The End of Midsummer
The End of Midsummer
The saltpeter bought from Margaret, except for producing gunpowder, was all used to lower the room temperature. Now almost every room was displayed with a bucket filled with saltpeter and also a kettle. Then he could sit in a cooler room and enjoy iced water to quench the thirst. In this case, he would not be sweating profusely the moment he came into the office.
Except Anna, the other witches were told to stop working other than the daily practice and learning. They would basically gather in the hall on the first floor to chit-chat or play Gwent, looking extremely cheerful. As for Anna... it was not that Roland did not want her to rest, but she was not afraid of the heat. She could hold the red-hot ingots of high-temperature directly in her hands, so the scorching hot summer was nothing to her. Even if she was busy working by the steel smelting stove the entire afternoon, she would not sweat more.
In order to reward the hard work of Anna, recently Roland had deliberately created some cold desserts to reward her, such as the classic delicious ice-cream in modern time. It was made by mixing the egg yolk, cream, milk, and sugar evenly and chilled with the saltpeter. Anna was very fond of this waxy, soft, and sweet snack. Every little bite of the ice-cream would make her lake-blue eyes bent into a slit, making him feel extremely pleased.
In addition, reading the monthly summary sent by the City Hall was also a great pleasure to Roland.
The population of Border Town had doubled again so far, which was close to 18,000 people. With a number of serfs turned over by Longsong Stronghold every month, it was not a problem to break the record of 20,000 next year. If the number of villages and towns within the domain were excluded, this scale was comparable to the big cities such as Redwater City, Valencia, and the king's city.
It was a pity that the quality of population did not improve with the quantity. At present, there was still only over 1,000 natives accepting the education, and they may take about a year to graduate. Although the private academy Karl opened previously had created a number of talents who graduated ahead, the less than 100 people were relatively unworthy to mention compared to the total population.
[Perhaps I should go ahead to educate the refugees from the Eastern Region, rather than doing it after building enough dormitory area,] Roland thought, [After all, early education is only good for them.]
The factories in the town were developing very well.
After half a year of construction, the industrial park now had three factories running. They were two steam engine production plants and a bullet processing plant. The number of workers in No.1 factory had increased from the initial dozen of blacksmiths to more than 100 people now. The subsequent participators were mainly the natives. This was what he wanted to see, a number of apprentices growing into craftsmen and promoting the next batch of apprentices.
The workers of No. 2 Factory belonged to the Crescent-Moon-Bay Caravan, who had generally mastered the usage of various machine tools within a month. Although the yield was relatively poor, the first-month performance of these craftsmen was apparently better than the blacksmiths from No.1 Factory. However, the steam engines they produced were owned by Roland before their contract expired. Now, both factories could produce almost 8 to 10 steam engines each month, which was the main income source of Border Town.
As for the bullets factory, the bullets produced would be directly passed to the First Army. Sentries were set at every entrance, and the factory was also surrounded by the patrols, and even the production was in-charged by the soldiers. After a week of the trial run, it had begun to mass produce the new generation of fixed bullets.
The pipeline Roland designed could not achieve full mechanical production. It did not matter if it was a primer, gunpowder or warhead, it needed to manually file the compaction. The tools were mainly two mechanical punching machine—one of it could press the copper Anna cut into the shell shape, while the other was used for stamping primer cup.
The soldiers needed to place the mercury fulminate evenly between two pieces of paper, stuck them up tightly, and then put them into the cup before inserting the cup into an annular groove at the bottom of a primer shell. As for loading black gunpowder and compacting the warheads, it was exactly the same as the previous reloading exercise.
The number of people in the plants was not much. There were only around 40 people and it could produce almost 500 bullets every day. Roland intended to turn these 40 people into full-time processing personnel in order to maintain the normal operation of the bullets factory.
Then Roland intended to build the soap plant and perfume plant. The former was a very important part of the military industry, while the latter might be able to open up new business channels for the town. As for the bicycle plant, it could be delayed a little, as long as it was put into production before the completion of the Kingdom Main Street.
"Your Highness," Nightingale said after she opened the door, "Maggie and Lightning are here."
Both of them drilled in beside Nightingale. They ran to the table and stuck their heads out. "Are you looking for us?"
"It'll be the last month of summer since tomorrow." Roland pulled out the reply letter he had written from the drawer and handed it to Maggie. "Remember to help me pass this to Tilly when you returned to the Fjords."
"Ah..." She stunned for a moment and blinked a few times before she took the envelope. She carefully stuffed it into the bag and said, "No problem, coo!"
Looking at Maggie's sudden enlightened look, Roland guessed she probably did not remember that she had to go back to report monthly. Roland suppressed himself from smiling. [It seems that the influence of the town is really big.]
"I've forgotten that tomorrow is the beginning of a new month," Lightning held her forehead and said, "doesn't that mean we won't meet for a while again?"
"The last time I was delayed due to Lady Tilly's sweeping plan. I'll come back as soon as possible this time." Maggie shook her white hair which was almost dragging on the ground. "Wait for me to explore that eagle nest... Coo!"
"I know," the little girl pouted and said, "it's a deal."
"You also have a task." Roland spread out a map of the southern area of the town. "This is the map you drew. Do you remember the location of a shallow beach in the direction of the mountain closed to the sea?"
"I do." Lightning pointed on the map. "It was around here."
"Well, you'll take Maggie for a fly later. After that, set up two flags in the junction of the shallow beach and the mountains, and marked them on the map." He looked at Maggie after finishing his order and said, "If Tilly agreed to send the witches, you'll take the sailing ship to the location of the shallow beach, and I'll meet you at the top of the mountain."
"Send the witches?" Lightning asked curiously, "are any new sisters coming to Border Town?"
"I don't know yet." Roland smiled. "It depends on Tilly 's answer... But I think she'll agree."