Chapter 10 Chapter 10 Eating Turtle Eggs Raw

At first, he couldn't do without the fire for a moment. Fire was too dear to him, such a dear and sweet good, the red and yellow flames lighting up the dark shed, the cheerful crackling of dry logs, and oh, he couldn't live without it.He went into the jungle, carrying back bundles of dead branches, until there was a tall pile in the shed, and he stopped to sit by the fire.Although it was almost noon and the room was already very hot, he kept breaking off dead branches and throwing them into the fire. I will never let you go out, like a soliloquy, and like a promise to the flame-never!He spent most of the day just like that by the fire, keeping the flames burning, occasionally eating some blackberries he had stored, and drinking from the river only when he was thirsty.The afternoon was over and the evening was approaching. His face was smoky and his skin was burnt red. He could finally think about what to do next.

To get through the night, he needs a big pile of firewood.There was no way to find wood when it was dark, so he had to find enough blocks, chop them, and stack them before the sun went down. Brian made sure the fire was sealed with new blocks before going out of the shed to find suitable fuel.Coming out of the campsite and climbing the hill, the storm caused by the landing of the plane-was that really only three or four days ago? —knocked three large white pines to the ground, criss-crossing each other.They were all dead now, dry and covered with weathered twigs—enough for him to burn for days.He chopped, snapped, and carried the pieces back to camp and piled them under the ledge until the firewood was as high as he was and covered six feet of ground.During the round trip, he added small pieces to the fire from time to time to keep the fire burning.On a trip back and forth, he realized another advantage of the fire: when he entered the depths of the leafy forest, as usual, the mosquitoes swarmed; but when he approached the fire, or just approached the smoke Beside the winding sheds, all the annoying little bugs disappeared.

This is a happy discovery.Those buzzing mosquitoes were driving him crazy, and the thought of a way to get rid of them lifted his spirits.On another round trip, he looked back and saw the smoke spiraling upward through the bushes, and it occurred to him that he now had a way of signaling.He could build a fire of burning twigs and maybe get noticed! That meant much, much more wood was needed, and the demand for wood seemed insatiable, so from afternoon until dusk he was moving wood. It was dark and he had to get through the night again.He sat down next to the fire, finished off the remaining blackberries, and had plenty of small pieces of wood at hand to add to at any time.After a day of hard work, his legs have already moved, but they still hurt a little.As he rubbed his legs, he looked at the fire, and for the first time since the crash, he felt like he could take control of the situation and start doing something instead of just sitting around and waiting to die.

When the food is gone, tomorrow, you can find it again; tomorrow, you can build a fire; tomorrow, there will be more wood... It was the fire that dispelled the coldness of the night, making him look forward to tomorrow and fall asleep peacefully. He was in such a deep sleep that he couldn't figure out what had woken him up, but when he opened his eyes it was pitch black.The fire has been exhausted, shouldn't it be extinguished?He stirred it with a stick, and found that the charcoal underneath was still glowing red.So he put sawdust on it, and blew carefully, and the flames quickly burst out again.

Almost wiped out!Looks like he can't sleep too much, he should try intermittent sleep, keep the fire going.He tried desperately to adjust his sleep, but this made him even more sleepy, and just as he was about to fall asleep again, he heard outside noises. The sound was very much like that of a porcupine, something was gliding, dragging along the sand.He hurriedly looked at the door, but it was too dark to see anything. Whatever it was, the rattling stopped quickly.He vaguely heard the sound of jumping into the lake and splashing water from the lakeside.Never mind, he has a fire now and plenty of charcoal, so he won't worry as much as he did last night.

He was so sleepy that he dozed off, so he had to sleep for a while again. When the sky turned white, he woke up again. The first thing he did was to add some wood to the still smoking fire, and then went outside to move around .He stood still, raised his arms above his head, bad, his stomach was curled up with hunger.He looked towards the lake and saw the footprints. It was a strange track: a straight trail in the middle of the sand by the lake, with claw tracks on either side, leading to a small sand mound, and then back to jumping into the lake. He walked over and knelt down to study them, trying to figure out what they were.

The owner of this trail must have had some sort of flat, towable bottom in the middle, and apparently had legs sticking out of the sides to propel the body forward. Going ashore, crawling from the lake to the little sand pile, and back into the lake—some kind of animal—aquatic animal!But it crawled ashore... what to do? This thing has something to do with the sand?play?pile of sand? he laughed.What a townsman!he thinks.You, a city dweller, still use the way of thinking of a city dweller—he puts a mirror in his heart, sees himself in the mirror, and sees his own appearance.City people, huh?Sitting on the beach with the way of thinking of your urbanites and trying to decipher the footprints is simply ignorance and delusion!How can wild animals want to play with sand when they crawl out of the water!No, animals don't do that!How could they waste time doing this?

It must have come up out of the lake for a reason, a brilliant reason, and he had to find the reason, he had to turn his mind around to figure it out, or he couldn't have figured it out. It came ashore for a purpose, and that was the reason—he thought, squatting down, that the reason must have something to do with the sand pile. He gently scraped the sand off the top of the pile with his hands, and, hell, there was only wet sand in there.But there must be a reason!He continued digging cautiously until, at four inches deep, a small chamber suddenly appeared in the damp, shady sand.Wow!There were eggs in it, lots of eggs.The egg was about the size of a ping pong ball and almost round.He couldn't help laughing out loud, oh, he got it.

That guy is a turtle!He had seen a TV show about sea turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs in the sand, and the freshwater lake turtles here must have similar habits.Turtles maybe, he knew they were big.The movement that woke him up at night must have been a soft-shelled turtle crawling ashore.It must have laid these eggs at that time. There is something to eat! What stood before him were not only eggs, not only knowledge, but more important than anything else, it was food! When he saw these eggs, his stomach tightened again, churning and gurgling, as if at the moment His stomach already belonged to someone else or it had opened its eyes and spotted the eggs and immediately urges to eat.Hell, hunger is always there, it's always dormant in him, it can't attack when there is nothing to eat, and now it finally sees these eggs and cries and screams to eat.Oh, his whole body was hungry for food so intensely that his breathing quickened with excitement.

He reached into the hole and took out the eggs one by one.Counted, a total of seventeen.These eggs are all white and round like balls; their shells are like leather, which will only dent but not break when squeezed by external force. He put them in a pyramid on the sand—for some reason, he felt richer than he had ever been before.Suddenly, he realized that he didn't know how to eat these eggs. Yes, he has a fire, but he can't cook them, no container?It never occurred to him to eat raw eggs.He had an uncle named Carter, who was Papa's brother, and he always beat eggs into milk and drank it in the morning.Brian had seen it once, and only once.When he saw the sticky egg white slide into his uncle's mouth along the side of the cup and flow down his throat, Brian was so sick that he almost spit out the contents of his stomach.

calm down!Calm down, he thought.With his stomach nearly attached to his spine, he became less and less fussy about his food.I remember that some aborigines in the world can eat locusts and ants, and they can eat insects. Of course, he can also eat raw eggs. He picked up an egg and tried to crack the shell, only to find that the shell was so tough.At last he sharpened a small stick with the hand-axe, poked a hole in the shell, and, using his fingers, enlarged the hole, and looked in.Nothing, it's just an egg!There was thick egg yolk in it, but not as much egg white as he thought. It's just an egg. But it is food! It's just a must-eat egg. Although it is raw! He looked at the lake, put the egg to his mouth, closed his eyes, sucked and squeezed it, and swallowed it as fast as he could. "vomit……" The taste is too greasy, slippery and greasy, but it is an egg after all!His throat wanted to spit it all at once, and his whole body twitched and quivered, but his stomach took it, left it, and wanted more. The second one is much easier, and the third one has no difficulty at all - it slides directly into the stomach.He ate six eggs in a row and thought he could eat them all without feeling full.However, a voice in his heart told him: Stop, leave the others! Brian couldn't believe the hunger at the moment, fully awakened by the egg, which shivered and tore at him.After the sixth egg was eaten, he still didn't feel satisfied, so he simply peeled off the shell and licked the inside clean.Then he went back and cracked the shells of the other five eggs, and licked them clean.He also hesitated to eat the eggshells.Well, it must have nutritional value too!He tried it, but found that the shell was extremely tough, hard to chew like leather, and he couldn't swallow it at all. He stood up, away from the eggs, for a long time—really standing up this time, with his back turned so he couldn't see them.Otherwise, he couldn't help but eat a few more. He would store the eggs in the shed and eat only one a day.He defeated the renewed hunger, brought it under control.He needs to put them away now, save them, and eat sparingly, only one piece a day.Then he realized at once that when he thought that, he hadn't thought they might come—the searchers.Of course, they would come before he ate them all at the rate of one a day. It was not good that he should forget them.He had to think about them all the time, because if they were forgotten, if they were no longer thought of, then maybe they would forget him. Also, he had to keep hoping. Always have hope.