Zhai Xiaoshan spit out the saliva in his mouth, then wiped a handful of sweat, and then sat on the stump of the tree that was a little dry by the sun, picked up the cowhide water bladder and drank it.

This is the port of Anduani on the island of Sebe, and of course, it is now called Lobster Harbour because there is always a large number of Xinhua Port fishing boats coming to catch lobsters every year when the dry season begins, which is a seafood that can be exported in large quantities to the mainland. The local middle class, led by the upper class, now has a pathological penchant for tuna and lobster. Even if the products exported from Xinhuaxia Island are pickled, they are still eager to buy them, which makes the fishermen of Xinhuaxia Island smile crookedly, because they can exchange a large number of daily necessities from the local rich and cheap seafood to consume, and everyone takes what they need, fast and fast!

Originally, there were only a few simple wooden buildings in the lobster harbor, which were used by fishermen who came here during the dry season to take shelter from the wind. But now there are many other buildings, and a wooden waterfront trestle has been built, which can moor two large ships at the same time. There were also more people in the port, but they were not fishermen, but some strong men who were heavily armed, and Zhai Xiaoshan was one of them.

Zhai Xiaoshan was originally the leader of a small group of bandits operating at the junction of Qingzhou and Laizhou in Shandong, and his uncle was now a well-known monk in Shandong, and the Manchu Qing Dynasty offered a reward of tens of thousands of taels to buy the first rank. After Zhai Xiaoshan was captured by Mo Dashuai, he first worked in a labor camp for half a year, and then was sent to Dabo to study military politics because of his outstanding performance, and later played a great role in the process of Zhai Cong's return to obedience. With this credit, he is also loyal. Therefore, when the team was expanded, he also got the position of a squadron leader. It's a middle-level officer.

However, his uncle was not very worried about the military career of this junior. Especially after he was seriously injured on an expedition, Zhai Congge pleaded with Mo Ming to let Zhai Xiaoshan leave the army, and then gave him a large sum of money to go to the east coast, which is said to be "cattle and sheep everywhere", to pass on the incense to his family, and stop messing with this big mess in Shandong. In this way, after Zhai Xiaoshan recovered from his injury, he was reluctantly sent to the East Coast mainland.

After arriving on the east coast, Zhai Xiaoshan settled in Zhenhai County. And as a supplement to the county militia brigade (to supplement the front-line battle losses), he went to Santa Fe and Corrientes to fight two small battles. I don't know if it's bad luck or what, this guy got seriously ill when he was in Santa Fe because of the water and soil, and he was sent home to raise him for more than half a month before he gradually got better, but at this time, his supplementary quota had already been filled by others, and he also received a discharge notice early.

After being discharged from the army, Zhai Xiaoshan, who was impatient to take care of the crops, left the land to his Bulgarian mother-in-law to plant, and then followed the craze of veterans to invest abroad by boat to Xinhuaxia Island. Once here, it was time to bid for land, buy seeds from the botanical gardens, ask Muscat merchants about slaves, and so on.

It's just that there is a "small" problem here, and that is that they don't have enough money to spend. The Bedouins in Muscat are charging $40 for each adult Baloch male. To be honest, this price is not expensive, but Zhai Xiaoshan and others, who are shy in their pockets, just can't afford it. Because they subscribed too much land on the banks of the Cotton River, the money was not very good. Now that we have calculated that after removing farm tools, seeds, land rent, water conservancy and irrigation fees, etc., there is no money left in hand, and I will definitely not be able to buy any more slaves.

However, this matter obviously can't help Zhai Xiaoshan. Who is he from? Bandits! The bandits' consistent idea is to rob if they don't have any money, so what if no one uses it now? Go grab it the same!

So, in this line of thinking, Zhai Xiaoshan took more than a dozen old brothers (the rest took the boat back first to continue to raise money) to the lobster port, where nearly 100 investors with the same idea had gathered. These people are all from the military, they do things simply and simply, and if they have no money, they will go to do a vote, afraid of Mao!

Of course, there were also some residents of Xinhua Port who came to join in the fun, and they were either hired or came voluntarily, and then went to Lobster Port to collect weapons. The weapons were provided by a crosser named Ma Wanpeng, who now has two sail fishing boats to fish for tuna near Zanzibar – he himself lives in Xinhua Port, of course. This time, he brought together a large group of idlers on the island to capture the natives as laborers, and he also borrowed fifty or sixty rifles and a piece of armor from the Xinhuagang arsenal through Guò's good relationship with Shi Qinjie, plus everyone's own axes, machetes, etc., to break through some native stockades and plunder some slaves, there is basically no difficulty.

Their target this time was the natives of the Comoros, a new race of Arab, Malay, and Bantu blood, who had a fierce temperament, using the skills of their ancestors (perhaps Malays or Arabs) to make iron and canoes, and then went out to sea to raid other tribes. Sometimes they went to Madagascar to raid, sometimes they went ashore to raid the Bantu blacks, sometimes they went to raid the Swahili (Arabs and blacks), and in short, they were a gang of robbers.

Of course, their level of civilization is still relatively low, and it is not even as good as the Malays on the other side of the strait, for example, their iron-made land is quite bad, and the canoe is not as good as the man-made land on the island of Madagascar. Therefore, Ma Wanpeng gathered hundreds of strong men (basically veterans with combat experience) to go to the Comoros Island to capture slaves, and it can be said that it is basically difficult to encounter any resistance. What the? You say those natives come to fight you with iron swords and wooden spears? Don't be funny, the people on the east coast have already encountered too many such natives on New Huaxia Island, and they basically have experience in dealing with them, so this time when they go to sea to arrest people, as long as they are not stupid enough to try to establish a base there, it is basically foolproof.

Although the law of the East Coast Republic of China prohibits the private keeping of black slaves or the employment of black laborers, the current Comorians have not been mixed with a large number of Bantu blood from East Africa as later generations, and they are mainly of mixed Arab and Malay blood, and occasionally some Arabs have brought Bantu blood to the island, but after all, there are not many. At this time, in fact, everyone can play a side game, and they can justify to their superiors that they are not black, and if they really can't do it, they can be sold to state-run plantations, and there is a shortage of people there anyway. Of course, in the case of an extreme shortage of labor, no one will really compare whether the Comoroians are black or not, and the development of the plantation economy is the top priority.

In this way, on the day of June 3, Ma Wanpeng himself personally took two steam engine sailing fishing boats full of slave hunters and quietly docked near the port of Moroni on the island of Comoros at night. At this time there were a few canoes moored in the harbor, but there were not enough keepers, and the steam engine galleon, as it slowly approached the inshore, lowered a large number of dinghys from the side of the ship, and then the slave catchers rowed the dinghy to the shore in a group of more than a dozen people. And when paddling to the shallow water, some of the impatient guys even jumped out of the dinghy and waded into the water to rush to the beach.

A handful of slave hunters who had seized the beach began to help each other put on armor, while others stood guard with muskets and axes. Everyone is an old man, and all kinds of tactical regulations are in order, so naturally they will not capsize in the gutter. After everyone had come ashore, Ma Wanpeng said a few words to the group, which meant a quick victory, breaking the enemy's resistance with lightning speed, and then taking control of some villages and robbing all the people or livestock in sight. After speaking, Ma Wanpeng rowed back to the boat with his entourage in a small boat, and the scene was in charge of a Ming veteran who was born as a non-commissioned officer.

The veteran who served as the commander did not talk nonsense, the battle plan had already been drawn up in advance, and now it would be good to strictly implement it, so that after only a few minutes, the team of more than a hundred people quietly touched the village under the cover of darkness.

There were basically no surprises during the battle. The Comorians, who were asleep, were caught off guard by the surprise attack, and no one had come to rob them for so many years, which made them very panicked and did not know what was happening. But even if they knew that, the village was full of devils in bright iron armor with swords and axes in their hands, and behind the devils there were many robbers with smoking weapons, which they had already known to be a weapon capable of killing, which made them even more irresistible.

Thus, in just a few hours, more than 100 people from the east coast were firmly in control of this small village, whose population was no more than a few hundred. Except for a few who fled at night, most of the people in the village were killed or captured, and most of them were here. Ma Wanpeng squinted on his boat for half the night, and in the early morning the statistics also came out, and last night the group killed a total of 48 Comorians and captured 505 men, women and children, including 246 adults (111 young men). In addition, we also obtained 31 cattle, 172 sheep, and a number of chickens, ducks and geese.

Among the captured population, the elderly and children are naturally not wanted, because they are pit goods, and the economic value of being able to create zào is very small, and Ma Wanpeng is even considering whether to let them go; Women, so-so, if it was cheaper, someone would buy it; Young and middle-aged men are definitely in demand, but everyone gangs up to loot, and naturally there is a set of rules for dividing the spoils. These slave hunters are all shareholders of the plantation, and the adult slaves will be digested internally, as for the old people and children, Ma Wanpeng Jianyi should take them back, see what the boss says, he thinks it is better to preserve the integrity of these Comorian families.

After all, the current East Coast Republic is not allowed to keep slaves on the surface, including indentured slaves, all of them are hired contracts, and in the future, these Comoroians will also be introduced to New China Island in the form of labor workers (of course, "labor workers" who do not pay wages), otherwise there is no way to wash their hands, and it is still necessary to preserve the integrity of their families at this time. (To be continued......)