that Liu Ye had found to mislead the enemy. Firstly, he had never shown himself in the Zhongzuo Bureau; secondly, his foreign face could confuse the enemy—after all, the people of the Ming Dynasty could not distinguish between the Dutch and the British, just as foreigners in later generations could not distinguish between the Chinese and the Japanese and Koreans.
"Damn it, we Zheng family didn't even bother to cause trouble for you red-haired bastards, yet you dare to come and bully us!" Zheng Hongkui gritted his teeth and ordered, "Get on the ship at all costs and bombard them with the newly bought cannons!"
The Zheng family's sailors jumped onto the sampans, untied the ropes, and rowed frantically toward their own warships. Those ships were equipped with newly purchased short heavy cannons; if they fired a few shots at the "barbarians'" decks, they were sure to give the "red-haired" men a run for their money—they had witnessed the power of those cannons firsthand.
The barbarian stood at the bow of the flagship, the "Lingao." Gao Jie, outside the cabin, closely monitored the entire battlefield. When he spotted someone attempting to board the large ship in a small boat, he immediately ordered: "'Lingao,' prepare! Attack these pirates! Don't give them a chance to board!"
The other seven ships continued to lock onto their targets and bombard them, while the 'Lingao' targeted the sampans.
"Boom boom boom!" Solid bullets rained down on the Zheng family sailors on the sampans. Although they managed to avoid the first one, it was difficult to avoid the second and third. Several sampans capsized and sank after being hit by a single shot.
Zheng Hongkui on the shore was quite nervous. The enemy's cannons were too powerful. He could only hope that his men could withstand the bombardment, board the ship smoothly, and return fire with short heavy cannons. In fact, he did not know that in order to avoid being exposed, the enemy did not use grapeshot at all. Otherwise, a few shots would have wiped out these small sampans with the barrage of grapeshot.
Seeing that most of his first batch of men were wounded by the cannon fire and had difficulty getting close to their large ships, Zheng Hongkui spat fiercely and shouted, "Everyone, get on board! Do everything you can to protect these large ships and heavy cannons. Once you get on board and fire the cannons, everyone will receive fifty taels of silver, and if you die, you'll get a hundred taels as a resettlement allowance!"
Such a generous reward caused the Zheng family's sailors to lose their composure. They roared and jumped onto the sampans, rowing desperately towards their own large ship despite the cannon fire.
The Lingao continued firing, and although sampans were occasionally hit, it could no longer stop the ant-like flow of people—there were simply too many people from the Zheng family, and the 14 cannons on one side of a Wuyi-class ship were clearly insufficient to stop these frenzied sailors.
Gao Jie stared wide-eyed at the sailors on the sampans in disbelief: "What did Zheng Yiguan promise them? Have these people gone mad?"
Liu Ye, inside the cabin, saw this scene through the window and sneered a few times: "It's true what they say, 'People die for money, birds die for food.' The Zheng family must have offered a hefty reward to make these people so reckless." He looked in the direction the sampan was moving and saw dozens of ships similar in size to the Wuxiang-class patrol ships. The bows and sides of the ships were painted blue, and large cannon muzzles were faintly visible on the hulls. He recognized these cannons very well; they were a low-end version of the 32-pound Caron cannons on his own ship—Caron cannons cast from white cast iron.
"Oh no, they're going to board the ship and counterattack, and they're using our cannons. That Zheng Zhilong is really greedy for money; he bought these expensive cannons but doesn't take them out to suppress the bandits; they're just sitting at home." Liu Ye quickly called over a sailor, "Go tell Gao Jie to be careful of the enemy boarding the ship and counterattacking."
————————————————————————
Note 1: A type of main warship of the Zheng family, decorated with blue hull, about 10 zhang long, 2 zhang 1 chi wide, 1 zhang 5 chi high, with a draft of 8 chi, a carrying capacity of three to four thousand dan, and equipped with only 2 cannons, one in front and one in the rear.