Chapter Twenty-Nine: Fingers
They gave me the answer in just two or three hours.
There was a slight breeze on the sea, which tickled me, and the chirping of a seagull in the distant sky made me stand up straight from the stern of the boat, and the tiger girl looked around at the bow of the boat, and apparently she also heard the sound of the gull.
With seagulls there is land, this is the obvious truth of the sea, now I am excited and nervous in my heart, I don't know how they do it, in the sea is like a chart to find land; And the nervous is, what will the next surface of the earth be like for me to set foot on? Is it once again overgrown with savages, or is it full of thorns?
The tiger girl held a large handful of jerky that I gave her, and from time to time fed a few into the mouth of the ball, and only ate one of them to satisfy her hunger, which seemed to be extremely economical, and I told her that there were many of them, and she seemed to understand what I was talking about, and shook her head respectfully, and carefully covered the jar of jerky and put it back in the cabin.
An hour later, a small island appeared less than a mile away, surrounded by a fog, which is why I didn't notice it until a nautical mile, it was so thick that it was easy to mix it with the sky.
The island is very high, with the appearance of a mountain, the tiger girl found it earlier, there was a sound of beating and scolding in the cabin, I looked over, only to see the tiger girl in the cabin with an angry expression and scolded Dandan, but Dandan's face was frustrated and let her reprimand bow her head and say nothing.
I jumped out of the cabin, and when she saw me coming down, she hurriedly lowered her head, and was about to kneel again, and I took her by the arm, and pointed to the island not far away.
But who knew that she actually started to rush again, and said something to Dan Dan in a scolding tone, with a serious face, her hands still pointed to the food reserves in the cabin from time to time, and she couldn't understand their expression, so she simply turned a deaf ear, this time she only said a few words and then didn't make a sound, after a moment of silence, she knelt on the ground, begging me to take out the water storage jar in the cabin and give it to her, and when she saw the result of her caution, she shook the jar as if she was observing the reserves, and actually opened the seal and handed it to me, making a gesture for me to drink, I took a few sips out of nowhere, and she took a big sip before handing Dan Dan and telling him something.
I don't feel comfortable with the water, but the island is right in front of me, and although I don't know if there is any fresh water on it, there are always puddles and puddles, so the worries are not so heavy.
But the closer I got to the island, the more entangled my heart became, the whole picture of it had been seen by me clearly, where was the island, it was like a castle in the sea, the cliffs around it towered perpendicular to the sea, the island was not big, at a glance, there was no sign of a beach at all, the most important thing, the closer you got to it, you would feel the tide surging, there was even thunder in the sky, the sky was also cloudy, but the dark clouds did not drift away, but they were so entrenched overhead.
I was worried that the tide would push the boat against this hard rock wall, so I commanded Dandan's oars to slow down the boat, and Huya always stood at the bow of the boat with a water tank in her hand and looked at the cliffs around her, without saying a word, until she walked around the island to a lower cliff mouth on the island, and then clenched her fists and motioned for us to slowly lean over.
Looking up, the cliff in front of me is about three meters high from the sea, although it is much shorter than other places, but it is by no means a place that ordinary people can climb, the surface of the rock wall is smooth as if it can reflect its own shadow, and there is not even a stone that can be grasped, the tiger girl frowned, whispering something to the ball, and her expression was unusually solemn.
There is a purple-green seaweed all over the sea under the boat, and strangely, I have never seen this kind of algae like a conifer, and most of the seaweed in the East China Sea is the kind of wide algae leaves, but these are different, each of which floats around with the sea like a tentacle, and the clusters are not visible at a glance, and the whole coast is reflected in purple.
I wanted to reach out and take a handful and put it in the palm of my hand, but I was stopped by the balls and signaled that it was dangerous, so I had to give up, maybe this thing was poisonous, and it was right to listen to the natives in such a place, I thought so in my heart.
In the few minutes when I looked down and pondered the seaweed, I looked up to find that the tiger girl had actually taken off her clothes, she wrapped the jug in the clothes she had taken off, and tied her sleeves to her body, and before I could speak, she stepped on the bow of the boat and climbed the mirror-like cliff.
Only then did I realize that Huya's fingers seemed to be very special, the fingers of her right hand were different from ordinary people, and two of them were surprisingly long, and even gave me the feeling that each of the two fingers had four fingers.
She tried her best to find the gap in the cliff wall, even if the gap was small, she would use those two special fingers to slam into it, and then buckle it, completely putting the weight of her whole body on the fingers of both hands, and just climbed up little by little, not so much climbing, but creating a ladder like climbing to the sky.
I tried to call her down several times to see her struggling and the pained expression she showed from time to time, but in the end she rushed up and disappeared into the edge of the cliff, and at that moment, a feeling of worry, anxiety, and exhaustion came over me, as if my family was taking an adventure and I couldn't do anything about it. I know that I am a person who can easily form friendships with people, which is a merit of Chinese like you and me, although these two natives may not like to be with each other as much as I do.
It wasn't until her figure disappeared completely that I sat back on the board and looked at the cliff in a daze.
I understood that she was going to replenish fresh water, and I could tell from her expression that she didn't plan to take me or Dandan, which meant that this cliff should be dangerous, maybe I was a good helper, but for me, this cliff was an impossible task, let alone me, and no one else would ever climb up like her.
Since she knew the danger on the cliff, that is to say, the landing point that Huya and Dan had planned in the first place should not be here, but it had come here by accident, so I seemed to understand why Huya had just scolded Dan Dan in such a tone, although I didn't understand it, but it sounded extremely harsh.
Since having them, even though it was only one night and one morning, I found that I had saved a lot of effort, and even felt like I was on vacation, I didn't have to worry about anything, and they took care of everything, which made me very happy, and if they could find the land they really wanted to go, I would definitely think of them as my best friends.
Time passed minute by minute, Dandan and I never saw the figure of the tiger girl on the cliff mouth again, which made Dandan extremely anxious, in fact, my heart became more and more uneasy, this time is too long, so long that it is panicking.
At that moment, a strange smell of pollen rushed into my nose, it was so strange that I swore I had never smelled it before, it was intoxicating, and in a trance I saw through the slit of my eyes that was about to close, and the balls seemed to be dancing on the side of the ship in confusion, with a grim smile on their faces.