As soon as Ye Yaodong returned home, he heard his mother chasing people away and the noise of children making noises.
He couldn't help but frowned, "What are you arguing about! Your Third Aunt and sister still need to rest, if you want to argue, get out of here."
The group of children had never seen him with such a serious face, and they were really scared. Suddenly, none of them dared to say a word, and even loosened their hands that were holding Ye's mother's arms and thighs.
"You are all itchy, but you are still asking for more. I told you to go home and do your homework, but you refused to do it. Do you know what time it is? You still want to listen and don't even want to read. Where is the whip?"
Mother Ye was so angry that she put her hands on her hips, pointed her index finger at them and cursed them one by one. She was just restrained by them together and couldn't even use the whip.
When they heard that they were going to use whips again, they immediately scattered like birds and beasts.
Ye's mother also chased out and yelled at the door, "If I don't beat you for three days, you will tear off the roof. When your mother has time in a few days, she will beat you all severely. If no one is watching over you, you will go crazy."
After a while, the scolding voices of Mrs. Ye Dasao and Mrs. Ye Ersao were heard from the room.
After Ye Yaodong and others ran away, he looked at his two sons with a sullen face. The two boys also panicked. After looking at each other, Ye Chenghu ran back to the house first, followed by Ye Chengyang.
They both forgot that his father now slept in the same room with them.
Ye Yaodong followed them into the room and watched them lie down on the bed side by side, pull up the quilt, and pretend to close their eyes and sleep.
He shook his head and walked over, "If you don't fall asleep later, I'll spank you."
Ye Chengyang's eyelashes trembled, but he kept them tightly closed, fearing that he would be beaten if he opened them.
Ye Chenghu was older and not that scared, so he peeked with one eye open and one eye closed, and found that his father was also looking at him, so he quickly closed his eyes in fear.
These two haven't slept the whole afternoon and have been arguing the whole time. It's just getting dark now, so it's okay for them to go to bed now. Early to bed, early to rise.
Seeing that they were behaving well, he went back to his bed and lay down.
When he went out at night, he found that there were some small waves and the small boat could not go out to sea. His boat could still withstand it, but the boat was shaking a little more than usual when the weather was calm.
The two uncles were just like their father-in-law and mother-in-law. They started vomiting before the novelty wore off. I don’t know if they put on seasickness patches. It still didn’t work.
Two grown men can vomit, they won’t die.
It was impossible to return anyway, and the loss would be huge if they missed a day. Compared with the profit they could get, they would just vomit for an hour.
If the old one can bear it, there's no reason why two strong and healthy ones can't.
"Please bear with it. We have already driven quite a distance. We will arrive in another hour."
"It's okay, it's okay. I'm just a little seasick. I'll feel better after I vomit." Lin Xianghui said slowly.
"Drink some water. You'll definitely have to vomit later. It's better to have something in your stomach."
The two nodded without saying anything, fearing that they would vomit again if they opened their mouths.
"Try massaging the Hegu point, maybe it can help. It's located at the base of the thumb."
"Let's try."
I don’t know if it was the motion sickness patch or the acupoint massage that worked, but the two of them didn’t vomit again. But their faces still looked ugly, and it was obvious that they were suppressing their emotions.
Ye's father first docked the boat at the island and put the two brothers down. Only then did they breathe a sigh of relief, thinking in their hearts that it is not easy to be a fisherman, and farming is easier.
But when they saw some squids scattered on the beach that had laid eggs and washed up, they no longer thought so. Seasickness was nothing. Making money was more important than anything else, and this made money much faster than farming.
Their eyes were shining, almost brighter than a flashlight.
It’s normal to have this reaction when seeing so many goods when going out to sea for the first time.
Ye Yaodong put all the tools that might be used for fishing in the sea into a bucket and took it off the boat. Maybe his two brothers-in-law would need them later.
"Today is the first day of the lunar year. The tide is almost full now. There is not much cargo left. They have all been swept back into the sea. Pick up as many as you can. When the tide starts to recede at 6 o'clock, there will be more stranded, but there will also be many seabirds. As I said before, pick up as much as you can."
He briefly told them about the high and low tide times, and the approximate times when the tide would change. After this brief explanation, he and Ye's father started picking up the trash.
It's still dark now, so he can't go down to the bottom of the sea. He can only go into the water after daybreak when the light is good.
The two brothers also quickly started working, making noises of surprise from time to time, which meant they had picked up other good stuff.
Ye Yaodong couldn't help but say, "When the tide recedes, a large area of beach will be exposed. You can walk around and take a look. Maybe there are some goodies stranded there."
The two of them responded happily in unison. There was no trace of the depressed look they had on the boat before.
Ye Yaodong picked up the squids for a while and saw that the tide was rising and the squids on the beach were being swept back into the sea one after another, so he gave each of them a small hand-scoop net.
He only made two small ones in total. He didn't have the right tools and didn't have much supplies, so he simply climbed up the reef carrying the bucket.
He had never been to the island before, and had only climbed up the side slope to bury the bodies.
"What are you doing Dongzi?"
"I'm going to take a walk in the woods and come out when it's daylight."
It's already 4 o'clock now. The sun rises earlier and earlier every day. It will take too long to go out to sea and trawle the net. With such little time, we might as well go to the woods and take a look.
He walked along the reef onto the grass. The green grass was wet with dew. The forest ahead was pitch black, but he could see clearly with the flashlight. There was nothing to be afraid of. Lin Guangyuan had been in and out several times, so there shouldn't be any danger in the forest.
Under the dim light, you can see lush green leaves, the dead leaves are soft under your feet, and the branches are swaying in the gentle breeze, and the leaves are rustling.
Ye Yaodong shone the flashlight around and then at the trees, and occasionally saw a few seabirds flying up.
He ignored the seabirds because he saw a pheasant in the jungle ahead, which was illuminated by his light and fluttered its wings in surprise.
Judging from its gray and twisted feathers and relatively small size, it should be a female. The male pheasant has very beautiful and bright feathers.
He knew his own limitations and knew he couldn't catch the creature with his bare hands, but that didn't stop him from following closely to take a look, as he had no where to go anyway.
As he approached, the flashlight kept shining. The pheasant called and fluttered its wings a few times, then flew directly into the woods and disappeared.
He had no choice but to look around again. He picked up a branch and poked the surrounding grass. Unexpectedly, he poked open a hidden patch of weeds and found a simple nest with more than a dozen eggs in it.
Ye Yaodong picked one up with surprise. It looked like a pheasant egg. He happily put them all into the bucket.
A great victory!
He simply wandered around, occasionally causing a commotion. The forest gradually became lively, with more sounds of insects and birds.
There were many more eggs in the bucket, and he couldn't tell whether they were seabird eggs or pheasant eggs. There were so many species of seabirds that he couldn't tell them apart. They were all eggs anyway, so he just put them together.
Maybe there have been a lot of seabirds flying here recently, and it’s their breeding season, so seabird eggs are easy to pick up. No wonder Lin Guangyuan could still hear someone calling him on the beach, he didn’t even walk very far.
He also dug out four or five lower seabird nests.
As he wandered around, the sky gradually brightened and the seabirds in the forest flew out in groups.
"Huh, wild strawberries?"
There was a bright red patch at the bottom of a small slope. When he first saw it, he thought it was rhododendron or something else, so he didn't use a flashlight to shine it. Unexpectedly, after daybreak, he saw that it was actually a patch of wild strawberries, and they were quite large, looking bigger than marbles.
He walked down the hillside carefully, picked one at random, broke it open and looked inside, removed the white soft cotton stuff inside, and then tasted it. It was very sweet, not sour at all.
I haven't eaten it for many years and almost forgot that there are a lot of this thing on the mountain now, especially in the grass.
Wild strawberries are very similar to prickly pears, but prickly pears grow on trees while wild strawberries grow in the grass.
There is also a kind called snakeberry, which also grows in the grass, but it is not edible. It looks very similar to wild strawberry and is easy to be eaten by mistake.
I heard that snakeberry is caused by a poisonous snake crawling over it and spitting on it, so you can see a lot of white saliva-like substances on the snakeberry. It is slightly poisonous, so children with weak stomachs should not eat it.
Adults usually lie to children by telling them that eating it will make them dumb and that they should not eat it carelessly.
Ye Yaodong took a look and saw that the whole field was full of wild strawberries. It was a pity that he didn't bring a basket, so he couldn't pick them, and they would be crushed if he picked them.
I can only wait and see if I have time to bring a basket to pick them. The two boys at home will definitely like them.
Looking at the red and orange rising sun in the distant sky, like a salted egg yolk, he felt a little hungry. He stretched himself and found that the water bucket was half full. He could go back to cook breakfast and eat before working.
But when he turned around, he saw a rooster with beautiful feathers leisurely foraging for food there. Unfortunately, he didn't have his slingshot with him. He hadn't played with it for decades. He felt that his aim was not good, so he didn't bring it with him.
Unable to catch it, he simply took two heavy steps towards it and snorted loudly.
The rooster was so frightened that it flapped its wings and flew around, and two of its feathers fell off.
After a little naughtiness, he felt better. He picked up the fallen feathers on the ground and put them in a bucket, pressing them with eggs to prevent them from being blown away by the wind, and then walked straight down.
When Father Ye saw him coming back, he went over to take a look at his harvest. "Just eggs? You're not as good as A Yuan. He also brought back a bunch of seabirds."
Ye Yaodong rolled his eyes at him and said, "If you can do it, go ahead and see what you can find in the woods."
"I just picked up a few eggs, and I'm not allowed to talk about it."
"It's obviously a bucket of eggs!"
"Go cook breakfast. I'll catch a few more. After we eat, set up the trap and go into the water. Remember to cook a few more eggs. If you don't have time to eat squid at noon, you can just eat them as a meal. It saves trouble."
Ye's father did not argue with him. In fact, as the tide rose, the squids on the beach had been almost all picked up. Without a hand net, he could only fish slowly when he went into the water.
Ye Yaodong rolled his eyes. He had just laughed at him for picking up a few eggs.