“How much are these seed potatoes supposed to weigh?”
“Thirty to forty grams.”
“Grams…? What’s that?”
“I don’t know either. They said thirty grams is about one ounce.”
“Huh… I don’t understand why they’re using some strange unit instead of convenient ounces and drams.”
“Watch your mouth. Make one mistake and you might get chased out without receiving a single potato. They said from now on, we’re to use only grams for weight.”
“What kind of—”
“I believe I just heard something about drams and ounces.”
“…Lord Nemo?”
“N-no, that’s not—”
“If not, then all is well.”
Ugh, what was that? I was sure I’d smelled the stench of some wicked base-sixteen system of units from somewhere.
Must have been my imagination.
In any case, that wasn’t what mattered right now.
Let’s take a look at the current situation of our community.
“Cut the potato pieces to this size and plant them in the ground! Dig only this deep before planting them!”
“Everyone, keep the spacing straight when you plant! These are crops Lord Nemo personally distributed to you, are they not!”
The settlement of the new residents was somehow coming along.
They had arrived around April, so it was a little late, but still, each of them hurriedly joined the ranks of farming, tilling their vegetable gardens and securing what they needed to live.
“L-Lord Nemo! C-c-could I be excused from lessons tomorrow? I only slept four hours yesterday before getting up!”
“Lord Nemo! P-please, just look over this potato field with us! Lord Nemo…!”
Uh… everyone seemed to be living well.
Or not.
First of all, the roughly one hundred Englishmen from Croatoan Island were having the time of their lives in hell.
For the crime of having settled in America a few years earlier, and for the crime of having grown potatoes and other crops a few years earlier, every last one of them had been dragged out to Chesapeake Bay.
“Huff, hufff… Like this, though it’s only a few grams’ worth, this size is suitable for a seed potato…”
“But what is a gram?”
“J-just memorize it whether you understand or not. This is the eighth time I’ve explained it, and if you ask me one more time, I’ll split your head open with this sickle…!”
Without even getting proper sleep, they were acting as farming instructors, a role that had never been in their fate.
But there’s no helping it… Other than you people, almost no one here has ever succeeded at potato farming.
And you people are, huh? At least blessed. Just look at Manteo and his tribesmen over there.
“Hey, you bastards! Do it properly!”
“Why are you swearing?”
“What do you think you’re doing eating that! Do you want to starve to death in winter!”
“We’re… not supposed to eat it?”
“They say we’re not supposed to eat this!”
“Oh, really? That’s a seed? Something that looks like that?”
“…This is driving me insane.”
At present, among the residents of the Chesapeake colony, the number of natives exceeded about six thousand.
Manteo’s tribesmen numbered around two hundred. And among them, the number of adults able to work was even smaller.
While the Englishmen from the Roanoke Colony each had to teach only six or seven people, more than fifty people clung to each of Manteo’s tribesmen, asking this and that.
And on top of that, the people the tribesmen were in charge of teaching were natives. What that meant was…
—“What…? You don’t hunt and eat ‘beasts’… but use them as ‘farming tools’…?”
—“You dig up the ‘soil’ before scattering the ‘seeds’…?”
That’s right. It meant they had to teach everything from the very beginning.
Because of that, Manteo had already collapsed from overwork four days ago.
For now, every human who had been with me for over a year had to take on the role of farming teacher. Me? I couldn’t. I was an angel in name, after all.
At any rate, did that mean things were easy for the people learning?
Not at all.
There were many Englishmen who, after hearing only Walter Raleigh’s reckless marketing, had imagined this place to be something like a paradise flowing with milk and honey.
Having come with dreams of getting rich in the New World, they nearly lost their minds when an angel suddenly showed up with a talent show and then abruptly demanded they attend mandatory farming classes.
And then.
“Everyone, hurry up and learn Algonquian too!”
“…Why?”
“Because you will have to teach the natives farming as well.”
“…???”
Was his name Thomas Harriot?
That fellow was doing very well. He was teaching Algonquian to the Englishmen and English to the Algonquians, promoting mutual exchange—meaning farming lessons.
And so, everyone in this settlement groaned under farming lectures and foreign language education.
Huuu… It was chaos, but there was no helping it.
If this was all it took to settle thousands of semi-sedentary people and people who had come from a continent thousands of kilometers away, then it was still a tremendous success.
For the moment, not a single person had starved to death, and no one had shed blood.
And that was how our community kept moving.
Moderately peaceful(?), moderately busy.
Then what was I doing?
Nothing much.
I just carried some medicine, went around interpreting here and there, managed the grape farms in various places, treated the injured when they appeared, managed the vegetable gardens and seeds, ran the cultivator through the potato fields, sprayed pesticide, hauled construction materials when new settlements were being built, mediated when people quarreled…
I simply did everything.
…Haa.
Naturally, even after all that, there was still work left to do.
“G-good heavens! Wh-what in the world is that, Lord Nemo?”
“…It’s an excavator, Mr. Bacon. You make it by attaching an arm to a wagon without horses.”
“Uwooooh…!”
“We’re going to move that to Chesapeake Bay.”
“…How?”
“Well… wouldn’t it work if we built a boat?”
Bacon opened his notebook like a madman and continued sketching, while Shakespeare gaped and stopped writing. So many people called over from Croatoan Island had come to watch that there was no space to drive the excavator.
At any rate.
They say the Central Plains, before humans developed it, was half jungle and half marshland, right? This place was similar.
Most of it consisted of forest and wetlands, so securing farmland required logging and reclamation.
To cut down the trees around Chesapeake Bay and quickly remove their roots… we needed machinery.
A machine that could handle the work of hundreds of people at once.
Right. If we built a barge and towed it behind the Nautilus or another ship… somehow, couldn’t we move it from Croatoan Island to Chesapeake Bay?
One might worry about what would happen if our one and only excavator fell into the sea. But it was fine. I had experimented.
Last time, when the cultivator got stuck between rocks, I had been terrified and sweated buckets, but once midnight passed, it had returned to the warehouse. Apparently, if it was judged to be in an “immobilized” state, it didn’t just get repaired—it respawned too.
Thank you… Hwangsuk Soft…!
Now only one problem remained.
“We just need to build a ship that can carry an excavator of about ten tons!”
“…”
“…”
“…Lord Nemo?”
“Yes.”
“I believe that is the biggest problem.”
“Vicente, your problem lies within your own heart.
The reason people fear something is because it has no form. Do not be frightened by a failure that has not yet come.”
“…Ah!”
I had said it to Vicente, but Shakespeare’s hand beside him suddenly sped up. As if he had received some sort of inspiration.
…What? Out of nowhere?
“At any rate, if we look, we will find a way. Even if we fail, there is nothing to lose, so do not fear too much.”
“Um… If the ship is damaged, I think we will lose quite a lot?”
“That will not happen.”
Uh… probably.
“For now, how about using these boxes we use to hold grapes?”
“Styrofoam won’t do.”
“Uh… why not?”
Crunch.
“The waves of Pamlico Sound are quite rough, aren’t they? It would be dangerous to make a boat out of this.”
Still, we tried an experiment, and the result was…
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-boom!
…It was crushed under the excavator before it even reached the sea. Ah, why hadn’t we thought of that?
At any rate, the problem became more complicated. It had to be strong enough to bear the excavator’s weight, light, and abundant enough to quickly make an entire boat. There was no way we had such a thing among our household consumables…
“Here! We ran out of liquid fertilizer, so I brought the empty water tank. Where should I throw this away?”
“As usual, wash it clean and give it to a household without one as a water tank… No, wait.”
Huh?
An IBC tank.
Why hadn’t I thought of that?
Was it light? If you removed the steel pallet from the bottom, it was plastic.
Was it sturdy? The outside was surrounded by a steel frame, so of course it was.
And the shape? It was a 500-liter tank, so it was suitably large, and since it was a square rectangular shape, if we tied several together like blocks and put planks on top of them…?
A wide barge would be completed in no time.
We immediately collected the IBC tanks being used as water tanks from each house and tied them together with wire. When we gathered dozens, hundreds of those tied IBC tanks and set them on the sea, they rocked with the waves… but floated.
It was a success.
We immediately fixed planks on top and placed the excavator… onto it…
Thud!
…It worked.
“Success!”
“They actually floated that monster on the sea!”
It worked. We had completed a barge and placed the excavator on top of it. That meant from now on, whether it was the Damas or any kind of heavy equipment, we could move it by sea.
Outside Croatoan, that is.
“Huuu… Now the person who has to move that is going to suffer quite a bit, isn’t he? Judging by the structure, he’ll have to attach that barge to the back and tow it all the way to Chesapeake Bay.”
“That’s right. It will be a very dangerous voyage.”
“…”
“…”
“…Please take care of it, Vicente.”
“I knew it would be me.”
Of course. You’re the captain.
Pay the price for trying to kill me three years ago, Vicente!
“The excavator? With the Lord’s help, even if it breaks, it will return. The barge? We have plenty of materials, so even if it breaks, we can make another.
But if the Nautilus is destroyed…”
“…Understood. I’ll do my best.”
Vicente González, age forty-eight.
The first human in history to nearly be crushed to death by an excavator.
Could he truly become the first human in history to be buried at sea together with an excavator this time…?
“Hah, huff… I-I-I’m alive…”
“You’ve worked hard.”
Fortunately, the excavator was not buried at sea, and neither was Vicente González.
After a grand journey that lasted several days, the excavator arrived at Chesapeake Bay, and people swarmed in like mad to look at it, causing a commotion.
And then.
Kwa-kwa-kwa-kwa-boom!
As expected, the amount of farmland in Chesapeake Bay began to multiply in an instant.
The logging itself did not take long. Rather, it was digging up the ground, pulling out the tree roots, and completely removing them that was difficult.
Our purpose was not to obtain lumber but to reclaim land, so we had to remove the trees down to the stumps and all.
Once the excavator was mobilized for that work, the pace increased severalfold.
In the blink of an eye, dozens of hectares of new land were reclaimed and distributed to the Algonquians and Englishmen. It was now late April, so it was fortunate that it just barely overlapped with the planting season for several crops.
Using the timber produced while clearing the land, they built houses and raised a church, and one by one, people came out of the cramped ship cabins and settled in Chesapeake Bay.
Ah, and one more thing. Unlike Croatoan, Chesapeake Bay did not produce an infinite supply of clean water.
“Ugh… ughhh…!”
“His stomach pains are terrible! The child keeps having diarrhea…!”
“First, give him this fever reducer! Margaret!”
“The IV fluid is here!”
Because of that, several people suffered severe stomach pains and high fevers. I placed the IBC tanks left over from making the barge at each house near where the patients with stomach pains had appeared.
“Everyone, fill those tanks with water, then add a little of this liquid. You must absolutely not touch or drink this liquid by itself.”
“Y-yes, understood!”
“Everyone, remember this! For a while, you must boil all water before drinking it!”
Either add bleach to the water before drinking it, or boil it before drinking.
Simply by teaching them that simple fact, the mysterious illness subsided within a few days. The people regained stability.
It was the moment when villages and settlements formed, and the colony began to grow. Once the busy work had more or less come to an end, Walter Raleigh came to see me.
“Good heavens… To think this truly worked.”
He shed tears, half overcome with emotion.
“Just a short while ago we were on the verge of bankruptcy… and now the colony has thousands of citizens…. Plus, that timber! Isn’t it incredible? You can’t even lay eyes on wood like that in England anymore!”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. To acquire oaks of that size, you’d have to import them from Russia, Denmark, Sweden, and so forth. Especially since dozens upon dozens of ships were wrecked in the recent naval battle with Spain, England must be in utter chaos over the timber shortage.”
“Then why not take that with us?”
“Could we cross the Atlantic lugging something that large and heavy? Even transporting three hundred horses and dairy cows was an enormous challenge. I risked my life for that.”
“Hmm….”
“Sigh… If only there were a way to take it back, gaining Her Majesty’s trust would become incredibly easy.”
Spain.
Right. Spain was in America.
They had sent several warships this way, thinking this place might serve as an English military base. There had even been actual clashes.
If at all possible, England needed to gain a moderate advantage in the war between the two for this place to remain safe and comfortable….
And even if they weren’t warships, having a few fast transport vessels would be convenient for us too, considering other export goods.
“Uh, Sir Raleigh? Couldn’t we build ships here?”
“Hahaha. Would such a thing make sense? For starters, we would need timber, skilled sailors, shipwrights, and all sorts of equipment and… mate… ri… als….”
“….”
Suddenly, Raleigh’s eyes widened, and he looked toward me.
He had realized it too.
This place had the most superior equipment in the world.
“….”
“….”
“…Do you perchance have a design in mind?”
“I do. Since I don’t know much about ships, would it be alright if I showed you with a picture first?”
“Of course.”
“Follow me to Croatoan.”
“Very well.”
And so, Raleigh and I returned to the Croatoan settlement.
I immediately turned on the computer, captured and printed a screen from the nineteenth-century city-building game ‘Anno Domini 1800’, and brought it with me.
“I am woefully ignorant of sailing, so I’m not sure if something like this would do.”
“Hahaha! It is fine. I have experience designing ships several times over, so I shall examine it and… judge… it….”
“….”
“…Has a ship like this ever existed in this world? This drawing, uh, where did you get…!”
Since it was roughly a nineteenth-century vessel, I had brought it thinking it would be better than what we had now.
I read from the printed materials and spoke to him.
“The ship’s name is Cl… ipper? It is called a clipper.”
“The sail arrangement… is no ordinary matter. How fast is this ship?”
“I’m afraid I do not know. It is something I heard from others.”
“Good Lord.”
Perhaps thinking he had received a ship’s blueprint from God Himself, the eyes of Walter Raleigh—the passionate explorer and the Queen’s sex toy—suddenly blazed with fire.
“If this ship is built, its speed will be truly formidable! I guarantee it! Clipper! The name is cheerful as well—splendid!”
As a seasoned mariner, he seemed to have grasped something instinctively. Though I still had no idea whatsoever.
“Well then, we shall need shipwrights and designers too, so we must move at once. Indeed, it was about time to return to London anyway.”
“You’re going back? To London?”
“Yes! I shall likely arrive in London in about two or three months! There are many settlers who wish to bring their families and relatives as well, so gathering people will take a few months….”
“…It will take about a year until you return.”
“Hmm? Well, yes?”
“Sigh… Then you must be careful.”
“Of course one must be careful! No matter how familiar I am with sailing, I am always careful!”
“No. Not the voyage—I mean London. The Black Death will be spreading.”
“…Pardon?”
“It is early May now, so when you arrive in London, it will be around August, just when the Black Death begins to spread. Take care of your health.”
“….”
“Ah, and there are a few things I should give you. Take these vitamin pills. If you have the sailors take one every few days, you should be able to prevent scurvy.”
“…Scurvy? With just those pills?”
“Yes.”
I showed him the vitamins I had taken out of my pocket, then unfastened my wristwatch and handed it to him.
“This is a watch fixed to Croatoan’s time. Use this to check the time aboard ship and determine your longitude. If I give you a map as well, you should have no trouble determining your position.”
“….”
“And… uh… ah, I shall give you some clothing. It is the protective suit I wear when spraying pesticides; if you wear that, your chances of catching the Black Death should decrease even if you contact the sick. I shall give you masks as well, so have the sailors wear them when you arrive.”
“….”
“And, when you depart, I shall give you a medicine.”
“…Medicine?”
“Yes. I’m not sure if it will work, but if administered by injection at the appropriate time, it should be able to cure the Black Death.”
“…Cure… the Black Death? What do you mean by injection?”
“Hmm… Take Miss Margaret Lawrence with you later. Miss Lawrence will explain. And do not forget to mix bleach into your drinking water to keep it from spoiling.”
“…Buh… bleach?”
“Sir Raleigh?”
“….”
After hurriedly dumping all this on him, Raleigh’s expression looked utterly blank.
As if a violent storm had swept through and left him in its wake.