The Austrian Imperial Navy had not underestimated the enemy. After receiving the intelligence, they had drawn up a meticulous plan.
Major Giovanni had deliberately led the Marine Corps soldiers on a wide detour, avoiding areas that might be pirate hideouts or patrolled by sentries, and choosing an apparently deserted stretch of shore.
Unexpectedly, they ran into two fellows wandering around. It was a case of letting one slip through despite a thousand precautions.
Giovanni's first thought was to capture them for questioning, but the moment he got a good look at their clothes, he abandoned the idea.
The two men were wearing wool shirts. Wool shirts weren't just for winter; lightweight ones could be worn in summer and even helped regulate body temperature, keeping you from catching cold when the temperature dropped at night. They were just the thing for people who spent their lives at sea.
But in the nineteenth century, wool shirts didn't come cheap. An ordinary sailor would have to save up for at least half a year to buy one.
The price wasn't quite enough to put them beyond an ordinary person's reach, but wool shirts were consumables. For sailors who worked aboard ships, they were practically out of the question as such impractical finery.
Could the two simply be ordinary pirates wearing loot they'd seized from a merchant ship?
That was highly unlikely. Most wool shirts in this era were handmade to measure, and the only factory in the world capable of mechanically mass-producing ready-made wool garments was in Vienna.
Besides, the two men had an air about them that set them far apart from ordinary sailors. Most common people in this era couldn't even read, and their true identities could be exposed without their realizing it.
There was no doubt these two were officers