Chapter 6

October Year 1915

Jonathan brought the tea mug with him, and went to sit by the water. It was about 7 in the evening. It was pitch-dark. He looked at the moon. A mysterious shining globe casting its reflections, which hit the dark, glassy surface of the water. Little Lump came real close to him and looked up on him. The hedgehog had not gone into hibernation in its nest under the log yet; Jonathan wondered why it had not settled down at this point. He knew that hibernation was a very deep and important sleeping process, accompanied by profound changes in the animal’s physiology. The heart beat drops from 180 beats a minute to 20 or less. Breathing almost stops completely and body temperature drops drastically. For a minute he worried that there was something wrong with Little Lump. He wondered if he might not have to wait a bit to set his eel traps, which he always set 3 days after a full moon, that was when the eels migrated. The eels always moved at night, sometimes he did the same because he refused to pay for setting pound nets and eel traps off the smallholdings, which was what you were supposed to do. That was why he often sailed out to set eel traps when night had fallen. The petals from the primroses, which had covered the earth earlier, had been replaced by yellow leaves. The air was damp and cool. He went back and crawled inside the cave, he felt safe here, to be sleeping on the ground, outdoors, on his own island. He settled under the warm blanket. Soon he was sleeping deeply and heavily…