The ministers, upon hearing this, immediately showered the King, the Queen, and now the Crown Prince with compliments once more.
They all remembered that it was the Crown Prince himself who had proposed this cost-free plan to tackle piracy, and now it indeed began to show initial signs of success.
Joseph, intrigued, took the report from the Marquis of Castries and started to read it, quickly discovering that it was an American named Charles who had obtained intelligence on the pirates from Algiers, enabling the successful ambush.
When he saw Charles mention that his information might have come from a former Tunisian Pasha named Eunice, he couldn’t help but narrow his eyes.
A former “Crown Prince” of Tunisia, still influential there? If this were true, perhaps his North African plan needed some adjustments.
Previously, he had planned to follow historical trajectories, starting with an attack on the pirate strongholds on the northern coast of Algiers, followed by purging pirates across all of Algiers. The other identity of the Barbary pirates was the navy of the North African states, deeply intertwined with their power elites. Eradicating the pirates would, in effect, turn the whole nation inside out.
But now, it seemed Tunisia might provide a better foothold!
After the Cabinet meeting concluded, Joseph immediately sought out the Marquis of Castries and ordered him to send a message to the Combined Fleet, calling for this man named Charles to come to Paris.
The Navy Minister was somewhat surprised but agreed at once.
Afterward, Joseph called for Fouche to expedite the construction of the intelligence network in Algiers and Tunisia.
…
In the central Pacific Ocean, two medium-sized sailing ships emblazoned with “Gemini Trading Company” were seemingly drifting aimlessly on the sea.
The ships had offloaded their cargo in the Far East and had purchased nothing, so they were exceptionally light and thus extremely fast.
After sailing straight west for a week, the ships turned south for more than ten nautical miles before again turning eastward, sails full.
If one examined their sailing records for the past month, it would appear they were loitering in the nearby waters, seemingly in search of something.
Aboard the armed merchant ship “Temper”, Captain Fraute marked a few points on the nautical chart and, frowning, said to his first mate, “If we still can’t find it a hundred nautical miles further south, we’ll have to head to Batavia for supplies, then return to Europe.”
Just then, the excited shout of a lookout came through the speaking tube: “Land! Land ho! 25 nautical miles to the east-southeast!”
Fraute hurriedly examined the chart and confirmed that the lookout’s mentioned position had no known islands, then excitedly grabbed a telescope and rushed to the foredeck.
Indeed, before long, a dark grey island with mottled green patches appeared in his telescope.
His heart surged with excitement—the Crown Prince was right, there really was an island here!
In the following days, Fraute led the crew to find a suitable sheltered harbor and set up an advance base on the island, flying the iris flag representing the King of France.
Five days later, they encountered the first group of the island’s indigenous people. After a difficult session of communicating through gestures, they hired nearly a hundred natives with trinkets like small knives and iron pots, starting to extract the brittle rocks that were abundant on the island.
The captain of the “Harmonium” watched as the crew and natives loaded the rocks into the hold and asked Fraute, “Are you sure these are the stones the Crown Prince was asking for?”
The latter nodded: “This is the only island in these waters; it can’t be wrong.”
“Alright then. But at least we’ve discovered new territory; there should be a good bonus in it, right?”
“I hope so,” Fraute looked towards the distant sea, “but the location of the island was pointed out by the Crown Prince. We just came to confirm it. Oh, he even knew the name of the island, what was it again?”
“Seems like it’s ‘Nauru’.”
“Yes, Nauru. What a strange name.”
As more of the native inhabitants of Nauru rushed over to mine stones, it took just over ten days for them to fill the cargo holds of the two armed merchant ships, each nearly 500 tons displacement.
Fraute left more than a dozen sailors to guard the station and ordered the two ships to set sail back to Europe.
…
The hot month of July arrived.
In a small village in France, 30 miles north of Berry.
Geiszler leaned against the rooftop, taking a wooden plank from his wife standing below and moved laboriously to cover the last hole, measured it, and hammered in the nails with force.
The entire roof was a crisscross of “patches,” and just buying these planks had cost Geiszler a full 1 livre and 7 sous.
Geiszler looked towards the chicken coop not far away, which had collapsed by more than half, which made him involuntarily think back to the terrifying disaster three days ago.
The weather was clear at the time, and he was “attending” to the new water pump with Blanche from the village when he suddenly felt his shoulder being struck violently by something, making him wince in pain. Looking over, he found a large bruise forming on his shoulder.
Believing it was the work of some mischievous village child, he looked around angrily but saw no child. Instead, he heard Blanche scream in agony and saw him collapse to the ground while holding his head.
“What’s wrong with you?” Geiszler rushed to help him up and was shocked to see a gash on his forehead, and beside him, in the dirt, lay a fist-sized “glass ball” with bloodstains on it.
Geiszler picked up the “glass ball,” and immediately a chill shot into his palm. It was then he realized that it was actually a ball of ice!
Soon after, thudding sounds of heavy objects striking the ground began to resound nearby.
The half-raised Blanche suddenly pointed to the sky and shouted in horror, “The sky! Take cover! These things are falling from the sky!”
Luckily, a wooden shed had already been built over the water pump, and the two men hurriedly crawled inside.
Soon, the individual “thuds” around them merged into a continuous barrage, and the wooden shed over their heads made a frightening “bang bang” noise as if a devil outside wanted to smash them to death with a hammer.
The terrifying “hammer” pounded for nearly 40 minutes before gradually stopping. Geiszler saw that even the thick planks on top of the shed had several cracks smashed into them.
He suddenly remembered something, pushed open the shed door, and stood frozen in place.
The once lush wheat fields had turned into flat ground, the nearly mature wheat smashed into mush by countless fist-sized hailstones, mixing with the ice, mud, and water into one mass.
Nearly half of the trees in the distance hung with broken branches and leaves, as if they had been ravaged by a mad giant, and on the ground, one could even see the flattened corpses of wild animals lying in pools of blood.
“No, no, oh God, have mercy…” Geiszler murmured tremblingly, ignoring the ice balls on the ground and stumbling back to his own home.
“Annette! Are you all alright?!”
The next moment, he saw his wife, her face covered in blood, holding the two children and walking out of the house with a look of terror.