WeTried Translations

Translator: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ Wind and a Cluster of Stars

Chapter 6

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The Netherlands, Night in Bremen

11. The Netherlands

April 7, early morning.

The diligent Dutch innkeeper bustled about, serving breakfast.

Still, in this chilly morning hour, only the owner was busy.

Everyone else enjoyed the cool, leisurely air of the morning.

We had decided to leave around nine without rushing, so everyone was relaxed.

It was still early.

Other than my group, only a couple of people in the dining room were waiting for breakfast.

Sweet, cold air blew in through the window and scattered the savory smell of soup from the kitchen.

Nearby, navigator Zenon smoked a cheroot with an easy expression.

Tobacco grown in the warm Caribbean, in fertile Havana, carried its own sweet, bitter scent.

Of course, up close it was acrid and harsh.

"Enjoy your meal."

Breakfast was bright yellow round cheese, erwtensoep, and bread.

The soup, which looked like it had been stirred all day, had potatoes and beans cooked until soft and served piping hot.

The flavor of mashed potato and onion was excellent.

The cheese, true to a dairy country, had its full, distinctive aroma and was a delicacy too.

And the bread, torn off in big bites, was freshly baked, steaming in the cold air.

"I think I could eat this every day and never get tired of it."

The innkeeper looked very pleased to hear me say that.

...

We walked along the canal in the brisk morning air.

Unlike London, Amsterdam had no fog, so it felt very clean and refreshing.

We decided to check the trading posts lined up along the canal.

The sailors stayed with the ship, and Amy and Zenon followed me down the hard cobbled road.

The morning was quiet.

Boats out early on the canal and milk carts rang their bells now and then, and people carrying bread baskets appeared from time to time before disappearing into alleys I did not know.

Plump seagulls waddled after us on their yellow feet, then quickly lost interest and turned away.

I checked goods and prices in several places, then learned that one of Amsterdam's specialties, glass beads, had dropped in price.

I did not know why, but at less than eight percent of the normal price, there had to be a reason demand had fallen.

Even so, they were still expensive.

They were not jewels or precious metals, and yes, prices had fallen, but artisans still colored each piece one by one, so most of the price had to be the cost of handwork.

They were used for lace decoration, all sorts of tools and household goods, and necklaces.

Zenon, already well past middle age, did not seem impressed by the glittering beads.

Amy, though, was completely absorbed, inspecting them one by one, then holding a handful up to the sunlight.

In the end, I bought around twenty boxes of those glass beads at a trading post with a pot of red flowers covered in dew.

I could have bought more if I spent everything I had, but I had a plan of my own.

After I paid, the sailors carried those round, pretty, shining things to the boat pulled in close by the canal.

Pale blue ones, red ones, and ones with color sealed inside refracted the morning sun and shone beautifully.

...

"Set sail for Groningen!"

Unlike on the way in, the ship moved lightly.

My plan was to follow the chain of cities to the east and buy up goods at good prices.

Then something unexpected happened.

As we left the canal and entered open sea, a galleon flotilla was coming into port.

The draft line on those huge, heavy galleons was right up at the limit.

Three galleons, and heavy cargo.

It looked like the Dutch fleet that should have arrived earlier.

Probably the metal goods I sold for a high price yesterday had only now arrived late.

In the flotilla, the mainmast of one galleon with a long pennant marking it as the flagship was broken.

I did not know what had happened, but it looked like that had delayed them.

For me, it could only be called luck.

...

I looked over the goods we bought yesterday and checked the ship.

No matter how big a Balsa got, it was still basically a little boat, so there was not much to see.

One sail, several sets of rigging, and inside, a small storage room that also served as a cabin.

In one corner was a simple cooking brazier, and beside it were water barrels and boxes of the glass beads and bead strings we had just bought.

"This really does not feel like a ship..."

I opened a cupboard, tore off a bit of the sardine meat Amy had put away, and ate it.

Inside the small wall cupboard were stacks of very hard round and square ship's biscuits.

While we were doing coastal trade, we would rarely need to eat them.

The first time I tried one, I bit down without thinking and felt like my teeth were going to break, so I had always been careful with them since then.

Though to be fair, all I had done was try them once as an example at Navigation School.

Anyway, as far as I could tell, if you were going to eat one plain, the best way was to hold it in your hand, smash it against a hard edge, break it into mouth sized pieces, and chew with your molars.

Hmm... then there was a small salt jar and grain flour...

Next to the ship's biscuits sat a few dark green limes wrapped in a paper bag, quietly starting to go bad.

"Amy! We need to eat these!"

...

April 7, around 2 p.m.

Freed from heavy cargo, the Balsa quickly reached the nearby city of Groningen.

Unlike Amsterdam, Groningen was a small city, so even after docking at the port, we had to search quite a while to find the trading posts.

They were hard to find, and they did not carry much stock.

On top of that, price differences between goods were severe.

Typical examples were juniper berry liquor, gin, fur, and honey.

Even gin, though it was a specialty product, had low output, so it was expensive.

As for fur, even with the price dropped in April, it was unclear whether it would sell for a proper price.

In the end, last year's harvest had been good and there was a lot of honey in storage, so even before new honey came out, I bought a little honey at an average price.

Since it was often used as seasoning instead of expensive sugar, it seemed best to buy at least some.

Oddly enough, while carrying the dozen or so bottles we bought, Zenon, who had always made the sailors below do that work, stepped in and carried honey himself.

He bought a small bottle of honey with his own money.

Then he would dab a little honey when rolling a cheroot, or when packing shredded tobacco into a pipe, he would moisten it little by little with a thumb wet with saliva.

Our next city was Bremen in Germany.

12. Night in Bremen

April 8, around 5 p.m.

The weather was very clear.

High in the sky, clouds like torn pieces of bread streamed quickly in the direction we were heading.

Our nameless Balsa moved fast with its single small sail.

It had been modified for trade to increase capacity, and with only one mast it was slower than other ships, but for a Balsa it was moving quickly now.

Most small Balsas were never given names.

Unless there was a special reason, these little boats were mostly used by beginners because they were simple and easy to handle.

So once their owners grew a bit, those boats were replaced and forgotten.

Everyone believed that the day would come soon when they switched to a bigger, finer ship.

That any satisfaction with this little boat would be as brief as spring snow.

So a Balsa was usually called "trade Balsa" or just "Balsa."

And on our Balsa, in the gaps around the prow, deck, and railings, lived a stowaway.

"Crab!"

Amy squatted down and clapped as if the tiny red crab were a puppy, calling its name.

But obviously a crab did not have the intelligence to understand words, so it just slipped deeper into the dark interior.

Amy tapped the deck, then placed a piece of fish in front of it and waved it around.

The red crab had no intention of coming out.

"It'll come out if you stay still."

"Try all you want, that thing won't come out..."

When I muttered that, Zenon beside me chimed in too.

...

April 8, 11 p.m.

The Balsa quietly entered Bremen's harbor, sunk in darkness.

Darkness lay everywhere, the tugboat lamps flickered and faded, and only the dockside fires pushed back the gathering dark in scattered patches.

The trading posts had long since closed, so we had no choice but to spend the night here and wait until morning to do anything.

I took the mate and navigator and looked for a nearby inn with a dining room.

Bremen was bigger than Groningen, and inns and restaurants lined the harbor, so finding one was easy.

A quiet night.

Outside the second floor window of the room I stayed in, a burst of rowdy noise woke me from sleep.

I opened the window and looked down the street, and a group of drunkards passed by, singing with slurred tongues, excited over who knew what.

And on a bench along that street, one red point glowed.

Navigator Zenon's face kept appearing and fading red whenever he drew on his tobacco.

Then once again, this German city settled into silence like a deep sea.

...

April 9, early morning.

Breakfast was simple potato stew and bread, and coffee came after.

It was Arabic style coffee, boiled directly in water, very bitter, but that made its own flavor all the stronger.

That same city which had been quiet last night overflowed with energy as soon as morning came and the sun rose.

First, we checked market prices for goods brought from nearby cities.

I did not expect goods from close cities to become expensive without any special reason.

As expected, prices had not risen at all. If anything, they had dropped.

Groningen had little demand because it was a small city, so trade itself was the problem.

Bremen, even as a large city, had the opposite problem. The goods were produced nearby, so supply was abundant.

Still, this city had long established handicrafts and industry, so industrial goods were cheap.

There were many cheap things, but funds were limited, and above all, the ship was small.

So after discussing it with Amy, we chose one thing, cotton cloth.

Made from soft white cotton, each piece spread as wide as a person's height, and could be used for all kinds of clothing, medical supplies, and industrial goods.

It was not the cheapest item, but it was one of the easiest to sell.

I decided to buy around thirty rolls.

Cotton itself was light, but once rolled and folded it became quite heavy, and the sailors had a hard time carrying it.

Once loaded, it weighed almost as much as the ingots we carried before.

"I hope this gets us a fair price."

"Captain, are our funds okay?"

"We still have enough, because of what happened in Amsterdam. About half is left. Let's stop by Hamburg and then go to London. London is a big city, demand is always there."

Again, the ship slipped away from port before we knew it.

Compared to when it came in, the Balsa leaving was far more sluggish.

The sailors and Zenon, who had long experience at sea, did not react much.

But this blue eyed lady seemed very disappointed.

All this time, we had mostly done nothing but sleep when we could, buy goods, and leave again.

For her, this repeating life and work on board with little novelty had to be boring.

"Hamburg is a big city. Let's stay there a day or two."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

Ah, I really wished I could make a lot of money, pay everyone enough without shortage, and never have to worry about lacking funds again.

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