"Hey-ho!"
Autumn skies were high, the flatlands vast. Over a thousand heads bobbed as they shouted in rhythm, dragging ships that sailed across the land. With the laborers' arduous steps, seven longships slowly moved forward over the level plain. As the longships were hauled along, thick, rough logs rolled beneath them. At both ends of each ship, weary, busy laborers kept carrying the round logs left behind at the stern back around to the bow.
"This was His Majesty's idea. He said wood rolling underneath would save effort."
Puapu wore leather armor and led over a hundred Purepecha Warriors, supervising more than a thousand laboring men. Tikalo stood beside him, looking at the tow-ropes harnessed around the laborers, then at the logs rolling beneath the longships, as if understanding dawned on him.
"Praise the Main God! His Majesty truly received divine inspiration!"
"Praise the Main God! Praise His Majesty!"
Puapu lowered his head and prayed. Then his gaze turned stern, sweeping over the crowd straining at the ropes, before he smiled and spoke to the Maya merchant.
"His Majesty is merciful and told us not to rush. He received divine inspiration, cherishes these captives, and invented such a fine labor-saving method! But in truth, each longship isn't all that heavy! If we set several dozen beams under the bottom of each ship and had four hundred laborers carry it up from the river without allowing them to rest halfway, it would take only three days to cover these thirty li! At most, after the work was done, a few hundred laborers would simply die of exhaustion."
The kingdom's newest Crocodile God Galley could already reach twenty-five meters in length and more than six meters in width, with a length-to-width ratio of about four to one and a draft just over