This was the first time he saw the power of a cannon. With a deafening roar, the cannon ball was shot out and landed around 500m away in the snow, blasting a lot of snow and mud into the air, and afterwards, it bounced once more into the air. With his eyes, it was impossible for Van’er to track the iron ball.
Seeing this, Van’er wondered how the Prince, managed to create such a terrible weapon. If you had to face artillery attacks, even with body armor, I am afraid it would be to no avail.
After each shot, the group was changed and the Prince ordered someone to mark the landing position. Afterwards, he let someone measure the distance between the muzzle and the flag. After four rounds, it was finally Van’er’s turn again, but then he heard the command to change the cannon’s angle.
A scale marked with 0, 5, 10, 25, and 30 was placed at the cannon’s end, where the cart was connected. Although Van’er saw this scale, he didn’t understand what it meant, but as long as they just followed the instructions, everything would be alright. Iron Axe shouted, “Shoot at the angle of 5!” Hearing this command, Jop, who was the one with the greatest strength in Van’er’s team, took the ramrod, inserted it into the muzzle, waited for them to open the hook which held the barrel at the right angle, and pressed it upwards until the scale showed 5 and snapped the hook in.
Compared with the angle of the barrel at the beginning, where the barrel was a little low, the barrel now pointed a little higher. This showed that the scale marked how high or low the barrel’s muzzle pointed into the sky.
When everything was ready, every group fired one more shot with the new angle, and after every shot, the distance was also measured.
Van’er could gradually understand what the Prince did.
He recorded the distance of every shot fired, and the higher the angle of the barrel, the higher the iron ball would fly.
This was a point where Van’er could use his experience from shooting with a bow, the higher up the aim, the further the arrow would fly. The flatter the shooting angle, the earlier the arrow would hit the ground. However, he hadn’t thought about that in the case of the cannon. Just because it is faster, the flying distance would be so much further. Suddenly, he got this crazy idea- if the iron ball got faster and faster, would it be possible that it would never stop?
At Redwater River, Little Town’s testing phase was also underway.
Since Wendy would act as the ship’s driving force, the ship’s personnel needed to be absolutely reliable. So, Roland picked some people who already knew about the witches as the first crew of Little Town. Carter became the captain, the helmsman was Brian, the sailors who had to set the sails were Carter’s subordinates, and the job of correspondent went to Titus Pyne, Nana’s father. These people often came into contact with the witches, so coupled with their own mental transformation where they got rid of their prejudice against the witches, there shouldn’t be a problem. In the case of Sir Pyne, it was even less the case, since his beloved daughter was a witch.
Chapter 82 Little Town’s first voyage
Since Lightning was the only one who had any practical experience with sailing, she was assigned the duty of serving as navigator.
In addition, she was also interested in the barge with its strange shape and unique construction material. Although it looked very crude, it had every important part needed for a ship and and was able to move, but she wasn’t allowed to steer it herself. After all, for most of her time at sea, she had only been a bystander since her father had always refused her requests to steer the ship.
In accordance to tradition, Lightning smashed a bottle of wheat wine on the ship’s bow for the ship’s first departure, and then she gave the order to set sail. Carter, as the captain, was naturally reluctant to let the little girl snatch his position as commander, so whenever she gave a command, the knight would follow up with the same command.
The sails of Little Town were sewn out of animal skin, with cowhide and sheepskin accounting for the majority of the sails, but they were also mixed with some of Border Town’s specialties, like wolf skin, bear skin, and the like. So the sail had many different kinds of colors- brown, gray and white, just like a sail patched together out of many rags. The sails were trapezoidal, and were divided by four separate beams. At the top of the sail, a cable went through the iron rings to connect it with the mast, while the bottom just fell onto the deck. One just had to pull the cable to raise the entire sail.
In order to make operating the ship as simple as possible, Little Town only had two sails that were parallel to each other and perpendicular to the middle line. In general, if a two-masted sailboat were to be constructed in this way, it would only be able to catch very little wind, almost making the second mast irrelevant. But with Wendy’s ability to control the wind, this design would let her distribute her power evenly on both sides of the center line, making it more convenient for the helmsman to change the direction of the ship.
When Lightning saw that the sail was set, she commanded the dockworkers on land to untie the rope. At the moment, the weather was very good. The snow that fell occasionally was driven by light wind just like the water as the ship slowly left the shore.
The little girl descended to Brian ‘s side and ordered, “Right on full rudder!
Carter also shouted, “Right on full rudder!”
“Uh, what does this right rudder mean?” Brian scratched his head and asked, “How many right circles?”
“No, you have to turn the steering-wheel left around,” said Lightning, while walking away. “Come on, or do I have to come over?”
She had forgotten that it was the first time for these people to control a ship, so they even didn’t understand the basics of any instructions. If this was a standard brig, I’m afraid they wouldn’t even be able to roll out the sails. With less than ten people, they were still able to drive the ship offshore, which was only possible due to the ship’s unique design.
Lightning took the wheel handle which was even higher than her, and with her feet off the ground, she rotated it left around — this huge transverse steering wheel was very heavy for ordinary women to turn. In the absence of mechanical power and under-equivalent power transmission, she had to overcome the entirety of the water resistance when moving the massive iron rudder. However, since Lightning could fly, this was no problem for her. She noted that there was a thin piece installed at the base of the rudder to prevent the rudder from overturning, so she couldn’t help but wonder, I heard that the ship is the Prince’s original design, so how can it be that he even knows this detail? Even sailors who had stayed at sea all year round did not necessarily know the structures of the various parts of the ship.
“Sister Wendy, you can start producing your wind.”
Wendy, who stood at the top of the cabin, didn’t know whether she should laugh or cry, so this was the true reason why His Highness had asked me if I’m afraid of heights.So now, I should power the ship with my ability? When thinking about her usual boring life, such as drying meat or clothes, this gave her a subtle feeling of contrast. She opened her hands, going into her usual practice state, and let the wind blow from her feet to her head equally, balancing the wind as much as possible when blowing it into both sides of the sail.
To be honest, Wendy did not expect that this seemingly simple task would be so difficult to operate.
Although she had awoken as a witch fifteen years ago, she had never tried to gain a deeper understanding and control of her power. Whether it was to call the wind to attack the enemy or to summon a storm to sweep the enemy away, those were one-time releases of a large amount of magic. In the camp, when doing the chores, she only had to sometimes use a lot of power, but as long as the goal could be achieved, she hadn’t to use much. Now thinking about Anna, who was always earnestly using her power, Wendy suddenly felt a little ashamed.