Starting from Robinson Crusoe-Chapter 58 - 21: The Storm Approaches

Chapter 58: Chapter 21: The Storm Approaches
The river approaching night was still gentle and soft.
Moonlight twirled in the swirling eddies, a cool breeze brushed over the water, causing the slender wild grass to sway.
A few glowing insects fluttered back and forth like fallen stars, while silver-scaled fish occasionally leaped out, snapping at the insects resting on the grass tips.
Frogs squatting among the tangled grass roots made restless sounds, rising and falling, merging into a continuous symphony.
The oil lamp cast a warm yellowish hue on the flowing water, as Chen Zhou removed his shoes, stepping barefoot into the riverbed.
In one hand he held the lamp, while the other carried a wooden bucket, containing a Long Saber for digging loaches and a wooden wine cup for catching tadpoles.
He faintly remembered that in childhood, searching for loaches was done by probing the clay at the bottom of slow-moving waters. Chen Zhou walked up along the riverbank for dozens of meters, looking for a suitable spot.
But the riverbed narrowed and constricted the farther upstream he went, and the water became deeper and swifter.
After entering the woods, the river meandered around a cow-hearted shaped boulder, forming a small lake.
Trees on both sides blocked the moonlight, making the already hard-to-see water surface appear even more deep and unpredictable.
"Ha, a fisherman’s Heaven?"
Chen Zhou joked, snapping a branch to poke at the lake water.
The branch, over a meter long, seemed to extend into some bottomless abyss, silently devoured by the pitch-black little lake.
Upon seeing the lake so deep, Chen Zhou dared not advance further, returning to shallow waters to scoop the riverbed’s silt for loaches.
After digging out four or five chunks of mud and clearing them away, he found only curled-up small shrimps, fish, or clams within, with no sign of loaches whatsoever.
Not to mention live loaches, not even a trace of the mucus coating their bodies could be found.
Loaches are highly adaptable, with decent reproductive abilities. As long as there’s no pollution in the water, you should see them.
Not finding any here implies that this river, or even the whole island, doesn’t support loach propagation.
Having no choice, Chen Zhou cleaned off the Long Saber and returned downstream, hoping to catch some tadpoles.
In his hometown, the four seasons were distinct.
Frogs by the riverside typically awoke in April and May, mated in June, July, and August, and by September most of the young frogs had matured. After the weather turned cooler, tadpoles were rarely seen.
As for the island’s climate, it divided into dry and rainy seasons, with little temperature change.
Even though it was already October, only after rains did one feel a slight chill, otherwise, it didn’t feel cold.
Thanks to this climate, frogs on the island hadn’t gone extinct, making tadpoles a common sight. When Chen Zhou rafted goods around, he often saw tadpole corpses in tide-exposed Rock Beach water holes.
Tadpoles were present even at the fresh and saltwater junction, so their numbers were even greater in the river channels.
Using the large wooden wine cup, Chen Zhou scooped bit by bit, soon catching more than twenty tadpoles.
Some of them had already taken on the semblance of frogs, with discernible hind legs if examined closely, while others seemed to have just recently hatched, resembling small commas.
Uncertain about which type of tadpole would be effective for feeding the cat, Chen Zhou brought them all back to the camp, killed them with a knife’s tip, and stuffed them into the little tabby cat’s mouth.
Just over an hour had passed, and the little tabby cat’s condition had worsened.
After eating the tadpoles, it retched dryly in the box, vomiting some yellowish mucus, before weakly collapsing again.
Chen Zhou touched its back, feeling its body temperature drop slightly again, then moved the wooden box near the fire to warm it up.
He already sensed in his heart that this little cat was unlikely to survive.
But often, all he could do was seek peace with his conscience, knowing he’d at least tried to save it.
The night passed without words.
The next morning, Chen Zhou found the little tabby cat’s rigid body in the box.
Its eyes were wide open, pupils scattered like a dim gray flower.
The little gray cat’s condition, on the other hand, had improved slightly; its eyes still secreted a bit, but its appetite increased, often scratching the inside of the wooden box, displaying a lively spirit.
He took the tabby cat’s body into the woods for burial. Looking at the mound of new earth covering the grave, Chen Zhou couldn’t help but sigh.
He hadn’t spent much time with the little cat and didn’t feel deeply about its death.
It just struck a chord, reminding him of the several cats he’d raised in childhood, especially one that stayed with him for four years.
That was a large, plump yellow cat, gentle to people and hygienic, never urinating indoors or stealing food, adept at catching mice.
The household’s kittens all followed it, learning hunting skills.
It understood to respect the elderly and care for the young, often bringing the caught birds or mice for the younger cats to savor; over four years, it raised more than a dozen good hunters.
On a stormy, snowy night, it returned home with its skin torn across its entire head, the blood at its mouth frozen into ice.
Chen Zhou hurriedly called his grandparents to apply medicine, but to no avail. Two days later, that big yellow cat lay beside the warehouse’s corn pile, dying alone.
In retrospect, from birth to death, the big yellow cat always fulfilled its duty: guarding grain, deterring mice.
Chen Zhou could no longer picture its appearance, vaguely feeling its fur color resembled the golden warmth of autumn corn drying in the sun.
The big yellow cat left the deepest impression on him. Since its death, every time he saw a cat’s body, Chen Zhou would think of it.
Sprinkling some leaves over the grave mound, he wasn’t immersed in memories for long before starting his new day’s work.
Unknowingly, it was already October 17th, with only eight days left before the storm arrived.
The long-haul transportation was drawing to a close, but for life on this deserted island, this was just a minuscule beginning.