The year was early 1650, when the banks of the Hungnam River were at their hottest in summer.

Outside the walls of the Sand Castle (the confluence of the Hindnam River and its tributaries, later the small village of Bellavista, Argentina) - named because the fort wall was made of adobe - the thunderous sound of horses' hooves came from far and near, and finally Shi Shiran stopped under a few low trees outside the fort wall. The riders on the horse talked and laughed loudly and turned over and dismounted, and the leader was a young East Coast non-commissioned officer in a dark blue military uniform and red-trimmed breeches, who seemed to be a sergeant with the rank of sergeant.

If there were acquaintances nearby at this time, they would definitely be able to recognize this excessively young non-commissioned officer as the eldest son of Major Xu Yu, the supreme commander of the East Coast Cavalry: Xu Xiangdong. This 18-year-old graduated from the Cavalry Section of the Dingyuan Army Military Academy, and is currently seconded to the Southern Railway Company to train local militia. You know, in this desolate part of Southern Patagonia, it would be unthinkable for the patrolmen and militia to not know how to ride horses.

He had just taken a dozen cavalrymen outside to catch fugitive slaves, and four of the six escaped Polish indentured slaves were caught, one of whom was hacked to death on the spot for resisting, and the other ran into the swampy mudflats on the south bank of the Hungnam River in a panic and died without a roof. Several gaucho patrolmen slammed the four captured Polish indentured slaves to the ground, causing them to scream.

Two middle-aged Polish men rushed out from within the fortress walls, and then walked towards Xu Yu with a flattering smile. Xu Yu looked at these two Slavic men who were almost twice his age, and scolded a few words impatiently, to the effect that they were not strict with their subordinates, and there were indentured slaves who fled without permission. I hope they will clean up the interior next time, and next time someone escapes. Cancel their supply of beer and cured fish for the month.

The four captured Poles were all young-looking. They had now been pushed to the ground by the helpers gathered by two middle-aged Poles. The men cursed in Polish and kicked the fugitives in the buttocks and waists. The four fugitives only held their heads in their hands and did not beg for mercy, as if they were waiting for the "compatriots" to vent their anger and stop themselves.

Xu Xiangdong glanced at these Polish indentured slaves contemptuously, lit a pipe for himself, and smoked it gracefully. These Poles had been settled here some time earlier through the port of Khinnan, and they were all slaves bought from the Ukrainian Cossacks and Crimeans by the European trading stations on the east coast. To be more precise, these were Polish prisoners of war who were not so difficult to manage and not so easy to digest - for they were basically officers of noble origin.

The new Chinese colonies showed little interest in these Polish nobles and officers. They were only willing to absorb the ordinary, homeless low-level Polish soldiers, so the aristocratic thorns were sent back to the East Coast and eventually allocated by the government to the Southern Railway Company to be "re-educated" on the construction sites of the Transoceanic Railway.

According to the regulations, they had to work in Southern Patagonia for up to seven years before they could receive a meager severance pay, apply for East Coast citizenship, and officially settle in the land. However, they are all nobles, and they may not be willing to settle in the pagan country of the New World on the East Coast, otherwise wouldn't the manor of their hometown be cheaper than others?

Probably for this reason. Ever since these Poles were placed en masse in a sand castle where birds don't, they have staged "prison escapes" almost every day. For example, yesterday's incident in which six people escaped in a gang. After dark, they hid the sight of the guards (the Poles managed themselves), and then, under the cover of night, quietly left the station. Xu Xiangdong and the others received a report in the evening, but they didn't take it seriously at all, they just told the patrol police to take care of the material warehouse and horse shed, and then waited until dawn after breakfast before getting on the horse and looking along the river.

In fact, in a place like Sand Castle, which is deep in the Gobi and where food supply depends entirely on outside inputs, you only need to control the food and horses, and don't care about anything else. If anyone runs and let him run well, there are no horses that can't run fast, and there are no scattered farmers and herdsmen on the east coast here, where can they get supplies? The final outcome is nothing more than death on the endless Gobi Desert. Besides, their escape route is also very fixed -- they go along the course of the Hungnan River, otherwise there will be no water to drink -- and it is very easy to find, and there is little difference between going out early and late to arrest.

Xu Xiangdong and others captured several dying Polish fugitives west of the sand castle this time, and they followed the river all the way to find them. These people were hungry and tired at that time, and I am afraid that they would be willing to be beaten back, otherwise they would probably starve to death in the wilderness. What a stupid Pole, if you want to escape, you don't know how to save more food, it's ridiculous!

However, it is not for nothing that these Poles want to escape, it is one thing to miss their hometown, but the bigger reason is the relatively harsh living conditions here in the sand castle and the heavy physical labor, which they have never experienced before, so there are endless incidents of escape. Of the nearly 800 Polish indentured slaves in Sand Castle, more than 50 have been "missing" so far, and most of them may have died in the wild; In addition, more than 300 people have escaped on record, but they were either captured or walked back on their own, and finally obediently returned to the sand castle, the only place in the wasteland where they could live.

After 1650, the construction of the Liangyang Railway has gradually entered a period of acceleration. Large quantities of material were transported through the port of Guò Xingnan to Zinycastle, Sand Castle, Montenegro Coal Mine and the port of Araucan, and then the construction of sections quickly began. Among these sections, the construction of the sand castle is the most difficult, mainly because it is deep in the hinterland of the wasteland, the place is extremely remote, the population is even more sparse, and the material transportation distance is long.

For example, the section of the railway foundation from the Sand Castle to the east, which these Polish indentured slaves were responsible for, was a heavy task. According to the estimation of the engineering department of the Southern Railway Company, the construction area needs to fill 16.36 million cubic meters of soil and excavate 3.07 million cubic meters, totaling 19.43 million cubic meters. Relying on the 800 or so of them alone, in the absence of steam plows, roller rollers (animal power), gravel rollers, steam hoes (generally used in coal mines) and other machinery and equipment, this can only be completed in the year of the monkey.

However, the Southern Railway Company did not intend to put all the work on their heads, steam machinery was very difficult, and the General Administration of State Security had not yet allowed the Southern Railway Company to use these machines in front of this group of Poles. Of course, this is nonsense, sooner or later these Poles will know about these equipment, and rumors of steam engines, trains, and some steam equipment are already slowly circulating in Europe at this time. For a country as closely linked to trade as the East Coast Republic, it is impossible for any technology to be kept secret for a long time, and other countries will gradually develop these things - even sending spies to steal them.

The machinery and equipment are not available for the time being, but the manpower cannot be increased. For example, in the next month, more than 400 Klandi slave workers will be relocated near the sand castle, and in March, it is said that another 500 or 600 black South African laborers will come to report. The arrival of these people will effectively alleviate the dilemma of manpower shortage and greatly accelerate the progress of the project.

In fact, fortunately, the sections of the two-ocean railway are all in the Gobi Desert, and there are no mountains to block them, which avoids the time-consuming, laborious and costly project of digging tunnels. In addition, precipitation here is very low (less than 300 mm a year), and it is mainly concentrated in winter, which has little impact on construction. Otherwise, like the Northwest Railway under construction in China, when the heavy rain does not stop in summer and autumn, the progress of the project will be severely affected, and the living and working environment of the construction site will suddenly fall into an extremely difficult situation. In the spring, the impact on construction should not be underestimated because the snow melts and the soil thaws. And this is also the reason why the local government has invested so much money, so many personnel, so many machinery and equipment on the Northwest Railway, and it has taken several years, and this traffic artery, which is not much longer than the Liangyang Railway, has not yet been fully connected.

The demand for labor in the Southern Railway Company is huge, and the Ming, Europeans, Indians, blacks, Malays, they don't pick anyone, as long as they have hands and feet, they can use it to build railways. Of these, the Indians, blacks, and European indentured slaves were the worst treated and the most onerous in their work. This is the case with these Polish indentured slaves in the Sand Castle, and it is better to say that they are now in the period of building the roadbed, and when the roadbed is completed and the rails are laid, they will also use their own hands to finish laying the rails little by little, and then strengthen them. This kind of work is undoubtedly extremely hard, and it is also the most prone to work-related injuries. On the small stretch of roadbed where the railroad tracks have already been laid in the direction of Xinbao in the port of Hungnam, the railway construction workers who emigrated from the Ming Dynasty are said to have begun to lay the rails with the help of the 1649 type railcars, which undoubtedly greatly reduced their workload and made the laying of rails no longer a high-risk task.

But this kind of good thing is destined to be lost to them, they are not Ming people, they cannot get nationality, houses, land and even women as soon as they enter the country - God, they are still Polish women! - They're damn white indentured servants, on the same level as those guarani monkeys, stupid black laborers. They can only use their own hands to complete their work bit by bit.

Almighty Lord, you must have forgotten your people trapped in the middle of the desert, right? They survived under the cruel slavery of the yellow-skinned infidels, and fell into a miserable and helpless situation. Could it be that the Taoist temple built outside the fortress walls has tarnished the glory of the Lord, so we are also in trouble? Some Poles, tossed to death by work, thought numbly. (To be continued......)