open sea

Chapter 612 Food
A new day in Majiagang begins with waking up from the cold.

On the sixth day of November, at dawn.

Just after dawn, Ma Gui walked out of the house wrapped in a thick white bear fur coat, held the oil lamp and yawned with red eyes, exhaling the first puff of white gas in the air.

In the past, he thought that life, old age, sickness and death were the only things that could not be changed by status and wealth. North America proved that there was still cold and hunger, no matter how rich or rich people wore fur robes, no matter whether they were bannermen or generals.

My stomach growls when I am not full, and I wake up several times when I fall asleep.

He counted the number of times he woke up from the cold curled up last night, and finally gave up the count... It seemed that he was always restless in his conscious or unconscious sleep, which made him confirm that it seemed to be the same as the previous night's sleep, and he was always in a half-dream and half-awake state.

Few people in the expeditionary army still wear breastplates. They generally only wear a chain mail under a fur coat, because wearing too thick makes it difficult to move, and the body can no longer bear the heavy armor.

The school field was completely white, and the snow that had fallen for two days seemed to have lightened. Ma Gui took a long knife from the weapon rack outside the house, plunged the handle of the knife into the snow and poked out the steps. Walking in the snow that is more than a foot deep, leaving a long string of footprints, leading directly to the skinned drum hanging in the center of the school field.

The drum is an old drum, but the skin on it is the third new one after landing in North America. The sound is not as deep as the ones made in the middle school in the past, but it is barely usable.

After beating the three-way drum, the flag soldiers came out of the houses slowly and slowly, and they picked up tools to shovel snow without the order of the general. This is what they must do every day, in order to prevent the school grounds and streets from freezing , They shoveled all morning yesterday, and only started doing logging and transporting work at noon. When they came back in the evening, Majiagang was covered with a thick layer of snow, and they were busy all night.

After enjoying a very poor quality of sleep, I got up in the morning and had to clear the snow-this is actually a good situation, this time the snow was not too heavy, last month I went out one morning, and it fell half a person's height at night In the snow, many Bannermen were trapped in the log cabin, and finally climbed out of the chimney of the fireplace, after which they changed the door to open inward.

"When Beiyang sends people back, I will demolish all the houses. Now it is too inconvenient for two or three people to live in one house. It is still like in Shuihu Peak, where a dozen people live in a big house, and a corridor is built outside the door of each house. , and the door opens inward, there must be a fireplace and a flue."

"The houses can be dispersed a bit, and a few places should be built in fishing grounds, farms, forest farms, quarries, pastures, ports, mud yards, and brick-burning factories, and several roads should be planned to reduce the useless labor of the flag army."

Ma Gui did not participate in the snow sweeping, but told his two clerks that he did not always show his privileges in this way. Most of the time, he would work with the Banner Army, because there was nothing more meaningful than labor. , something that warms up the body.

As the saying goes, martial arts practitioners should practice in summer and winter in winter, but Zhili's solar terms don't work here. Although Ma Gui has only a little understanding of astronomical phenomena, it is obvious that winter will begin in October, and winter will only come out in April. , Maybe I have to practice eighteen or nineteen in winter.

In fact, this has already made the Banner Army feel very happy. At least the winter here is only six months, but Shuihufeng has nine months of winter.

The military craftsman of the same text re-planned the new Majia Port. Magui went to visit the two bannermen who had stolen the bison and got sick. After the huge bison was cut and weighed, it weighed 970 jin. The color of the meat is very beautiful. Although Ma Gui ordered the Banner Army not to eat it and let the domesticated white bears eat it, there are still a few Banner soldiers who compete with the big white bear for food, and even fewer people have stomach problems.

I don’t know how to hunt for my master, and I would bite people without a bridle, and it’s uncomfortable to ride, and I have to think about getting food for it all day—Magui doesn’t know whether he is taming the big pyrenes or the big pyrenes tame him.

However, Ma Gui did not punish them. For the Banner Army who had no stable food source during the long-term migration, it was very difficult to accept the waste of good food, let alone them. Ma Gui himself has made a lot of determination to give up those meats in the balance between satiety and safety.

So when Ma Gui went to visit the patient, he sat for a long while without opening his mouth, just listening to the patient admitting his mistakes again and again, hoping that the Lord would not punish them for it.

After they finished speaking, Ma Zongbing, who was sitting upright, licked his lips and asked, "Is it delicious?"

Sick Banner Army: "Huh?"

"Punishment still needs to be punished, but I always wanted to ask, is the bison meat delicious?" Ma Gui was very serious, with a strong yearning for meat and an inquiring spirit on his face: "The meat is very red and looks lean. It’s soft and tender to the touch, how do you eat it, did you steal the oil and fry it, or bake it on a slate in the fireplace, could it be boiled in clear water, would it be too bland without spices?”

"No, no, general! Just add some salt and throw two twigs into the pot, it will be delicious! It's much better than white bear meat!"

The sick Banner Army who had diarrhea, his face turned pale, and was wrapped in a coat, he seemed to be cured when he mentioned this, and said happily, "It would be better if there was a little oil, general, we should grow some rapeseed on the farm. There is too little fat, although... please punish the general!"

"Oh! Rapeseed, yes, we need a big saw, hammer, rapeseed, no, the salmon in the sea are very fat!"

Ma Gui ignored half of Banner's words and suddenly prostrated himself on the couch, and it took him a long time to realize: "You guys are still eating white bear meat!"

But why does this tone sound full of envy?

He frowned and said: "Listen, as a punishment, when you two recover from illness, go fishing with the fishermen. We will eat the lean fish, and you two will find a way to turn it into fish oil." Taking a deep breath through his nose, some unfulfilled expressions appeared on his face, and said: "When the snowstorm is over and the hunters bring back the buffalo, you must let all the brothers eat fried beef with fish!"

When the two patients heard this, what kind of punishment is this? Didn't the mother eat fish and meat again?

Hastily fell down again and shouted thanks.

Ma Gui's burly figure stood up, and he could tell what they were thinking just by looking at the expressions of the two of them. He waved his hand lightly, and then he sighed heavily, and sighed with emotion: "We are all hungry, not just you, Everyone suffers from cold and hunger, and Ma knows what it feels like to be hungry, so why would you not be allowed to eat, there are only thousands of soldiers, and you are the only ones, no one can die, no matter it is greed or military law .”

"Bringing the best armor and weapons, training the best soldiers, driving the best warships and the best artillery, no one would have expected such an encounter."

"The imperial court and Ma both think this expedition...is too simple!"

Ma Gui walked out of the patient's room and went back to his room to write a book. In fact, it was just a small book with dozens of sheets of paper, which roughly introduced the climate, tribes, and topography of the areas they passed through. Fishing grounds, rocks, edible fruits, and most importantly, there are all kinds of equipment used and lacked by the expeditionary army and various difficulties encountered.

As well as Ma Gui's admission of the failure of the Eastern Expedition, in the book, he strongly suggested to Chen Mu and the court to re-establish the second expeditionary force, with dozens or even hundreds of small fleets of hundreds of households, carrying soldiers All kinds of daily necessities abroad, landed on the land where spring wheat can be planted along the southern coast of the Heishui Mohe Islands, built small towns, and connected them by boat to move eastward together.

On the cover of this thin book bound together with bent iron nails, there are a few big characters written by Magui with charcoal pen - "Zhan Thorn Record"

"ferry!"

The wooden door was suddenly pushed open, and the soldier propped his knees and shouted into the room together with the cold wind. His arm pointed to the port behind him, but he opened his mouth but couldn't speak. He took several deep breaths and swallowed deeply to moisten his throat. , and then simply bowed down and said: "General, the fleet is coming!"

　Good morning!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)