WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Wind and a Cluster of Stars

Chapter 14

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Navigator, The Weather Warms

26. Navigator

April 19, 8:00 p.m.

It was only by evening that the ship finally settled.

The weather was still cold, and after sunset, white breath rose along the rail.

Now and then, smoke rose from the flue connected to the galley on the lowest deck, and pale steam billowed up in thick bursts.

Cold weather made it harder to move, and that often led to injuries, so Zenon limited deck work as much as possible. From early morning on, he banned the sailors from drinking beer or running around on deck.

The ship docked smoothly at the next port, Aberdeen.

As expected, the farther south we went, the milder it got.

Aberdeen was dry, and it felt gentler than Thurso in the far north.

I stopped by the fish market near the harbor.

Attached to the market was a liquor wholesaler that was still open.

The streets were still bright with lights, and merchants were wrapping up late evening business, so it seemed that was why the shop had not closed yet.

I started bargaining there.

I still had around 120 crates left, and the wholesaler wanted 80. He said he would cut 5 percent if he bought everything, so I sold the whole lot.

After all those twists and turns, the whiskey I had brought from Dublin over several days was finally sold out.

In that last deal, I sold it at 81 percent of London price, so compared to how cheaply I bought it, I still made a decent profit.

"How much is it, Amy?"

Amy groaned over the numbers, then finished calculating the total value of all the whiskey we had sold so far.

I had used half the money from selling paper to buy whiskey, then turned a profit on that whiskey.

Not much, but still.

"For now, we can pay off the bank debt. There should be some left as starting capital too. But after maintenance costs, what remains is..."

"It is not much, but we finished all the guild work too. We can take new commissions in London. The ship still lacks a lot. We need personal weapons too, and we have to buy more materials and sailcloth."

Whenever money was tight, there were always too many places to spend it.

Still, once everything was sold, I felt lighter.

I planned to leave at dawn tomorrow after waiting for wind, so I decided to walk around this old Scottish city.

I wandered aimlessly, breathing in the sharp scent of the chilly night air.

The streets spread out in a radial pattern, with city hall and the church at the center, so as long as I used them as reference points, I probably would not get lost.

Aberdeen was a port city, an old city with a long tradition of education and scholarship.

Even at night, its city hall and church glowed white in the faint moonlight.

Up close, I saw they were built of white granite, and the church stood white and solid.

I pushed open a dark ebony door and stepped inside.

Only the altar candles burned quietly,

and the sound of my footsteps alone echoed through the night air.

Cold air drifted around the rows of long benches, wrapped in the smell of old wood.

"..."

In front of the altar was a round pool of moonlight.

Moonlight from a small stained glass window shone pale white and blue.

In daylight, it was probably vivid red and blue,

but moonlight erased every primary color, leaving only a pale glow and sharpening the cold atmosphere.

Only the two candles burning steadily on silver candlesticks cast long shadows,

creating a mood that was both quiet and dreamlike.

Cold moonlit stained glass and silver candlesticks.

I sat in the very front pew of the empty church and spent a while in silence.

...

"Come on, hurry up. Mom said we still have to eat dinner even if we are late."

A little boy and girl who looked like siblings held hands and hurried down an alley.

Soon came the sound of doors closing, then laughter.

Warm yellow lamp light shone from each window and filled the alley.

From each house came the sweet resin scent of oak and pine burning in fireplaces, mixed into the cold night air.

Through one family window I happened to pass, I saw a small child reading by the fireplace while the mother sat in a rocking chair and knitted through the night.

On that windowsill were sweet red rose hips left from winter, so maybe that child liked birds.

'Are people with a place to live on land happy?'

I had thought that once.

There were countless navigators, and for even more countless reasons, they became navigators.

Most of them made a home of their ship and treated the cities they passed through as hometowns.

I once had a place to live, and people I called family,

but now I had become a navigator too, and this was the life I had to live.

Those sad and painful days were long past, left behind as bitter and gloomy memories.

Amy wanted to buy the wind.

I wanted to buy stars, and I knew very well that would never come true.

The life of a navigator.

People always searching beyond the sea for dreams they could never reach.

...

April 20, 7:00 a.m.

The ship had left Aberdeen at dawn while I was asleep.

By the time I woke, checked the ship, and returned to the captain's cabin,

Amy had brought breakfast on a tray.

Unexpectedly, it was something I liked.

Among the fish caught overnight was sole, and she had steamed it.

She had seasoned it lightly with salt and cooked it with a little wine,

and the sole's firm white flesh had an excellent chewy bite.

This style of cooking with wine was probably from France.

I thanked her and ate breakfast with Amy.

The pickled cabbage we made a few days ago had started to ferment, so it now had a mild sourness.

With that on top of the white fish, it made a great breakfast.

Amy's cat had porridge for breakfast, ship's biscuit boiled in water.

We were out of bread now, so I grabbed one round ship's biscuit and went up to the upper deck.

...

The wind had shifted, and the westerly had become a fair wind.

Zenon told the sailors to furl all fore-and-aft sails and spread all square sails to catch it.

I slammed the ship's biscuit in my hand against the rail, put the broken pieces in my mouth, and watched the sailors as it melted on my tongue.

The sailors climbed the backstays, rope ladders fixed to the mainmast,

and as soon as they opened the stowed sails, the wind filled them tight.

Before long, the fluyt caught the wind, built speed, and surged ahead fast.

As the sun rose, the temperature climbed and it started to warm, and waves striking the bow occasionally splashed up onto the upper deck.

At this speed, even the next city, Edinburgh, would come quickly.

27. The Weather Warms

April 20, 9:00 a.m.

The rising sun warmed the sea and the ship's side.

Now that we had finally escaped the cold North Atlantic current, the ship seemed lively again, like dandelions that had crouched on the ground all winter opening under spring sunlight.

Amy seized the chance and had the sailors spread their hammocks out on deck to air in the sun,

while Zenon inspected the guns and ammunition and sorted them again.

It was good weather.

After days of heavy clouds and white-foamed seas,

seeing a sky so blue it hurt the eyes and a deep blue ocean felt almost unreal.

Pale clouds like cotton drifted leisurely eastward,

and the bow staysail and inner jib, both triangular sails,

were so puffed up they looked like thick-crusted bread baked with too much yeast.

As the weather warmed, the little red crab, Crab, which had been out of sight for a while, boldly came up on deck too,

wandering around near the grooves in the rail ornaments as if looking for something to eat.

"Shake it off, quick."

Zenon stayed busy with work he could not do before.

Together with the sailors, he hauled out the powder barrels and dried them.

I had bought Red Letter at 1 pound 10 shillings per 100-pound barrel, about 45 kilograms.

Cheap low-grade Black Eagle was not even a third of that price, but I believed this would prove itself at an important moment one day.

On long voyages, powdered gunpowder could absorb moisture and clump up,

and damp powder increased both smoke and misfire rate.

So powder had to be stored carefully, and of course anything involving flame was strictly forbidden near it.

The rest of the sailors were ordered by the boatswain to clean the unused guns again and again.

They also wiped the round shot with cloth and stacked it neatly in the magazine.

...

1:00 p.m.

Zenon, both boatswain and sailing master, ate lunch, took a short break,

then drove the sailors again and opened the gunports.

They did not actually fire, but he made them repeat loading powder and shot.

Pulling a loaded gun apart again to remove shot and powder was extremely difficult,

so he had them practice the motions just to learn the whole cycle.

Since we had few sailors, Zenon assigned temporary gunners

and set up port and starboard gun crews,

so in emergencies they could move left and right with the ship's turns and operate the guns.

Real gunners were usually dedicated roles, sure, but what small ship like this carried full-time gunners?

The sailors probably felt this was work they could have done without,

and though they did not show it openly, their faces were not happy.

He even made them practice volley fire and ripple fire drills on top of that,

so I heard them muttering things like, "Cold weather was better," and "Just hire proper gunners."

In the end, he had them fire for real,

then, under the navigator's authority, handed out generous rum and shut them up.

Even after that, whenever he got a chance, he kept making them do it.

...

3:00 p.m.

By the time the sea had warmed nicely under the afternoon sun, the wind was still cool,

and riding that wind, we reached Edinburgh's outer harbor.

Moored beside a heavy galleon, the fluyt looked like nothing more than a lump of horse dung dropped beside a cartwheel.

We had nothing to sell, so I started work in Edinburgh by going around the trading post to see if there was a suitable item.

There were all kinds of goods.

In a way, industry across Britain seemed mostly similar.

Primary mineral processing, textiles, spinning, and livestock.

Walking the road along the sea, lightly warmed by sunlight, the reflected light from the water flashed and dazzled my eyes.

At a trading post facing the sea, I took notice of thin, light flannel.*

*(The source parenthetical uses an Age of Discovery spelling variant; normalized here as flannel.)

It was April, spring, right when wool shearing and production began.

This flannel looked newly made, soft and fuzzy and very light,

and one look showed excellent warmth, as if proving it was high quality.

This was probably exactly the right moment.

Wool flannel was used for everything from underwear to outerwear to hats.

And now that spring had started, wool production had probably only just begun.

On top of that, it naturally took time for that supply to reach London and spread there.

Wool in London differed in quality and weaving method from here, so it seemed worth taking.

I also found that the price had dropped.

A clothing shop owner who bought fabric from the trading post told me that as wool production began, flannel prices naturally fell.

The price was around 91 percent of average, and the distance from northern Edinburgh to southern London was far enough that land transport had limits,

so no matter how I looked at it, London probably did not have much supply yet.

"What do you think?"

"I think it is good."

Amy seemed to judge it as profitable too.

"Buy as much as we can. This window will be short. We have to sell before it gets warmer and before London stock increases. It is already late April."

Amy calculated the volume per flannel roll

and said we could load around 480 rolls.

If London prices were poor, we could keep moving south and stop at other cities.

I bought as much flannel as possible.

After I signed the payment slip and paid, the trading post owner had workers carry it by wagon near the harbor,

and the sailors loaded it under Amy's direction.

Just having a trading post made things this convenient, buying in bulk all at once.

Full of expectation, I decided to head for London as soon as loading finished.

It would take at least more than a full day to reach London.

...

8:00 p.m.

After dinner, I turned up the lamp and was writing the ship's log when I heard a low murmur outside.

The ship was small, but because of wave noise and its enclosed structure, quiet voices were hard to hear,

so unless someone was speaking fairly loudly, this almost never happened.

When I went up to the deck where the sound came from, it was already over.

Zenon was scolding two sailors standing in front of him.

"Hey, tie these bastards to the mainmast and foremast."

It was a common punishment for fighting.

"Navigator."

"Ah, Captain."

The seasoned middle-aged navigator turned toward me.

"What happened?"

"These two drank and fought. Nothing major, but rules are rules."

"But tying them up is a bit..."

I did not mean tying them up was too light a punishment.

And I was not asking for keelhauling or flogging either.

I had only read in books about cruel captains ordering nails driven through the backs of hands.

This was something we could probably let slide.

Most importantly, I came out on deck often,

so seeing them tied up and pretending not to notice would be awkward.

"If you do not like tying them up, we can just assign some other simple work."

The boatswain usually handled sailor work on his own,

but above that stood the captain, and his word was law, so Zenon followed what I said.

I figured his "simple work" would be things like cleaning or handling waste, so I went back in,

finished the rest of the log, and went to sleep.

Then the next day, only around noon, I found out Zenon had given those fighting sailors something worse than being tied up:

a thirty-minute rotation shift.

I nearly keeled over when I heard.

(That thirty-minute rotation meant they took turns every thirty minutes through the night, waking each other so neither of them could sleep.)

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