From Robinson Crusoe

Chapter 65 Recuperation
February 2th to March 26th were the most leisurely days for Chen Zhou since he arrived on the island.

During his convalescence, he could sleep as long as he wanted and cook whatever he wanted.

When the weather is a little clearer, do some light work or take a walk to the beach at the foot of the mountain, and carry back a bag of cement on the way back to the camp, which is considered exercise.

Occasionally I drink a little wine, and when I feel like it, I paint a few pictures.

Paint the mountains by the sea, the raging waves, the rising sun, the dense forest orchids, the rocky beaches of the small river, etc.

It's a pity that the notebooks I brought down from the ship had small paper, thin paper, not white enough and without paper texture, so they were not suitable for sketching or painting with charcoal.

Of course, he didn't have any suitable pen tools for sketching.

The more common pencils, pens and less common brushes all need to be made by ourselves.

As for charcoal drawing or silver needle pen sketching which requires special paper, it is even more unrealistic.

Not to mention all those professional stuff, he didn't even have an eraser. Neither the black ink on the ship nor the homemade pink and purple ink could be erased, and he couldn't regret it after putting pen to paper.

Fortunately, Chen Zhou developed a personal habit of being precise and concise when drawing structural diagrams and striving to reduce the number of modifications.

There are not many problems when actually drawing, and it is generally acceptable.

But paper was precious and could not be wasted. After drawing more than a dozen pages, he felt reluctant to throw it away.

Fortunately, these mysterious rewards came with a lot of corrugated paper, which was enough for painting with charcoal sticks.

Chen Zhou even customized several frames for corrugated paper and hung the finished paintings under the load-bearing beams in the bedroom so that he could see them every day when he woke up, which was a kind of spiritual comfort.

In addition to corrugated paper, he is also researching and developing a new type of "paper", such as fired clay boards.

After trying dozens of times, he put the white mud smeared on the surface of the wood block into the stove to burn it, and then took it out to cool after the fire was extinguished.

The result was either deformation and cracking or peeling, and it never succeeded.

After reading the ceramic manufacturing guide provided by a brother on the forum, Chen Zhou realized that even if it was just to fire such a simple pottery, there were requirements for the structure and temperature of the furnace, not to mention that his white clay had not been screened and did not meet the standards at all.

Moreover, the wood blocks he used were too thick. If he had used flammable rattan to weave it, the effect might have been better.

Charcoal is needed to increase the temperature of the flame, bricks are needed to build a pottery furnace, and it would be best to get a bellows.

These have to be manufactured and accumulated slowly, so Chen Zhou can only temporarily give up his plan to make clay panels.

……

Improving the painting experience is not limited to studying paper. Chen Zhou also tried to make brushes and ink of other colors, and wanted to paint some watercolor paintings.

The decorative paintings brought down from the ship were all oil paintings on canvas.

At this time, the more abstract modern style oil paintings had not yet appeared. Among the decorative paintings on the ship, two were landscape paintings and one was a portrait painting.

The oil painting still uses traditional realistic style, with cautious use of colors, no overly strong color contrast, and the control of light is not as accurate as modern paintings.

Maybe the painter's skills are not good enough, the body proportions of the noble girl in the portrait are also awkward.

Of course, Chen Zhou evaluated these paintings from the perspective of an admirer. If he were to really paint them, his level might not even be enough to surpass this painter.

After all, the fact that his paintings can be hung in the captain's first mate's room means that he has a certain degree of fame in this era, and at least he can make money by selling paintings.

...Although his painting progress was not smooth, Chen Zhou did gain something in other aspects.

The weather was still clear on the morning of March 3st, with no sign of rain in the short term. He was bored, so he took a rope to the platform where the sheep were and set a few traps around the footprints left by the sheep.

Unexpectedly, we caught a prey on March 3nd.

It was an old goat with a thin body, dull fur and skin disease. After the noose was put around its neck, it had almost no strength to struggle, so it simply lay down where it was and waited to die.

When Chen Zhou discovered it, it was already the evening of March 3nd.

It rained for several times that day, and the old goat's already sparse hair could not block the rain. A lot of wool was washed away by the sudden rain. The whole goat was soaked and exuded a strong smell of sheep.

It lay shivering on the hillside where the sheep were walking by, breathing heavily, with its head drooped, and weakly reaching for the weeds beside it.

However, the noose restricted its range of movement, and no matter how hard it tried, it was unable to successfully eat the grass.

Fortunately, Chen Zhou arrived in time. Seeing that the animal was so old and in poor health, it was not worthy of domestication and breeding. He couldn't bear to see it continue to struggle to survive, so he kindly gave it a knife, ending its suffering and sending it to heaven to enjoy life.

While it was not raining, Chen Zhou skinned the sheep on the spot and cut off the four front and back legs, but did not dare to touch the internal organs.

On the one hand, there is not much meat on the sheep. Once you cut open the fur, you can see the bones. There is not even a bit of fat to be found. There is no need to waste energy dragging it into the cave.

On the other hand, Chen Zhou was also worried that the old and thin sheep might have germs or parasites.

The liver and lungs of sheep are usually the parts most seriously affected by parasites. Since he was not short of food now, he gave up on these parts.

Of course, he might not care about the sheep's internal organs, but Lai Fu suffered from the gluttony that every dog suffers from.

Seeing that the owner had abandoned the sheep here and was about to leave with four lamb legs, it pounced directly on the sheep's carcass and was about to tear open its chest to find the heart and liver.

Before his mouth even touched the lamb ribs, Chen Zhou started yelling loudly.

While stopping him with his voice, he also grabbed Lai Fu by the scruff of the neck and pulled him back.

Lai Fu was naturally reluctant. He wagged his tail and whined, trying his best to please his master, hoping that he would show leniency.

However, Chen Zhou had been treated so many times that he had developed an immunity to this. Instead of easing up, his expression became even more severe. He trained Lai Fu all the way back to the cave. He was worried that Lai Fu would sneak out in the middle of the night to find meat, so he tied him to a load-bearing column.

Lai Fu was scolded for nothing, didn't get to eat the meat, and then lost his freedom. He was in a low mood. He lay obediently beside the load-bearing column and didn't say a word.

That night, Chen Zhou cooked a pot of mutton soup and grilled a few skewers of mutton.

The seal oil spread on the lamb does taste fragrant after being roasted, but it also has a fishy smell and is not very delicious.

Whenever this happens, Chen Zhou misses spices especially.

I pulled the mutton off the wooden skewer and chewed it hard, imagining the aroma of chili powder, pepper, onion, ginger and garlic.

He suddenly remembered that on the day he went down the mountain to get medicine, he found many unknown medicine jars containing plant seeds. He originally wanted to take them to the mountain to open and identify them.

I didn't expect that I was too tired that day, and after putting the seeds on the food rack in the kitchen, I was busy making a fire and boiling water, and I actually forgot about the seeds.

If the grilled lamb kebabs today hadn’t tasted bad, I might not have remembered it.

(End of this chapter)