Having worked through how fish baskets should be made, Bai Shuo went with the simplest version first. He heated up thin, slender bamboo strips and bent them into the shape he wanted, secured them with hemp rope, then, once they’d set, removed the rope and tied the fishing net onto the frame, leaving a few openings around the sides for fish to swim in, then treated the openings with hemp rope again to keep any fish that got inside from escaping.
The other kind of fish basket looked something like a basket or backpack-basket. Bai Shuo first wove a narrow-bottomed bamboo basket, extended it upward a stretch, then began narrowing the opening gradually, and finally wove a funnel-shaped flap valve, once fitted in place, it was easy for fish to swim in from outside, but nearly impossible to find their way back out from within.
He taught Cailin the technique and had her bring along a few others to help make more, while Bai Shuo sent the chicks off to dig up earthworms.
Earthworms turned up in especially large numbers after rain, and Bai Shuo had seen this plenty of times before. It hadn’t rained the past couple of days, but the chicks had dug up plenty before through their own play, and had gotten quite skilled at it, they’d find a patch of damp soil, dig it open, and strike gold nearly every time.
Bai Shuo handed out two bamboo tubes and told the chicks to put whatever earthworms they dug up inside.
One kind of bait alone wouldn’t do, he had no idea what the fish in this particular river actually preferred to eat, so he figured he might as well try a few different kinds and see.
Scraps of meat left over from cutting, crushed wheat, insects caught outside, he set out two fish baskets for each kind of bait, to see in the end which one caught the most fish.
Once the fish baskets went into the water, there was no need to check on them right away, so Bai Shuo spent the time patiently teaching everyone how to weave fishing nets.
To make sure the finished nets all came out roughly the same size, Bai Shuo cut the bamboo strips to a uniform width, sanding the edges down slightly, and handed one out to each person.
Weaving fishing nets wasn’t hard to learn, after one evening of Bai Shuo teaching, everyone had basically figured out the technique, though speeds varied, the elders, who spent their days in the tribe weaving tools and twisting hemp rope, tended to be faster at it.
Bai Shuo divided up the work based on everyone’s strengths. Since weaving fishing nets counted as important work right now, he assigned the fastest hands to that job first, next came the matter of raw material, that meant twisting hemp rope, so these two groups mattered most, ten people total, six weaving nets, four preparing hemp rope.
The rest of the elders were assigned to weaving backpack-baskets and other tools, and also handled repairs whenever the hunting or gathering party’s tools broke down.
Among the gathering party, those skilled with their hands made a batch of clay pieces every evening, the rest went out to dig soil and gather branches, branches especially, since Bai Shuo had asked everyone to bring back every last piece of dead, dry wood they came across. He’d realized something recently: relying purely on soil and stone wasn’t quite going to cut it, it was time to consider firing bricks. Bricks came out uniform in shape, and for building a proper stove, they’d clearly work better than stone.
Bai Shuo had also been thinking about lime. Lime was made by firing limestone, and lately he’d been having the hunting and gathering parties bring back a variety of different stones, so far, no sign of any limestone yet, though Bai Shuo wasn’t especially worried, limestone wasn’t a particularly rare material, and if it truly couldn’t be found nearby, he could always go collect shells at the seaside instead, more trouble, certainly, but it would still get him lime in the end.
Compared to the adult Feather Clan, the chicks’ workload stayed considerably lighter. The chicks around Bai Shuo and Bai Su’s age, under Bai Su’s lead, searched for the plants Bai Shuo needed, always leaving one or two behind at the tribe to help Bai Shuo with whatever he needed. The chicks closer to Bai Le’s age handled tasks that required no particular skill, things like shouting when the water started boiling, or keeping watch over the little cluck-birds in their pen.
With this division of labor in place, efficiency improved considerably compared to before. In the old days, whenever a new job came up, everyone would swarm toward it at once, and once that job was finished, they’d all go hunting for the next thing to do, plenty of time got wasted just wandering around looking for something to occupy themselves. Now, Bai Shuo could judge from output alone where there weren’t enough hands and where there were too many, and adjust accordingly.
The elders spent the whole day at the tribe, and their net-weaving speed wasn’t slow at all, within two days, Bai Shuo had several large fishing nets ready, each one considerably bigger than the test piece he’d woven earlier.
Bai Shuo tested the length, tied several nets together end to end using hemp rope, and went to discuss with the chieftain about capturing an oink-beast alive.
At first, hearing that Bai Shuo wanted to catch an oink-beast alive, Hua Yong hesitated considerably. Oink-beasts were aggressive game, and even when a kill didn’t go clean the first time, the hunting party would immediately finish the job with a follow-up strike or two, making sure the animal had stopped breathing before dragging it away, the risk of trying to capture one alive felt far too great.
Bai Shuo had already anticipated this concern from him, and without further preamble, pulled out the large fishing net. “What if we used this?”
Hua Yong studied the large net, thought it over for a moment, and asked, “Just throw it over the oink-beast directly?”
Bai Shuo shook his head. “No, pick two people to hide with the net along the oink-beast’s path back to its den, have everyone else drive the oink-beast this way, and block it with the net when it gets close. The oink-beast will try to force its way through, but the harder it pushes, the more tangled it’ll get in the net.”
Running headlong into a net, the smartest move would be to back away, but prey animals never understood that logic, caught, all they’d do was keep pushing forward with brute force, and that was exactly when the Feather Clan could move in to bind them up, or lift them off the ground entirely, and wait until the animal had exhausted itself before proceeding to the next step.
And with the hunting party occupied catching the mother, this would also be the perfect window to hunt down the oink-beast’s piglets, go after the young first, and the mother would fight back viciously, but once she was restrained, going after her utterly defenseless offspring would be effortless.
Hua Yong had never heard of this method of capturing prey before. He picked up the hemp-woven net and examined it over and over, and finally decided to trust Bai Shuo’s approach. “I’ll take people out tomorrow to give it a try.”
Hearing this, Bai Shuo let out a breath of relief, he knew Hua Yong’s character well enough by now, once he said he’d try something, he’d follow through.
The next day, Hua Yong indeed brought out that bundle of netting, though he didn’t send all three hunting parties out right away, he picked people first.
Hua Yong selected the twenty strongest Feather Clan in the tribe to form a fresh team, while the remaining thirty or forty went out searching for game together as usual. Experienced and powerful Feather Clan could each do the work of two, for this first attempt at a new capture method, Hua Yong had deliberately chosen them specifically.
The Hundred-Feather Tribe numbered nearly two hundred, roughly a third of them chicks, with ten near-adults on the verge of coming of age, and twenty elders or Feather Clan unable to hunt due to injury, leaving the rest as Feather Clan in the prime of their strength. There were normally three hunting parties, each numbering around twenty.
On an ordinary day, the three parties would split up and go their separate ways to search for game, but today Hua Yong was being cautious, keeping only the strongest with him. If the attempt failed, this group’s experience and strength meant they’d almost certainly avoid injury, if it succeeded, they’d learn the new hunting technique on the spot and could go on to teach it to their own regular parties afterward.
The hunting party set off in grand fashion, and the gathering party wasn’t far behind, though the two groups headed in different directions.
Even though they belonged to the same tribe, the hunting and gathering parties never traveled together, every day, they went in different directions entirely, since what each group needed differed. Wherever the hunting party went, game was plentiful, but that same activity did serious damage to the surrounding plant life, the gathering party wouldn’t find much worth picking there anyway, and going along would only risk startling prey and hurting the hunt. So the two groups had always kept to separate routes.
People tended to assume, since the tribe lived off animals like moo-beasts for food, that hunting them posed no real danger, but in truth, running into a whole herd of moo-beasts at once was a serious threat even to the tribe’s strongest warriors, who wouldn’t be so foolish as to charge in head-on. To gather more food safely, the gathering party generally avoided areas thick with game, sticking instead to spots where the fruit and leaf-greens remained relatively intact.
Once the various parties had all set off, Bai Shuo began his own busy, fulfilling day, standing by the stone pot for a moment, he suddenly remembered the fish baskets and fish traps he’d left in the river.
Counting the days, it had been over two now, plenty of time to go pull them up and check.
The fish baskets and fish traps had all been tied off with hemp rope, the other end secured to a tree along the riverbank, to find trees spaced out at a suitable distance, the baskets and traps ended up spread fairly far apart from one another, so as not to interfere with each other’s catch.
Bai Shuo looked around, and in the end called over Bai Su, Wu Yan, and Caihong, the four of them headed to the river to haul in the fish baskets.
Pulling directly with bare hands chafed painfully, so Bai Shuo found a branch, and he and Bai Su twisted it together while Wu Yan and Caihong helped from the riverbank, and between them they managed to drag the fish basket clear of the river. Fortunately the water level was still fairly low right now, so Wu Yan and Caihong could simply carry the basket over to the bank without much trouble.
The same method worked for the rest of the baskets. Having soaked in water, the baskets had grown a bit heavy, Wu Yan and Caihong hauled them one by one over to where Bai Shuo stood, here, opening one up carried the risk that any fish inside might escape, since once a fish touched water, catching it again became more than ten times harder.
Bai Shuo’s gaze settled on the fish basket made from netting, this was the only one he could actually see inside, and he spotted two fish, one large, one small.
The larger one looked to be about thirty centimeters long, cramped for space inside the basket, the smaller one measured only about ten-odd centimeters.
Bai Shuo untied the hemp rope, opened the designated flap, and tipped the fish into the backpack-basket they’d brought along.
Several fish baskets still remained, their contents impossible to make out from outside, Bai Shuo picked one up, undid the lid on top, and peered inside, a little surprised at what he found.
This time there were plenty of small fish, just one about ten-odd centimeters long, the rest all smaller than his own palm, and remarkably numerous, a single basket poured out over a dozen of them.
Bai Shuo picked up one of the fish and held it up against the netting to compare, and it clicked at once, it wasn’t that no small fish ever swam into the net-woven baskets, it was just that the mesh openings were a bit large, so the smaller fish could swim right back out again, leaving only the bigger ones behind.
Opening the rest of the baskets, every single one turned up something, though taken altogether, small fish still outnumbered the rest by far, only six large fish in total.
As for the bait, crushed wheat had performed the worst, Bai Shuo suspected the powder had simply washed away in the water, and the two fish caught in that basket had probably wandered in purely by accident. Of the remaining three bait types, chopped meat scraps performed best, not only did it draw in fish, it had also attracted three crabs. Earthworms and insects performed about the same.
Once all the fish had been emptied out, Wu Yan pulled out the stone knife hanging at his waist and asked, “Should I kill them?”
Bai Shuo nodded. “Yeah, kill them all. Don’t throw away the innards, put them back in the fish baskets.” He remembered fish innards could attract other fish too, since the smell carried strongly, and it might well draw in crabs as well.
Catching these three crabs right now was hardly the crab season, but who could ever say no to more variety on the table?
Among all the chicks his age, Wu Yan’s nerve was clearly the boldest, Bai Shuo hadn’t spotted a second one brave enough to gut a fish outright.
Wu Yan handled the knife with practiced skill, following Bai Shuo’s guidance, he knocked the fish unconscious with a stick, slit open its belly, tucked the innards into a fish basket, then dug out the gills, scraped off the scales, and just like that, one fish was fully processed. The whole sequence flowed smoothly, without a single wasted motion.
The larger fish were cleaned up first, the smaller ones, Bai Su and Caihong could handle just fine. Bai Shuo wanted to help too, and had just reached out, his fingers hadn’t even touched the fish yet, when the backpack-basket got snatched clean away by Wu Yan.
“Smells too strong.” Wu Yan made quick work of one fish in a few motions, tossed the innards into the fish basket, rinsed it off in the river, and moved on to the next.
“Shuo, you just watch,” Bai Su said as he worked, just as unwilling as Wu Yan to let his little brother touch the fish.
“Yeah, Shuo, just tell us how to do it,” Caihong agreed enthusiastically. Bai Shuo just needed to teach them, if Bai Shuo did everything himself, what would even be left for the rest of them to do?
Bai Shuo very nearly found himself persuaded by that logic, but pitched in anyway, though what landed in his hands were only the finger-sized little fish, needing nothing more than to squeeze out the innards, no gutting or scaling required.
The four of them cleaned the fish, big and small, thoroughly, reset the fish baskets with fresh bait, dropped them back into the river, and headed back toward the tribe with their catch.
Bai Shuo sniffed at his own hands, the fishy smell was strong, and even after washing them several times, it still hadn’t quite gone away. Looks like once they got back, he’d need to whip up some kind of degreasing, odor-removing cleanser too.