```
White waves lashed against the rocks.
Ships were thick on the water, stretching as far as the eye could see.
In the half-open dockyard, chains, and pulleys screeched dissonantly. The dock gates gaped like a giant maw as sailors emerged en masse, shouldering barrels and crates to be loaded onto the large ship like a dragon. The boxes contained supplies of pitch, tar, rosin, and even cables, anchor chains, winches, various bolts of materials, and iron nails—essentially, anything of value that could be removed and taken from the dockyard were almost completely stripped away.
There were also some scrapped cargo ships beached and abandoned, of various designs, most plundered by the Red Flag Gang, now unusable. Artisans swarmed like busy ants over the shipframes and keel blocks, stripping off any usable timber from the ships' structures.
"Old Xu, what flag are you sailing under now?"
