The house lent to Zaiko by the Satsuma clan is a samurai house located on the edge of Wabotsu Castle. The www.biquge.info house is covered with white walls and black tiles, and is decorated with a Tang-style roof. The gatehouse of the house has a beautiful tiled roof with the family crest of the Satsuma clan hanging underneath. To the left of the gatehouse is a row of terraced houses with six rooms, which are for people of lower status. There is a courtyard in the gatehouse, and the road in the courtyard is paved with ashlar. In front of the courtyard is a large Japanese-style house. This Japanese-style house has two courtyards, and in the middle of each courtyard is a beautiful small garden, with a total of 12 rooms on the four sides of the two courtyards.

Xiao Xiangui took the officials in charge of the house, such as the chief manager, the general shop, the helm, and the deputy of finance, into the house, and each person had a room. Although there was no bed in the room, you had to sleep on the floor like the Japanese, but this samurai yashiki was much more comfortable than the rocking, cramped and crowded boat.

The Satsuma Domain's warehouses have arquebuses in stock. Xiao Xiangui transported the silver to the castle of Naomitsu in Miya-no-Castle, and the Satsuma clan soon sent arquebuses and gunpowder from Tsurumaru Castle.

The Japanese forgehouse craftsmen were paid enough wages, and the materials used were very fine, and the risk of the arquebus being blown up was very low. But if it's done well, the price will be high. Although the Satsuma clan had a special forging house, even then a single arquebus sold for fifty taels of silver. Coupled with the matching gunpowder projectiles and the money for customizing the bomb, Xiao Xiangui spent nearly 9,000 taels of silver this time.

Although the flesh hurt, in order to save his life, Xiao Xiangui gritted his teeth and paid.

The bomb was made to order, and it needed to be improvised at the Satsuma Domain's forging house, and it would take four months to deliver.

On the day the arquebus was sent to the ship, Li Tu picked one up, put it in his hand and looked at it.

The arquebuses of this era were called iron cannons in Japan and belonged to breech-loading rifles. The iron cannon made by the Satsuma clan was one meter and two meters long and weighed three kilograms.

The cross-section of the barrel of the iron cannon is octagonal, the outer diameter gradually shrinks into a conical shape from back to front, and the wall thickness of the barrel gradually thins with the change of pressure in the barrel. Under the barrel was a wooden bracket with a hole in it for a through-strip.

Behind the iron cannon, the trigger-controlled arquebus groove is stuck with the fire rope, which is facing the bottom fire plate, which has a medicine pot lid on top of the bottom fire plate, which can be sealed when closed. There is a fire transfer hole on the side of the chamber in the chamber, which communicates with the primer disc and is used for ignition.

The arquebus had a complete set of sights, consisting of a shutter above the middle of the barrel and a crosshair above the muzzle. There are several lugs fixed to the butt with pins under the middle of the barrel, and the tail of the barrel is fixedly connected to the butt with a ferrule.

On the wooden tray under the barrel of the gun, the name of the forger of this gun, Hiraichi Yunhachiro, is engraved. If the quality of the gun is not good, the forger is responsible. The butt of the gun is carved into the wood and painted with a layer of brown paint, making the whole gun look like a work of art.

After Xiao Xiangui discussed with Naomitsu Miyagi, Naomitsu Miyagi specially set aside a wasteland outside the town as a shooting range for the sailors of the Zaixing to train. Not only that, but the Satsuma clan also sent a samurai skilled in arquebuses to instruct the sailors of the Zaiko in handling the arquebus.

In late July, the crew of the Zaixing began arquebus shooting training.

In Japanese arquebus tactics, there was already the technology to order gunpowder packs.

When preparing gunpowder, the Japanese mixed a single shot dose of gunpowder with a projectile and put it into a special bamboo tube. In the face of hostile warfare, gunpowder and projectiles can be poured into the barrel at the same time, which speeds up the loading speed and reduces the possibility of excessive explosion and boring of gunpowder. This technique is called Sakai in Japanese.

But even so, the arquebus operation is still complicated, each shooting requires more than a dozen processes, to take the bar, clear the chamber, fill the gunpowder, through the strip tamping, clear the bottom fire plate, load the bottom fire plate, shake the bottom fire plate, blow the bottom fire plate, load the fire rope, test the fire rope, aiming, and finally shoot. Even a skilled shooter would take twenty seconds to complete this entire routine.

And the sailors of the Zaixing, who used the arquebus for the first time, took a minute to complete a shot.

As for the accuracy of shooting, the sailors of the Zaiheung were even more miserable. In the first training, eighty steps outside the large plank of one person, few sailors could hit.

If you want to improve, you can only keep training, summarizing, training, summarizing.

Under the guidance of the samurai of the Satsuma Domain, everyone seized the time to train.

But just two days into the training, deserters appeared in the ranks. On this day, as soon as he arrived at the training ground, Li Tu saw the crew gathering in twos and threes to discuss.

When the shipwright Yuan Pin heard that Xiao Xiangui had not been able to buy Li Dan's flag, he was afraid that he would meet Chen Shengning on the way back, and he was afraid that he would lose his life, so he ran away.

Xiao Xiangui went to find Miyashiro Naomitsu, and Miyanojo Naomitsu sent people to search all over the port town for several days, but they did not find Yuan Pin's figure. It seems that he had fled to other towns, probably ports such as Hirado and Nagasaki, and went on someone else's ship.

At the moment of the great enemy, the appearance of deserters has affected the morale of the sailors. More people wondered if they should escape in someone else's boat. Every night, Li Tu saw sailors muttering in the corners of the terrace.

The secret path is not good, Li Tu found Xiao Xiangui.

"Lord, in order to keep the goods and silver, you have to sprinkle silver to boost morale."

These days, I am worried about the safety of the return trip, and I don't sleep well, and Xiao Xian and the nobles have lost a lot of weight. Hearing Li Tu's words, Xiao Xiangui asked:

"How do you sprinkle money?"

Li Tu said: "Promise the crew that if they arrive in Zhangzhou safely, they will give each of them a reward of sixty taels of silver. In addition, since everyone has learned the arquebus technique this year, the next year will increase by ten taels of silver per labor money. In addition, those who perform well in training will also be rewarded with a small amount of silver. ”

When Xiao Xiangui heard this, he calculated it and said, "This is more than two thousand taels of silver." ”

Li Tu said indifferently: "Under the heavy reward, there is a brave man." The shipwright can't let the shipwrights live and die for nothing. If this money is not spent, more and more people will flee. ”

Xiao Xiangui sighed, nodded and replied, "Then according to what you said, I will announce this on the ship tomorrow." ”

The next day, in front of the whole boat, Xiao Xiangui announced the "silver reward on the shore" and the increase in salary for the coming year.

Not only that, Li Tu also jumped out to encourage everyone, saying: "We are equipped with arquebuses and bombs, and our combat effectiveness has been greatly improved." This battle will be won! ”

The so-called people die for money, and birds die for food. When the crew heard these words, their morale was greatly boosted, and they all abandoned the idea of escaping.

Seeing that the promise of the reward was immediate, Xiao Xiangui trusted Li Tu more and more, so he asked Li Tu to be in charge of the training.