Of course, with Zheng Hongkui's status in the Zheng family, he is naturally not a marginalized object, Zheng Zhilong left him behind, and he took a lot of trouble to appease him, afraid that he would have any ideas. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 info Zheng Hongkui also knew that he had encountered such an unfortunate thing, and it was a good choice for Taoguang to be obscure for a while, so he also stayed in the Zhongzuo Institute with peace of mind. It's just that I didn't expect that there was a chance that I would be bumped into by myself - the port was attacked by the enemy!

The hand fell and stumbled in to report: "Fourth master, it's not good, a lot of big plywood boats rushed in, and when they saw the ship, they opened fire, and several ships have been sunk......"

Zheng Hongkui shouted with a gloomy face: "I heard it without you reporting it, such a loud cannon sound can be heard by the deaf." Hurry up and call the brethren and go to the harbor to meet the enemy! ”

"Yes!"

After his subordinates left in a hurry, Zheng Hongkui suddenly remembered that many of the short and heavy cannons delivered by the Qiongzhou battalion after the first lunar month were placed on his own big green head (Note 1), and these cannons cost a full 300,000 taels of silver.

The more he thought about it, the more frightened he became, cold sweat broke out on his forehead, he took out his knife from the bedside, walked to the yard and shouted: "Everyone get up for me, don't stand up for the corpse, rush to the dock to protect our ship!" ”

One after another, shipowners and maritime merchants rushed to the dock, and were first stunned by the scene before them, and then almost fainted: in the rumbling of cannons, nearly ten large plywood boats that had never been seen before roamed the harbor, happily spraying flames, and cannonballs whizzing towards their own ships, watching the ships be smashed through, flooded, and sunk, but there was nothing to be done.

Someone felt sorry for his boat and wanted to take his men on a sampan to board the ship and steer the boat to avoid the gunfire, but he was stopped by an acquaintance: "You don't want to die?" Cannons don't have long eyes. ”

"What then? Watching my ship sink? ”

"What if you are unwilling, you will be on the line with your life, and you will not be able to steer the ship to avoid the shelling of these big ships."

At this time, someone saw Zheng Hongkui angrily leading people to the dock, and hurriedly surrounded him: "Fourth master, you quickly come up with an idea to drive away these plywood boats that appeared out of nowhere!" ”

Zheng Hongkui looked at it fixedly, and his heart sank. The flag hoisted by this big ship is a red-haired person, and the double-deck cannon deck is also unique to the Yiren, is it possible that the eldest brother tried his best to avoid a war with Liu Xiang and Hongmao, but Hongmao didn't know what to do, and took the initiative to attack the left office?

He beckoned, and his subordinate handed over a clairing mirror—this thing had been bought from Macao, and cost hundreds of taels of silver, which was expensive, but it was indispensable for marching and fighting at sea—and took it, put it in front of him, and looked at the enemy ship.

Many of the ships were filled with Chinese faces, but this was not unusual, even the red-haired people could hire Chinese as sailors, and the Zheng family also hired a black musket team. Zheng Hongkui used a clairvoyant mirror to check left and right, and finally locked onto the flagship of the enemy ship - the commander at the bow was really a blonde and blue-eyed Yiren!

In the summer, Nan and the others naturally hid in the cabin and did not show up, but William not only did not hide, but stood in the most conspicuous position on the bow of the ship. For one, he has never appeared in the center left; Second, this foreign face can confuse the public - anyway, the people of the Ming Dynasty cannot distinguish the difference between the Dutch and the British, just as foreigners in the old time and space cannot distinguish between Chinese and Japanese and Koreans.

"Damn, our Zheng family didn't go to find your red-haired bad luck, you actually bullied the door!" Zheng Hongkui gritted his teeth and ordered, "Let me board the ship at any cost and bombard the fuck with the newly bought!" ”

The sailors of the Zheng family jumped on the sampan, untied the ropes, and rowed desperately to their own warship. Those ships had newly purchased short and heavy guns, and they only had to put a few guns on the deck of the "Yiren" to ensure that the "red hairs" could not eat and go around -- they had seen the power of this cannon with their own eyes.

William stood at the bow of the flagship "Lingao" and kept a close eye on the entire battlefield. When he noticed that someone was trying to board the big ship in a small boat, he immediately ordered: "The 'Lingao' is ready to attack these pirates, and do not give them a chance to board the ship!" ”

The remaining seven ships still locked on to their targets and continued to bombard, and the 'Lingao' aimed at these sampans.

"Boom boom", the solid bomb split head cover smashed into the Zheng family sailors on the sampan, although the first one was avoided, but it was difficult to avoid the second and third, several sampans were directly overturned and sunk after being shot.

Zheng Hongkui on the shore was quite nervous, the enemy's artillery was too powerful, and he could only hope that his own men would survive the shelling, board the ship smoothly, and return fire with short and heavy artillery. In fact, he didn't know that in order to avoid revealing the stuffing, the other party didn't use shotguns at all, otherwise after a few shots, these small sampans would be swept away by the barrage formed by the shotguns.

Seeing that most of the first batch of men were injured by artillery fire and it was difficult to get close to his own big ship, Zheng Hongkui spat fiercely and ordered loudly: "Everyone give me up, no matter what, I must keep these big ships and heavy artillery." As long as they board the ship and fire the cannon, everyone will have fifty taels of silver, and if they die, they will be given a hundred taels of settling-in money! ”

When such a bold reward was opened, the sailors of the Zheng family were not calm, and jumped on the sampan with a roar, braving the cannon fire and rowing desperately towards their big ship.

The "Lingao" still fired, and although there were sampan shots from time to time, it slowly couldn't stop the ant-like flow of people - there were too many people in the Zheng family, and a Wuyi-class one-sided 14 guns obviously couldn't stop these crazy sailors.

William's eyes widened and he looked at the sailors on the sampan in disbelief: "What did Zheng Yiguan promise them?" Are all these people crazy? ”

Xia Nan, who was in the cabin, saw this scene through the window and sneered a few times: "It's really people who die for money and birds die for food, the Zheng family must have offered a lot of rewards to make these people so desperate." He looked in the direction of the sampan, and it turned out to be dozens of ships of the same size as the Wuxiang-class patrol ships, the bow and sides of the ships were painted blue, and the thick muzzles were faintly visible on the side of the ships, this kind of cannon was very familiar to him, it was the low-end version of the 32-pound Caron gun on his own ship, the Caron gun cast in white iron.

"No, they're going to board the ship to fight back, and they're still using our guns. This Zheng Zhilong is really greedy for money, and the cannons he bought at a high price are not taken out to suppress bandits, but they are all placed at home. Xia Nan hurriedly called a sailor, "Go to the bow of the ship and tell William to be careful that the enemy boards the ship and counterattacks." ”

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Note 1: A kind of main warship of the Zheng family, the hull is decorated with cyan, the length is about 10 zhang, the width is 2 zhang 1 foot, the height is 5 feet, the draft is 8 feet, the load is three or four thousand quintals, and it is only equipped with 2 cannons in total, 1 in the front and 1 in the rear.