On October 31, 1640, the new Chinese colony of Xinhuabao Wharf. The temperature was 27 degrees Celsius, the southeast wind was level 6, and it was pouring rain.

Li Yi, who was dressed in an oilcloth poncho, jumped down from the rope ladder, landed steadily on the wooden trestle of the pier, and said with a smile to Shi Qinjie, who came to greet him: "I'm here to deliver the express." Lee's Express, Tong Suo is not bullied! 600 slaves, 50 overseers, three platoons of officers and men of the army, 300 tons of sorghum, 250 tons of cement and lime, ten horses, twenty pigs, sixty goats, and a few other bits and pieces. Oh, by the way, there are also some technicians from the building materials factory you need, a dozen or so in total, all on board. ”

"You're finally here." Shi Qinjie said with a sad face, "If you don't come to my side again, something may happen one day." ”

"What's wrong?" Li Yi was stunned, and then asked, "What's wrong?" Someone attacked you? No, there isn't a force nearby that has such strength. ”

"You don't need a lot of strength, as long as I can pick out a few hundred fighters, I'll be choked." Shi Qinjie grabbed Li Yi's arm, and then said, "Don't stand here in the wind and rain, go back to the city and talk about it." ”

Several naval officers walked towards the city with Li Yi. The rest of the Navy sailors used pulley booms on the deck of the ship to lift the waterproof packing materials one by one to the docks, where a large group of slaves had been waiting to carry the goods to the warehouse.

Shi Qinjie, Li Yi and others walked along the gravel road by the wharf through a coconut grove, and then walked more than 200 meters before entering the main urban area of Xinhuabao. Today, Xinhua Fort is still a "semi-finished product", with only a few houses and less than 40 houses. The city wall is even more repaired here and there. The bits and pieces add up, although there are also three or five hundred meters. But it's clear that it's still far from complete.

On the contrary, a rippling reservoir with rippling blue waves five or six hundred meters away is more pleasing to the eye, and Li Yi noticed it when he was on the boat just now. The reservoir didn't exist when I last visited, and it was apparently built in the last few months. The bushes and woods around the reservoir seem to have been cleared, and it looks like it is going to be developed into farmland.

A group of slaves dressed in thick cloth and jeans, dressed in oilcloth ponchos, lined up along the streets of the city, shouting slogans as they went, but the slogans sounded a little weak.

"Slaves who have just finished work." Shi Qinjie hurriedly explained, "Recently, the malaria epidemic has been under control, with only one new death and two new infections in a week. The situation is developing in a good direction. But a new trouble arose, and on October 22nd, three slaves went missing from our logging camp west of the city, and it turned out that they were most likely attacked by the natives. That wasn't the end of it, as on October 27, an Eight Banners overseer and two slaves who remained outside the city to guard the logging camp were attacked and all killed. The barbarians left their bodies, but all weapons and clothes were stripped away, and logging camps were destroyed. On October 30, that is, yesterday, Pei Soning, who was presiding over the construction of the cement kiln, reported to me. Signs of barbarian activity have been found in the forests southeast of the site, and they have now been forced to stop work. ”

"The natives are so good?" Li Yi said with some surprise. "But how do you want me to help? Is it possible to keep my fleet anchored here to help you defend? This is impossible, I have to hurry back to Hezhong Port to transport people and supplies for you, brother. Besides, it's almost starting to be the rainy season, right? I see that this rain is obviously more than the last time I came, the rainy season, brother, the rainy season is very bad for us, and the rate of fire of muskets has dropped by at least half. This is still in a place where there is shelter from the rain, and if it is in the field, is there a difference between this musket and a burning stick? In other words, even if our fleet stays and all the sailors go ashore, at most we will add more than a hundred burning sticks to you, is it meaningful? ”

"Who told you to do that? Don't make it up yourself. Shi Qinjie glanced at Li Yi, then took the lead in the house, took off his raincoat and handed it to the orderlies, and said, "You take your boat to sail south along the east coast tomorrow." Recently, many of these barbarians have come in canoes, yes, the kind of canoes that are common in Southeast Asia, the kind that can seat dozens of people at a time. I suspect their lair is somewhere along the southern coast, and you'll see if you can find them. ”

"Okay, I'll give it a try. But I can't guarantee that I'll find it, and I won't look for it for too long. Li Yi said indispensably: "By the way, how can you be sure that these barbarians are in the south? ”

"They came to us from the south." Shi Qinjie said, "Please, haven't you usually checked the information in the data room?" The indigenous people of northeastern Madagascar, called the Betsy Misaraka, generally operate along the coast from Antsilana in the north to the island of St. Mary in the south. Of course, they rarely come to the area around Antsiranana, but unfortunately, now they have come and know of our presence. Guards, go to the commander of Shou Company and bring the two captured barbarians. ”

The guards responded. After a while, Shou Daoshi and several army soldiers braved the rain to escort two natives dressed in an unknown fiber fabric.

Li Yi, who was sitting in the chair, stood up involuntarily at first glance, and then asked Shi Qinjie in surprise: "Southeast Asians?" ”

"To be exact, it should be of Malay descent." Shi Qinjie said. Before he came to this place, he had looked up some information in the reference room, and then asked a few people who knew a little bit about the history of Madagascar, and he had a superficial understanding of the inhabitants of the Falklands.

Li Yi circled around the two "Malay" captives, and the more he looked at them, the more he felt that they looked like the natives of Southeast Asia, and their physical characteristics were completely different from the Bantu blacks on the East African continent. First of all, their hair, unlike the curly and fluffy hair of ordinary black people (which can effectively protect from the sun and enhance heat dissipation), their hair is dark, long, and straight, which is typical of East Asian and Southeast Asian hair; In fact, their skin, different from the dark skin of black people, the skin color of these two people is only darker and brighter than the average Chinese, and they are essentially yellow-skinned people, or it is not impossible to call them brown-skinned people, in short, it is not the same thing as the black people of the Bantu Negro race.

Moreover, although Li Yi does not understand their language, Shi Qinjie has a little research in this area. He let the two captives say something at will, and although he couldn't understand what they were saying, even Li Yi knew at the moment that what they were talking to those Bantu Cosa people was not in the same language at all.

Shi Qinjie told him that the two men were supposed to speak Malay, Indonesian, or Maori, which were classified as Malay-Polynesians, and he could not tell which one he could tell. Because what they are saying at this moment is likely to have evolved into a dialect over a long period of time, but many of the words are clearly of Malay origin. Some of the words sound Arabic or Persian, perhaps because Arabs and Persians have been coming to Madagascar to trade and live in Madagascar since 1,000 years ago.

All in all, Shi Qinjie believes that these people are fundamentally descendants of the Malays. Perhaps a group of Malays living near Malaya and Indonesia mastered the rules of the Indian Ocean monsoon and currents, and then sailed to the island of Madagascar in a canoe of their own making, and then lived and multiplied. One of the most direct proofs of this is that the canoes used by these barbarians are exactly the same style as those made by the natives of Southeast Asia. Moreover, they can smelt pig iron and make iron weapons, and the level of civilization is said to have reached the feudal society, completely destroying the backward and ignorant Bantu blacks on the African continent.

"It's true that they're not Bantu blacks." Li Yi also said later, "But it doesn't matter, we are all barbarians, and there is not much difference." By the way, you said they could make canoes and a little seamanship, so didn't you mean that we could take them as slave sailors? As you know, there is a great shortage of sailors in the country, and every year we have to go to the Caribbean to recruit pirates, but the number is still too small to be enough. Coupled with the imminent expansion of our merchant fleet, there is a shortage of sailors, and now these are excellent slave sailors, whether they are called Betshimsarakars or Malays! We can conquer them, and then recruit a large number of men from among them to serve as sailors on merchant ships. We don't need more on each ship, put seven or eight, and use our own people for the rest. This saves a lot of sailors, which means we can equip more merchant ships. Yes, that's it! What a great idea! Ha Lu Ha! ”

After Shi Qinjie silently thought about it, he also felt that this idea was really good. It just so happened that now that these barbarians had fallen into the hands of the East Coasters, Li Yi felt that he had "sufficient reasons" to conquest them. Of course, even if these barbarians hadn't offended the East Coast people at the moment, Li Yi would have found countless reasons to conquest them, after all, this had never been a warm and kind world, but a world world full of the law of the jungle and the law of the jungle.

The two men had a proper plan, and then began to calculate the resources and manpower available at hand in order to formulate a realistic battle plan. Moreover, it is the rainy season, and it rains incessantly, and it is really not an easy task to conquer these barbarians, and it must be considered holistically. (To be continued......)