She tossed the dying ray, now too weak to struggle, into the bamboo basket and placed it under a tree. Wrapping her arms around a coconut palm, she pushed off the trunk with her toes and scrambled up with incredible speed, reaching the top in the blink of an eye.
The coconut palms by the beach were very productive. Almost every treetop had more than ten coconuts hanging from it. In just the past two days, she had spotted at least two high-yielding trees with no fewer than twenty coconuts each.
Based on their consumption over the past few days, they had only emptied two or three trees. For the entire grove of coconut palms on the beach, it was just a drop in the bucket.
When she returned to the shelter with the heavy basket on her back and a string of coconuts in her hand, she found that the fire had already gone out.
She reached out and held her hand over the embers. They were still warm. It seemed the fire had gone out less than half an hour ago.
'Asleep already?'
