According to the established sailing plan, Nicole set off from Dongshan Island and arrived at the Wanshan Islands a day later, where more than 600 children and 1,500 people from the orphanage boarded the ship and set sail south.

It is expected to arrive at Porto Holo in seven to eight days, where it will receive several hundred Sulu Han tenant slaves and continue south, arriving at Zixia Island in three days.

Leaving behind 6,500 refugees and supplies from Dongshan Island, they will leave Zixia Bay after replenishing as much coal as possible, and are expected to arrive at the Blue Pier in Xin'an City in three to four days.

It is estimated that it will take seven to eight days to arrive at the Red Wharf, unload the materials and personnel, load all kinds of trade goods, load all kinds of trade goods, and then set sail to Xin'an Port, and after finishing the business, go directly to Wanshan Island to load people---- Obviously, this route has also done the business to Macao undertaken by the Pride in the past.

The entire voyage cycle takes about forty to fifty days at a time, and perhaps sixty days if you need to take shelter from a storm.

Two days ago, Yu Hewei, on behalf of the board of directors of the "Beishang Fund", sent a telegram to the two ships and three places: After discussing with the people of the Huotang Club, the members of the board of directors believed that the capital budget of the "Changfeng Operation" might be broken through, and the time might be longer than the original plan.

Therefore, during this time, the task of transporting migrants and business must be taken into account, and this arrangement of the Nicole is a last resort, and even so, during the implementation of Operation Constant Wind, our trade rhythm will inevitably be slowed down, and the speed of capital flow will be reduced, resulting in a decrease in overall trade profits by one to two percent.

The main reason for this is that the Pride is currently unable to take on trade missions.

However, Wang Xue soon sent a telegram from the Red House saying that a sister ship of the Pride on the slipway will be assembled by the end of this month, because it is the first DIY assembly, we are very cautious, because this is the accumulation of process experience and various data in the assembly process, so the assembly is relatively slow.

However, please rest assured that from the assembly of the second sister ship, the construction period will be greatly shortened, and if the Red Mansion side gives itself enough labor, from the end of July, it will be possible to assemble a Pride class sister ship every three to four months on average.

In this case, we will have at least two Pride sister ships in operation by the end of the year, and three Pride class ships operating together by that time should be able to make up for the reduced trade volume during Operation Constant Wind.

By analogy, next year, from the beginning of 1660 to the first half of the third year, five other Pride sister ships will be successfully assembled, and we will have eight Pride class sailing yachts in business as soon as the end of next year or the beginning of the following year, including the Pride, and by that time, our overall strength will have a leap forward.

Wang Gong's telegram immediately sparked a lively discussion between the two ships and three places, and it was clear that everyone's emotions were starting to rise, especially the crew of the Pride, many of whom were already predicting that they would be able to become captains in the next one to two years.

Of course, this year is certainly not possible, after all, everyone assumes that the captains and first mates of the feminist Captain Teemo, who are still in a state of disconnection, are the captains and first officers of the first sister ships.

Gu Jin quickly sent a telegram to respond to everyone's concerns, and he revealed his plans to everyone---- Zhu Beiguo and Xu Zhi as captains is just a transition, and the task of the two is to serve as captains during the trial voyage after the new ship is launched, and the first mate who follows the trial voyage is the real captain candidate in the future.

As soon as Captain Gu's plan was revealed, it quickly got everyone's support, obviously, Zhu and Xu must have other tasks, especially Zhu Beiguo, everyone agrees that Brother Zhu's main business should be to serve as the director of the Federal Immigration Bureau, as for Xu Zhi, this gentleman is a foreign language master, I heard that Sun Lao intends to let Xu Zhi be his assistant, after all, Lao Ba is now both the president of the federal Senate and the vice president, and Lao Ba has done these positions a little half-heartedly, because he has always been thinking about his big career - the Australian Development Bank - that has been in the " The registration of the "Beishang Fund" is waiting for himself and Xiaoyu to take out the financial institutions that operate and have the right to issue notes, because it is a big business that can grow into a global financial empire in the future.

The telegraph exchange between the two ships and three places did not have any impact on Wei Hong and Irush on Dongshan Island, because they were currently on an information island, and they did not have any long-distance instant messengers except for two walkie-talkies with a communication distance of eight kilometers.

However, the brothers are now very excited and devoted, because the outpost sent by Chen Shangchuan a few days ago has finally returned---- bringing back a series of very important information: the Qing army is attacking from both sides, and the war is about to start.

On the morning of 12 July, in Chen Shangchuan's camp, Chen and Chen jointly discussed the military situation with Wei Ai and the others, and at the request of Wei and Ai, Chen Anping gave a detailed account of the Qing army's advance.

According to the intelligence of the spies, the enemy in front of them was not "real Manchuria", and the intruders were all green battalion soldiers, and all of them were foot soldiers, except for a few officers on horseback, the non-commissioned officers had no cavalry and artillery.

At present, the Qing army that has gone out of the southeast of Yunnan and southwest Guizhou is attacking the city and plundering land all the way to the southeast, and in the area of Yunnan and Guizhou in western Guangdong, except for the prefectures and counties that were originally in the hands of the Tartar court, all the prefectures and counties that were originally controlled by the Yongli court were treated as "reverse areas" to give various forms of "appeasement and purge---- so the people of these states and counties were unlucky, and the green battalions of all walks of life began to "appease" all the way in the name of clearing and rebellious, and by virtue of the momentum of the imperial court.

These green battalion soldiers are not good at fighting, but the scourge of the common people is still very powerful, the villages and villages along the way of the green battalion soldiers are on fire and smoke from every house, all the prefectures and counties that have been captured, the larger ones are better, and those slightly smaller or remote county seats, once occupied by the Qing army, are all subject to various forms of looting, resulting in countless refugees.

Up to now, the Qing army is coming to Lei and Gao Erzhou in two ways.

First of all, in the west, at the beginning of July of the solar calendar, the state cities of Qinlian and Lian have been captured, and four of the six surrounding county towns have been in the hands of the Qing army, and the Qing army has approached the coastal area.

To the north, the fall of Gaozhou City was basically a foregone conclusion, because of Chen's withdrawal of troops to protect himself, there were almost no decent military subordinates in the prefectures and counties along the way, and the local magistrates either retreated to Dongshan Island with the army in order to keep their wealth, or hung up their crowns and went into hiding, and some had already left the city and surrendered to the Qing army.

Because of the distance between the surrounding counties, except for a few counties near the coast of Dongshan Island, there is a high probability that they will be successfully occupied by the Qing army within a month.

The only thing that has a little variable is near Leizhou---- because of the terrain of the peninsula, there are two green battalion armies of about 9,000 people are marching towards Leizhou City along two official roads, forming a state of flanking attacks on Leizhou City in the west and north, which is menacing.

In order to further understand the enemy's situation, Wei Ai and Chen Ai asked Chen Shangchuan and Chen Anping about the affairs of the green battalion's military equipment, and the other party answered everything one by one.

Chen Anping said that the so-called green battalion is the army of the Han people, and compared with the Eight Banners of the Manchurian, Mongolian and Han Army, it is unified with the green flag as the name, also known as the green flag soldiers.

The green camp originated from the Ming system, in order to recruit the soldiers and horses of the old Ming army who surrendered to the rebellion, inherited from father to son, similar to the Ming military household.

The green battalion is based on the town, according to the size of the garrison, the strength of each town is different, the town has a co-ordination battalion, and then a signal post, each battalion has hundreds to more than 1,000 officers and soldiers.

The treatment of the green battalion is very different from that of the Eight Banners, especially at present, now the salaries and grains of each soldier in the Green Battalion are only a fraction of the soldiers of the Eight Banners, so every time there is a war, it is common for officers and soldiers to take the opportunity to plunder the people's property and kill good deeds.