Chapter 13 The Long Winter We spent many days gathering roots, grains, fruits, and acorns.
We filled as many of the rooms as we could with what we had.
It started to become gloomy and cloudy again.
Thunder and lightning were everywhere.
The winter was not far off.
We needed to be ready for twelve weeks of cold rain.
We spent our time in the cave making it warm and cozy.
We used a large bamboo pole to hang a candle up high so we had light.
We set up a library, putting our books on shelves and decorating the walls with maps and charts from the wreck.
Jack and his mother made a living room and a kitchen and Fritz and I built a workshop.
Our cave was endless.
We were ready for winter.
My wife and I decided to use the winter months to school the boys.
It was a good opportunity for our boys to learn a language other than our native German, so we all studied French from books saved from the wreck.
I'm going to learn Spanish, announced Jack.
I just love how important people sound when they speak it.
The boys also tried to learn English and Dutch with their mother.
Soon we had all learned a few words and phrases of both languages.
We also passed the time by opening up all the chests from the wreck and going through them for treasure.
We found chairs and clocks, a music box, and many other things.
In this way, we spent the long winter, but this time our home didn't feel like prison.
As the season closed, the weather became even wilder.
Storms blew and lightning flashed.
The wind was like a hurricane.
And then, suddenly, it was over.
We went walking on the first dry day and saw something through our telescope on the far end of the beach.
It looked like an overturned boat, and we decided to find out more.
We were all happy to be back to exploring.
Heading toward it, we noticed it was not a boat but a huge stranded whale that had washed up and died.
The storm had truly been a strong one.
But the destructive storm had also washed up lovely coral and shells everywhere which the boys collected.
We walked back home to get tools to cut blubber from the whale.
The oil would come in handy.
Fritz and Jack climbed the whale to begin the work.
As we cut into the whale, the air was filled with birds.
The birds snatched at the whale and bothered us to no end.
Once we had finely stripped the whale of fat and meat, we cut further into the whale to get bones to use as oil lanterns.
We left the rest for the birds and loaded our boat with all that we could carry.
We decided to call the place of our latest adventure Whale Beach.
We got home, stinking and tired, and each had a bath, thanks to our bamboo water pipeline.
We put on clean clothes and ate supper and were all happy to be done with our whale.
The next morning I showed the boys how to get the oil from the blubber.
It was a day of bad smells and an unhappy family.
We all knew we needed the oil for lamps and other things, but the work was not what any of us wanted.
We all decided that when the bones of the whale were picked clean by the birds, we should set up a camp there.
That way, if we had messy work like this, we could keep it away from our home.
I then set about building a small rowing machine for our boat, which simply turned a cog that set the oars to row.
Everyone was pleased and the next day we decided to take the boat to Cape Disappointment and check on our animals.
As we came close, we saw that they were afraid of us.
We had been gone too long in our winter cave.
The goats would not be milked and had to be lassoed to get the job done.
We had to catch all of the chickens and birds all over again.
We then loaded our boat with eggs and milk and what we could take from the land and made our way back to Whale Beach.
When we returned, I spent some time making baskets and saddles and collars and other things for the animals that we needed.
This gave the boys an excellent idea.
