Chapter 1516: Chapter 62: Siege (32)
The sound of the signal lights opening and closing was like a hypnotic lullaby.
The night was as dark as ink, and at the cape of Magit Island, the junior officer on duty was already anxious from waiting.
An ominous premonition lingered in his heart, growing ever stronger.
Just when he was increasingly certain that the supply ship would never arrive tonight, several dark silhouettes of boats emerged from the mist and suddenly appeared in his view.
The duty officer’s spirits were immediately lifted, his drowsiness vanished, and he snatched the signal lamp from his subordinate, rapidly flashing a series of communication codes towards the boats.
Yet the three approaching boats did not respond to the duty officer’s inquiries, instead they rowed even harder, accelerating towards the makeshift pier constructed from planks taken from sunken ships.
The leading boat rowed especially fast, quickly pulling away from the other two, and soon reached the pier’s front.
A tall figure cloaked in a cape appeared at the bow, and without waiting for the boat to stop, he leapt effortlessly over the water, landing firmly on the jetty, and without stopping, strode directly towards the shore.
The swaggering manner of the figure made the duty officer’s blood boil; he could easily imagine with his knee bone how detestable and arrogant the person beneath the cloak must be.
The duty officer couldn’t help but clench his fists, stepping on the wooden brace used for supporting the musketeer’s elbow, and he directly climbed over the breastwork, marching angrily to confront him.
“Why did you ignore the signals?”
“Why did you arrive so late?”
“What’s all this commotion about?”
As the distance narrowed, the chain of rebukes was already at the tip of the duty officer’s tongue, yet he swallowed them back.
Because in the faint glow of the signal lamp, he suddenly noticed under the cloak seemed to be a pair of officer’s boots with silver seams and gold buckles.
The duty officer stopped in front of the visitor, suspiciously examining him up and down, then loosely saluted.
“Please identify yourself,” he said, quite reluctantly.
The visitor’s face was hidden in the shadow of his hood, making it indiscernible, but he seemed to smile slightly, casually returning the salute and then removing his hood, revealing a distinguished face known to all.
The duty officer paused for a moment, the next second he instinctively straightened his body, saluting meticulously, a smile of delight uncontrollably appearing on his eyebrows.
The visitor also returned the salute earnestly.
The duty officer turned back, waved towards the breastwork behind him and the fortress beyond.
Seeing that the duty officer had confirmed the visitor’s identity, the soldiers who had been waiting in the trenches yawned and walked out of the breastwork, languidly arriving at the jetty, catching the ropes tossed from the small boats, and securely mooring all three boats to the jetty.
Then, the soldiers began to unload supplies from the boats: barrels of twice-baked bread, pickled fish, gunpowder, cannonballs, spirits, stacks of baskets and straw mats for fortification, bundles of ropes, and the increasingly indispensable consumable—people.
The supply ship had brought twenty-four new recruits this evening. To save transport capacity, the recruits were sent to the battlefield unarmed and without armor, barehanded.
Of course, this was because on Magit Island, weapons were the least scarce.
The island was full of unclaimed weapons, lacking only hands to wield them, so there was no need to worry about this.
Once confirming it was their supply ship, the small gate beneath the fortress wall also opened.
A dozen severely wounded soldiers were carried out and sent onto the small boats, their mouths stuffed with cloth to keep them from groaning.
The soldiers carrying the wounded also walked cautiously, fearing any noise might attract enemy artillery fire.
Then came an equal number of corpses—space was also a precious resource, leaving no room for the dead.
However, with only three supply ships, fitting twenty-four seated living individuals was already cramped, let alone accommodating a dozen lying wounded, thus there simply wasn’t enough space for the similarly lying dead.
The island had no extra containers for the deceased to rest in; planks, burlap sacks, barrels, boots and clothes stripped from the bodies—all available materials had already become part of the defenses.
Thus, the bodies could only be unceremoniously floated in the water, tied to the bow with ropes, drifting along, leaving one to wonder if the small boats were dragging the dead or the dead were leading the boats.
Fortunately, the deceased clearly didn’t mind; for them, everything had already ended. They quietly soaked in the river waters like infants in amniotic fluid, detached from anything in this world.
The soldiers sending off their companions stood silently on the jetty, watching the small boats leave.
As for them, they still had to endure suffering on Magit Island.
However, the sentimentality lasted only for a moment, and then the soldiers began to move the supplies ashore.
A crane extended from the wall, ready to hoist the supplies into the fortress.
The visiting officer noticed that just in the few steps from the jetty to outside the wall, several barrels of spirits had already been unsealed.
The soldiers carrying supplies emitted a strong stench of alcohol that anyone breathing through their nostrils could smell, yet the duty officer seemed oblivious.
The officer slightly raised his eyebrows.
The duty officer sensed the visitor’s displeasure. Perhaps because the person before him had once been an admired role model, he suddenly felt a bit embarrassed.