“Eek! Th-the Blue Crescent Pirates!”
With no wind to flee on, the sailors of the merchant ship could not put up even a proper resistance before they were forced to kneel on the deck.
Karga seized the trembling merchant captain by the hair and growled.
“Answer my questions properly. I heard that among you Pelua bastards’ ships, there was one bizarre vessel without even a mast that left Masina and headed east. On your way here, did you happen to see any wreckage that had sunk beneath the sea?”
He intended to salvage even the wreckage and find out where the gold coins had gone.
But the answer that came from the captain’s mouth went completely against Karga’s expectations.
“W-wreckage? Sunk?! A-are you talking about that devilish ship?!”
“Devil? So you’ve seen that ship!”
Karga’s eyes flashed as he pressed a blue steel blade to the captain’s throat.
And yet, despite the knife touching his neck, the captain’s eyes were clouded not by fear of the pirate, but by the terrible shock of some impossible sight he had witnessed.
“I-I saw it, yes… No, it’s hard to even say I saw it. It simply passed us by.”
“Passed you by? In this rotten doldrums with not a single breath of wind? Don’t spout nonsense! It isn’t even a galley with oars—how could it pass you by carrying that heavy cargo!”
Karga flew into a rage, but the captain only stared blankly into the air and muttered like a man whose soul had left him.
“W-wind? Rowers? That monster didn’t need any of that. From a pitch-black chimney it spat fire until the sky turned dark and belched out smoke… Then it crushed the seawater with the enormous waterwheels attached to both sides of the ship…”
“What? Waterwheels?”
“Yes! Even when the current surged against it, even when waves struck its bow, that monster did not stop! With a roar like a thudding heartbeat, like a flying arrow… it overtook our ship and vanished beyond the eastern horizon in an instant!”
The captain clutched his head with both hands and screamed.
“That insane speed! No matter how hard anyone rowed, it was a speed that could never be caught! It passed through here three days ago, so by now it must be long gone from this place!”
“……”
Silence.
On the deck of the pirate ship that had been brimming with murderous intent, only a chilling silence settled.
The knife in Karga’s hand dropped limply to the deck with a thud.
Even he, a man seasoned by long years at sea, could not make sense of the captain’s words.
It moved without sails?
It ignored the opposing current and raced faster than a galley?
It had already broken through the passage three days ago and disappeared to the east?
“Th-that’s a lie…”
The first mate muttered in a trembling voice.
“Chief, it makes no sense. How could a plank loaded full of cargo fly over the sea!”
Karga could not answer.
With blank eyes, he stared out at the eastern sea the captain had pointed to.
The sea was calm, and still the wind did not blow.
But far away, beyond the distant horizon, at the very edge of the sky—
Even though several days had passed, a faint, black “trail of smoke” that had not yet been scattered by the wind was drawn in a merciless straight line toward the east.
It was not a seascape familiar to pirates.
It was the trace of perfect violence created by man, advancing as it tore apart the laws of nature and the order of the currents by force.
“A m-monster…”
Up the spine of one-eyed Karga, who had prided himself on being a merciless predator of the southern seas, began to crawl a terrible helplessness and fear he had never felt in his life.
What they had been chasing was not “a stupid target carrying money.”
It was an overwhelming and violent “disaster of steel” that would overturn the entire paradigm of the age.
Lorenzo’s vile trap, the pirates’ vicious encirclement—
Before the sound of the enormous steamship’s whistle as it headed east, they were nothing more than pitiful leaves floating on the sea.
*
Clank! Swoooosh! Clank! Swoooosh!
The pitch-black beast of steel crossing the boundless sea knew no exhaustion.
The enormous paddle wheels on both sides of the hull relentlessly crushed the seawater, and the ship raced swiftly eastward, mercilessly splitting the waves that struck its bow into two.
“M-my heavens… The positions of the constellations have already changed!”
“We’re in the doldrums without a breath of wind, and yet we’re going against the waves at this insane speed!”
The sailors gathered on deck could not contain their astonishment.
They were veteran seamen who had spent their entire lives rolling about at sea, staking their lives on sails and ropes, but this bizarre voyage that completely ignored the providence of nature and cut straight across the sea was thoroughly destroying their common sense.
“Not even the god of the sea could catch our ship!”
As the sailors’ cheers burst out, I emerged from the engine room wiping away sweat, leaned against the deck railing, and gave them a faint grin.
“Hey, everyone enjoying the cruise?”
At my call, the sailors turned their heads in unison.
In their eyes there was now more than the simple authority one felt toward an employer. There was absolute awe, as though they were looking upon a great magician who performed miracles.
“Chief Merchant! At this speed, we really will reach the rough waters off the eastern heathens’ coast in ten days!”
“Thanks to the heat that chunk of iron in the ship gives off, it isn’t even cold!”
“Good. Keep that spirit and shovel coal into the firebox diligently!”
I spread three fingers wide toward the sailors.
“If we make it to the eastern sea like this, fill the hold with cotton, and return safely to Pelua! On top of the basic allowance I promised you, I’ll add a bonus of three times that amount!”
“Three times?!”
“Waaaaah!! Long live Chief Merchant Carnoble!!”
The sailors’ frenzied shouts shook the sea.
For sailors, there is no fuel more certain than a heap of gold coins.
With morale soaring to the heavens, the sailors began grabbing shovels and racing toward the engine room, each claiming they would shovel in the coal.
As I watched that satisfying sight, Ayla approached beside me, frowning at the acrid smell of smoke.
“You’re throwing money around like water, El Panso. We already have mountains of gold to spend buying cotton.”
“We’re crossing the dangerous eastern sea. Raising morale this much is only basic. Once we sweep up cotton for dirt cheap on Cyprus Island, triple allowances like that will be pocket change.”
When I shrugged, Ayla crossed her arms and shot me a suspicious look.
“Fine, let’s say that’s true. Then what have you been so lovingly raising down in the bottom of the ship since earlier?”
“The bottom?”
“Yeah. Earlier, I saw you watering some wooden tubs in a dark storage room below the cargo hold. What exactly are you scheming in that damp place that smells musty and doesn’t get a single ray of light?”
At Ayla’s curious question, I grinned and beckoned to her.
“Curious? Follow me. I’ll show you the most important ‘golden crop’ for when we conquer the seas from now on.”
I took Ayla down to the very bottom of the ship, to the damp, dark storage room of the lower deck.
If this had originally been a galley, it would have been a hellish space where hundreds of slaves were chained up, shedding blood and sweat as they rowed.
But with the introduction of the steam engine, this dark space had been left empty, and now dozens of large wooden tubs were stacked there in layers like steamers.
When I lifted the damp cloth covering one of the wooden tubs, Ayla frowned and peered inside.
“What is this? Yellow heads… and long white tails? Is it some kind of weed?”
“Bean sprouts.”
“Bean… sprouts?”
Ayla tilted her head as though she had never heard of them in her life.
This world did have a culture of eating beans, but the concept of germinating them in darkness and growing them into sprouts to eat did not exist.
I grabbed a handful of the fresh bean sprouts growing inside the tub and showed them to her.
“Listen carefully, Ayla. Do you know what sailors fear most when they go out to sea for long periods? Pirates? Storms? No. It’s the ‘curse of the sea.’”
The curse of the sea referred to scurvy.
At my words, Ayla’s expression stiffened.
As the owner of a trading company, she too knew well of that terrible curse that spread among sailors like an epidemic.
After a month at sea, the sailors’ gums would bleed, their teeth would fall out, bruises would spread all over their bodies, and in the end they would waste away and die.
“I know. If you breathe damp sea air for too long, black bile accumulates in the body, muddying the blood and rotting the flesh. I heard there’s no treatment except bleeding.”
“……”
Any modern person would know that scurvy was a disease caused by a deficiency of vitamin C.
But here, that was not common knowledge.
Faced with that overwhelming gap, I felt my mood sink.
Because of scurvy, called the curse of the sea, long voyages were unthinkable in this place.
I corrected her mistaken common sense.
“No, it’s a disease caused by not eating fresh fruit or vegetables. The sea breeze has nothing to do with it.”
“What? El Panso, how do you know that? Did you study medicine separately or something?”
“Mm, a little.”
“…Not bad. Anyway, then you’re saying we have to feed them vegetables?”
“Exactly. But vegetables all rot away inside the ship within a few weeks at most. These bean sprouts are different.”
Pointing at the bean sprouts, I launched into an impassioned explanation.
“The key component that prevents that curse of the sea is a nutrient called ‘vitamin C.’ Dried beans don’t have this vitamin C, but if you water the beans and sprout them in a damp place like this without light, vitamin C is produced explosively, as if by a miracle.”
“Vita… what? Is that some kind of magical reagent?”
“Well, let’s call it the magic of science.”
To the bewildered Ayla, I explained the overwhelming efficiency of growing bean sprouts.
“Think about it. If you put beans in sacks, they won’t rot for years. Whenever we need vegetables during a voyage, all we have to do is pour water on them in this dark, humid storage room at the bottom of the ship, and in a few days fresh vegetables are replicated without end! No worry about rotting, and no worry about taking up space.”
“…They grow on their own if you just give them water? Without light?”
“If anything, they become tough and inedible if they see light. The bottom of a ship like this is the perfect environment for growing bean sprouts. However, that ‘vitamin C’ fellow I mentioned is very weak to heat, so if we boil it thoroughly, it gets destroyed. That’s why I’m thinking of blanching them lightly or steeping them into soup to feed the sailors.”
Of course, on a short, high-speed voyage of barely ten days like this one, there was no chance of scurvy, so there was no particular need to worry about vitamin C.
But when the day came for our ships to cross the ocean beyond Pelua and pioneer the New World, these bean sprouts would become a great lifeline that would save thousands of sailors.
Ayla looked back and forth between the bean sprouts and my face, then let out a deep sigh and shook her head.
“I don’t understand a single one of those difficult words, whether it’s vitamins or whatever. But after seeing with my own two eyes how you’re tearing across the sea with that ridiculous hunk of iron, it’s hard to argue with what you say.”
She poked the tub of bean sprouts and asked as if resigned.
“Anyway, you’re saying that whenever we go out to sea from now on, we have to keep chewing on these yellow-headed weeds?”
“Once you try them, they’re pretty tasty and crunchy. They’re perfect as a snack with alcohol too.”
“Don’t make me laugh. Just load plenty of meat.”
Just as Ayla grumbled and snorted—
“Land hoooo!”