Monitoring the movements of the Portuguese slave ships began in the morning of the same day. Surprisingly, the surveillance operation continued until the evening of the next day. During this time, Isabel Walton had the sailors deliberately anchor the Nemesis in the waters near the port of Neves, and Captain Hawkins's three armed merchant ships followed her to the vicinity of the harbor.

Then, taking advantage of the Portuguese to transfer a large number of black slaves onto the cargo merchant ships, he swaggered into the port with the maritime lieutenant, the artillery commander, and Captain Hawkins on the ferry. Stopping the ship and going ashore, he calmly led the crowd through the Portuguese priests, gunners, and many sailors who were in charge of supplies and detained slaves.

After a friendly conversation with Portugal and a bribe with a large amount of Spanish silver coins, she received a startling piece of news. Two Clark armed merchant ships with a displacement of 300 tons and converted into a Portuguese version of the ship, in order to carry more black slaves to the Americas, actually dismantled more than a dozen heavy guns on board. The only armament left was a few hand cannons erected on the side sides of the ship to kill and wound enemy personnel!

A hand cannon is a firearm with a simple structure, the main structure is a barrel with some grips. Invented by the Germans in 1364, it belongs to the family of muskets. Weighing about 10 pounds, it fires iron or lead bullets from a match. Due to its low price and ease of mass production, it gradually occupied the European theater in the Middle Ages.

In addition, while the Crossbow is incredibly accurate and as powerful as a hand cannon, it is expensive, slow to reload, and highly susceptible to wet weather. The accuracy and rate of fire of the English longbow were much better than that of the hand cannon, but as the Middle Ages progressed, the raw material for making the longbow became more and more scarce, until the yew wood in all of Europe was almost exhausted. Regardless, the hand cannon, with its serious technical shortcomings, became a common long-range weapon on the battlefields of late medieval Europe.

The Portuguese removed the heavy guns from the ships, but retained the hand cannons, which could only kill and wound enemy personnel, and such armed merchant ships were no different from other purely Portuguese cargo merchant ships. Upon receiving the news, Isabel quickly left the harbor with her fellow privateers and returned to her merchant ship, waiting for the news of the departure of the two slave merchant ships.

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The dinner of the day looked very simple, with no fruit, only a leaf or two of vegetables, and almost all corned beef, hard bread and spoiled cheese. After all, when the fleet arrived on the island of São Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea from the island of Spain after crossing the entire Atlantic, the food, drinks and other supplies on each ship had already been consumed by the crew. If the island of São Tomé was not replenished at this time, Isabel's fleet would not have been able to reach the Caribbean or the American continent.

Captain John Hawkins, who was in charge of supplies, hesitated for a long time in front of the captain's cabin before knocking on Isabel's cabin door. "Come in." A familiar voice came from the captain's cabin, and John bit his lip and opened the hatch and walked inside.

"Captain, you know that the ship is seriously undersufficiency, I think... It was supposed to go ashore immediately for resupply. John stood at the captain's desk with his chest straight, and with a blink of his eyes he said what he wanted to say.

Isabel glanced at the plate of fairly rich food in front of her, raised her eyelids and looked at the navigator with a tense face, "John, I know that supplies are not enough to last until the next land. However, I promise that we will get a lot of supplies tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. ”

John glanced at Isabel, who also had an ugly face, and hurriedly looked at the porthole behind the other party, "Captain, I know the plan to plunder the Portuguese merchant ships, I... I don't dare to doubt your judgment either. What I want to say is that if the raiding plan does not succeed, we must resupply the island of São Tomé. ”

Isabel turned to the porthole behind her seat with her hands on her hips and stared at Captain Hawkins' merchant ship in the sea near the stern. After a moment, he looked back at the Navigator, "Well, I accept your opinion. John, you're still very young, you have to be calm when you get into trouble in the future, understand? ”

"Even the food is almost gone, how can you stay calm." John Hawkins complained to himself, and quickly raised his head and puffed up his chest to look at his aristocratic female captain, "Yes, Captain. ”

In fact, the problem of supply is relatively easy to solve. If we do not succeed in plundering the two Portuguese slave ships this time, we can at most go ashore again to find out about the other slave ships, and then we can use this time to resupply. It's just that Isabel felt that it was too much of a waste of time.

Now, the time has come to the second week of January 1544. Isabel Walton, who had been leading the fleet to sea for more than four months, was desperate to know everything about the Anglo-Soviet war. She feared that the war to snatch Prince Edward's wife-to-be, the Queen of Scots, would kill more people on the battlefield. Among them were her relatives and the northern nobles and knights she knew.

Under the influence of the haze of war in what the Scots at the time called "eight or nine years of war", and another phrase that appeared in the 1850s, "rough pursuit", Isabel intended to return to England as soon as possible. Use your wit, opinion, advice, or proactive actions to do something about this damn war.

After a full night of surveillance, the night sailors on the Nemesis finally spotted the movements of the two slave trading ships at sunrise the next morning. Boatswain Brady Hawkins, staring at two bloodshot eyes, stumbled up the small staircase of the lookout to the captain's cabin and knocked on the door.

At this time, I saw that the hatch was suddenly opened outward, and Isabel, who was ready to go, walked out head-on with a handguard and sword on her waist. When he saw some Brady who had not yet woken up, he just said lightly, "Boatswain, is there any news of the Portuguese merchant ships?" ”

"Yes, captain, those two slave ships have just left the port."

"Well, what about the Portuguese routes?"

"It's sailing west on a route to and from the Americas."

"Go and wake up those who haven't woken up yet, pull up the sails and get ready to set sail." Isabel commanded as she walked towards the stairs of the lookout, "If you're looking for me, I'm on the gun deck, do you hear me?" ”

By this time, the two Portuguese slave merchant ships had left the deep sea off the island of São Tomé, and were sailing slowly towards the American continent.