April 21st, late at night.

Breezy weather with mild weather and no fog and visibility greater than or equal to 10 km.

According to the lunar calendar, it is the beginning of the month, so there are only twinkling stars in the clear night sky, but there is no moon that dominates the starry sky.

Ogawa was looking at the sea with its tiny waves rolling wide, not knowing what he was thinking.

"Ogawa-kun, what are you looking at!"

Behind him, a samurai with a bottle of wine in his hand came over drunk, hung around his neck like a monkey, and quipped with the smell of wine: "Do you want to see if there are any mermaids in the Maguan Strait?" ”

There was a burst of laughter from behind, and a group of samurai sitting around the bonfire laughed and said, "Ogawa-kun, come over to the bar and drink with dried fish and shredded squid!" ”

Ogawa sighed a little bitterly, and with a push of his hand, Hasegawa, who was leaning on his body, fell to the ground, and the wine bottle rolled to the side, and he fell asleep directly.

"Hasegawa, you've drunk too much." When Ogawa saw that he was asleep, he kicked him and tried to wake him up.

"I'm not drunk, no," Hasegawa muttered, turning over in the direction of Ogawa's kick, his hands unconsciously touching the beach, looking still searching for his bottle.

Ogawa had to give up his mission to continue monitoring the strait, bending down and dragging Hasegawa's arm, pulling him all the way back to the dinner place by the campfire.

The people who participated in this dinner were all the shogunate soldiers who were ordered to garrison Kitakyushu, counting three or four generations from their ancestors, and they were all warriors who had seen blood on the battlefield with the Western Army and even the Ming Army. It's just that His Excellency Tadashi Aoyama, who sent them to monitor the Maguan Strait, didn't expect that it was only more than 20 years of Chengping, and the descendants of these samurai would decline into soft-footed shrimp who were not even willing to stand guard.

As soon as Xiao Chuan sat down, several people around him couldn't wait to stuff a bottle of beer into his hand: "Come on, dutiful Xiao Chuan, try this bottle of Leizhou beer." ”

Ogawa thanked him, took the still cold beer from the man's hand, and poured it into his mouth.

In an instant, the state of mind that had been a little guilty because of slipping away during the duty was completely purified by this sip of cold beer. Smuggled beer from the Viceroy of the South China Sea of Ao-Song deeply cleansed Ogawa's palate from the long-term persecution of sake, and mercilessly detonated every taste bud on the tip of his tongue.

He gently spat out a mouthful of carbon dioxide, "ha", and then took another big sip.

The unique taste of wheat fermentation once again occupies his cerebral cortex, and the high-speed electrical signals transmitted by nerve fibers constantly remind him: "One mouthful, one mouthful!" ”

"Sake is such a bunch of water that has changed its taste." He whispered, and then tried to follow his subconscious's instructions and swallow the bottle of beer to himself.

"Hey, this is the last beer!" The samurai next to him snatched the beer bottle from Ogawa's hand, carefully closed the lid and put it away, "You can't be drunk by Ogawa-kun." ”

"Haven't any merchants arrived this month?" Ogawa asked him with some dissatisfaction.

He casually turned his head to look at the Ashigaru army not far away who were nibbling on a few sweet potato rice balls, and looked away a little impatiently, as if he didn't want to waste time on those untouchables.

A person on the side of the campfire heard his words and laughed: "Where are there still people transporting beer, those vendors who are not afraid of death are busy transporting arms and medicines, these beers are all stored before the war, and they are not sold now." ”

Ogawa had no choice but to nod, took out a bottle of earthy sake from the basket on the ground, tore open the seal and drank it.

After a few seconds, Ogawa put down the bottle, reached in front of him, and sighed into his palm.

"No alcohol at all!"

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Just as Xiao Chuan and his party were absent from work and drinking, two kilometers northwest of them, several small boats painted black were drifting along the sea breeze.

On this starlit night, it was difficult to see the ships with low sides even from thirty meters away, but the sails had not been raised, and even if they were pure black canvases.

"To the southeast, about two kilometres, there is an observation post, but everyone is drinking." A man lying on the bow of the boat held binoculars and whispered, "There are 16 people in total, and I don't know their identities." ”

"Add, there are more than forty ordinary soldiers on the beach, estimated to be Ashigaru, but it cannot be confirmed."

A person behind him agreed, and then wrote in the dark in his notebook. He was specially trained to keep his records legible even if he couldn't read the handwriting on the paper.

"Get ready to measure." The man whispered.

Soon, seven or eight hunched figures appeared on the ship, picking up a bundle of rope from the plank and carefully controlling it to sink into the sea.

With the help of an iron ball tied to the end of the rope, the rough rope slowly but surely submerged into the water, gradually disappearing into the dark sea.

"It's bottoming out." The sailors who controlled the rope quickly returned.

"You're recording the depth here." The captain with binoculars was still watching the Japanese samurai laughing and laughing around the bright campfire, and without looking back, he said, "Ladies and gentlemen, the measurement here may not be accurate enough, I hope to go a little further." ”

The busy people on the boat did not stop their work, and a young man was still retrieving the cable while reporting the depth of the water, which was recorded by the clerk.

The captain put down his binoculars, turned to look at his crew, and said calmly: "Now that the vote begins, are you willing to take the risk?" ”

The people on the boat also calmly raised their right hands. In total darkness, the captain's proposal was adopted by 8 votes in favor and 0 against.

The captain smiled imperceptibly, picked up a piece of burning charcoal from the iron basin beside him, and shook it quickly towards another boat dozens of meters away.

Soon, the ship that received the signal came back. "Stay safe and protect yourself."

The captain shouted in a low voice, and two cadets transferred from the Department of Surveying and Mapping of the Taipei Naval Academy joined the sailors, waving their oars and stirring in the sea water at a small cutting angle to minimize splashes and sounds.

In the stillness of the sea, a lonely wooden boat left the encirclement of its kind and slowly headed towards the noisy shore.

The captain did not join the rowing, but kept kneeling on one knee in the bow of the boat, carefully observing the sentinels on the shore. It was his mission as a captain that he had to judge possible dangers with his experience and wisdom and take responsibility for his sailors and the students who came to intern.

After paddling forward for about two hundred meters, he waved his hand and said, "Okay, take a measurement here and speed up." ”

The sailors and cadets, who were still rowing hard, immediately stopped what they were doing, picked up the cable and a wooden stick marked with a scale, and began to survey.

The captain was still staring at the shore. Now that the bonfires on the shore can be faintly lit on the ship, the risk of exposure to the survey ship is gradually increasing.

More than ten minutes later, the survey ship moved again, and the crew remained strictly silent, and for a moment only the sound of the sea being pushed away was transmitted on the ship.

At this time, on the shore, Ogawa impatiently put down a bottle of sake and rested against the stones on the beach. After a few months of beer, the sake that has haunted him for the past twenty years has completely lost its allure, and it is only to get a little drunken hazy feeling, and there is no enjoyment in itself.

"Hey, Lord Gujing is coming, everyone clean up!"

Under the reminder of the samurai who came to inform everyone in the village of Nimei, the samurai who learned that the squire was going to come to inspect the work instantly panicked, and they no longer had the ease of laughing and drinking as before.

The hurriedly cleaned up was soon caught by the general Furui Hideo who rushed to the scene. This short, middle-aged man turned red with anger, and in the light of the fire, he looked like a piece of pork liver that had been in the air for a long time.

"Wow, wow! You red deer! Furui pointed to a messy beach and kicked out a half-buried wine bottle, "General Ben asked you to watch the strait, but you are drinking here!" Really, I'm blind and deaf, and don't know your tricks? ”

The more he spoke, the more angry he became, and he drew his saber and slashed it into the campfire, splashing large sparks. "Look at you guys, I'm so ashamed of you!"

"Look behind you, look at the Maguan Strait! Even if Saga is rebellious and lurks only 200 zhang away, you pigs won't be able to see it! Idiot! Rubbish! ”

Just as General Furui turned on the mouth cannon mode and angrily scolded his subordinates, on the sea five hundred meters away, the captain was tightly attached to the ship's board, and the crew pulled the cable in his hand with force.

Soon, a fluctuating current swam down the rope to the front of the boat. The captain reached out and grabbed the other man, pushing upwards with force.

"Boom", after a slight sound of water, the diver dressed in black was dragged from the sea to the boat.

"Quick, evacuate immediately!" The captain turned his head and shouted to the crew as he took a towel to wipe the water from the diver's hair.

The man took the towel and, without daring to dry himself, hurriedly recited to the clerk the data he had written down.

The clerk listened intently, and with the help of the faint light from the brazier, he quickly wrote down the numbers in the diver's mouth in his notebook. He knew very well that the importance of these dozen pieces of data was even more important than the previous hours of their busyness, so much so that a promising trainee would risk being captured and swim to the surface of the sea no more than five hundred meters away from the enemy to measure.

At this time, on the shore, a certain royal family member beside Gujing saw a trace of strangeness coming from the sea. In front of him stood a derelict samurai, probably surnamed Ogawa or something, still looking at him, so he couldn't turn his head to stare at the sea.

So he could only try to search the dark sea out of the corner of his eye, but he only saw the boundless darkness and the twinkling stars in the night sky.

"Maybe it's a hallucination." He thought.

At 2 a.m. on 22 April, all the small boats sent out returned to the destroyer Landwater, where they were secured to the side of the ship by the sailors.

Standing on the deck, the captain was resting with a glass of cold beer in his hand, looking at the Maguan Strait several kilometers away.

To the north of the strait, the majestic Shimonoseki Fortress stands majestically in the sea breeze, its majestic silhouette faintly illuminated by the flickering light of the fire.