Chapter 42: The Crisis Comes
With these two knives, it is much more convenient to cut fish, seaweed and seafood, and I also use the high temperature of the fire to melt the foam and solidify it again, but there are many bubbles in the solidified foam to reduce its hardness, and it is easy to break and cannot be used as a knife at all.
It seems that only the foam dissolved in lemonade can reach the hardness of making a knife, but my lemons are almost all used up and there is not much foam left, but now two foam knives are enough.
On the desert island, I still live a precarious life every day, but my ingenuity has allowed me to move from the life of a primitive and wild society to the life of a simple and civilized society.
I have a hut to shelter from the wind and rain, a fire to heat and light, various tools for life, and I also domesticated a coconut crab "Sunday", and I built a toilet under a coconut tree 30 meters away from Xiaowu.
In this way, my life was more civilized, and I even started a farming life, although there was nothing to cultivate on the island, but I could plan the water and soil of the island.
The island has a tropical climate and plenty of rain, but the soil on the island is mostly sandy and has very low viscosity, which quickly seeps into the ground when it rains, and the surface soil erosion is also serious.
So the vegetation on the island is not very lush, so I decided to artificially improve the soil erosion on the island.
In this way, I became a reclaimer, a farmer, using almost all the materials I could use as tools, plowing the land, and even using my hands.
The most important thing is to cultivate coconut seedlings for transplanting, that is, bury the whole coconut in the sandy soil and attach some weeds to keep it water, and the coconut seedlings can be transplanted in a month or two.
I don't know how long it has been, but I have collected the rest of the coconuts I have collected during this time, except for the ones I ate on Sunday, and the rest of them have been used to cultivate coconut seedlings, and before I know it, the newly transplanted coconut seedlings are two or three meters tall.
During the cultivation of coconut seedlings, I used up some fresh water reserves, and I thought that the fresh water consumed by the rain would soon be replenished, but this time I made a mistake.
Although I didn't know the specific concept of time when I came to the island, I could grasp the general change of the seasons, and the four seasons here are not very distinct, but the dry season and the rainy season can still be distinguished.
The temperature is high and rainy in the rainy season, and the temperature is low and rainy in the dry season.
I should have experienced two or three such exchanges between the dry season and the rainy season on the island, and the saddest thing was that in the dry season, because there was little rainfall, there was less fresh water supply, and the slightest mistake would lead to death from thirst.
Every time the dry season comes, the wind direction is changed first, and then slowly enter the dry season, and the dry season sometimes rains but only very little, but this time the dry season is much more serious than each time.
It has not rained for two or three months, and my fresh water reserve is decreasing little by little, and it seems that it will not rain for a short time, and I faintly feel that the crisis is coming.
There was no rain for another month or so, and my fresh water reserves were running out, and my heart began to panic, and it was the first time that I had drifted to this small island.
However, I was still calm and clear-headed, and I began to control my water intake, minimize my activities, and began to collect coconuts around to stock up on some food.
So I held on for another month and still not a drop of rain, and there was no dew to collect.
I only drink 500---700 ml of water a day, so I can't last more than a week, and I only have five or six coconuts, and now I have one day to climb up the tall coconut trees to pick coconuts, which is very dangerous and very hard work, but now there is no other way but to take risks.
I tied a rope around my waist with thin bamboo silk and fastened it to the coconut tree, which was the rope and harness that sustained my life, and I slowly climbed up the coconut tree more than ten meters high.
It's really quite strenuous, and to make matters worse, I'm a little afraid of heights, and I am trembling every time I go up a tree, but I can't help but have no other choice if I want to live.
Picking coconut is not only a laborious and dangerous job but also a technical job, because there are no props I can only twist down one by one, very hard, what is more annoying is that the coconut tree belongs to the palm but there are no branches, even if you climb to the top of the tree there is no supporting branch, it is difficult to open it when you dry it back, all picking coconut is a very hard and dangerous job.
In order to pick coconuts more efficiently, I sharpen the stone axe and try to pick as many coconuts as I can every time I climb the coconut tree.
I don't know why the coconut production on the island has decreased a lot during this time, maybe it is because of the dry weather, I searched for a long time to find a coconut tree full of coconuts.
I climbed up with great difficulty to adjust the angle of the seat belt, and then used the stone axe to cut off the root of the coconut stalk, I want to cut off all the coconuts on this coconut tree, thirty coconuts should be able to let me use it for more than ten days, so that I don't have to work hard to climb the tree every day, after all, this work is dangerous and hard.
I was really exhausted after cutting all the coconuts with great difficulty, my limbs were weak, and I had no strength at all, so I had to rest for a while to take a breath and recover my strength before I could go down.
I threw down the stone axe and held the safety rope in both hands, ready to rest for a while, when I suddenly noticed a large fishing boat on the sea in the distance.
My first thought was to ask for help from the boat, I shouted and waved to the fishing boat at the same time, but I immediately understood how stupid my actions were, the fishing boat was at least a few kilometers away from me and would not find out about my distress at all, I had to light the fire on the beach to the fishing boat to be able to find my distress.
I don't care about being tired or not getting tired to get off the tree quickly, this is my only chance to be rescued, but it's easy to go up the tree and difficult to get off the tree, the safety belt is to keep me safe, but now it greatly affects the speed of my down the tree, and I untied the safety rope without thinking about it.
Untied the safety rope, I went down the tree at a fast speed, but without the protection of the safety rope, it also increased the danger, sure enough, because I cut the coconut when the physical strength was excessive, now the limbs are weak, and in order to ask the fishing boat for help, I fell too fast, when I fell halfway, the physical strength was not supported, the feet slipped, and the hands did not grasp the tree trunk, unfortunately I fell from five or six meters above the ground.
At that moment, I shouted "It's over" in my heart, and then I fell heavily on the beach, and my eyes were black and unconscious.