Vanyushka once again tried water. It is cold! But he got used to bathing. It is necessary to plunge only at once!
Vanyushka attached a nanosnik, connected tubes to the device producing oxygen and plunged into the water. Water immediately filled the tank in a satchel, and the device began to emit oxygen.
Water was so cold that Vanyushka nearly ran out on the coast, but constrained effort of will itself and forced to move ahead.
The entrance to the underground tunnel was quite low. Vanyushke was necessary to be bent. The lamp lit granite walls which contracted more and more closely. Vanyushka floated, grabbled. In one place there was fear that it will not be possible to creep further. But when this bottleneck was overcome, the tunnel began to extend quickly. Walls were moved apart, the arch rose above water level. Vanyushka emerged on a surface and uvidat that he is in the huge cave filled with water. The stalactites which were hanging down from a ceiling of a cave reminded strange monsters. Monsters reached for water and were reflected in it; the bottom from a gray-green stone was visible absolutely distinctly. The great number of fishes swam in this underground lake where there was no vegetation. What these fishes, besides a consuming similar ate? Vanyushka hooked a hand one fish of a strange look – prickly, dry, nonflexible – and was convinced that it was absolutely blind. Instead of eyes it had only small deepenings. All fishes of this lake never seeing light were blind! Vanyushka surveyed cave walls under water and was convinced that they have several side channels through which fishes incessantly swam in and came up. Perhaps, in the neighbourhood there were reservoirs which contained all necessary for maintenance of life of this blind kingdom.
Having crossed the lake, Vanyushka came to the coast and went on huge, all to the narrowed tunnel. And suddenly he shuddered and stopped, to something attentively listening. No, everything is silent. Seemed to it. These are probably echo whims. Unless there can be people here? Vanyushka took some more steps forward and again stopped. This time the human voices muffled by distance – as though men’s and women’s – about something arguing rather distinctly reached it. Who are they, these people and where they are? How could make the way here? Vanyushki’s curiosity was excited excessively. He decided to creep with unnoticed and to observe unknown. Closed a palm lamp light, having left only a small ray, and, carefully going, went aside from where voices reached.
Voices were distributed more and more clearly, closer and closer, and before Vanyushka there were only fruitless, dead arches of a cave. Ahead the stone ridge which was not reaching cave top was seen. Behind cover of this ridge of Vanyushk could approach unnoticed on a short distance. It was now possible to sort separate words.
– Look, Boris Grigoryevich what strange whitish reflected light on the cave arch! – told a female voice.
Vanyushka involuntarily raised the head up and uvidat that one beam of the lamp covered with a hand gives a small reflection On the cave arch. This reflection was also noticed by someone, being on other side of a stone ridge. Vanyushka hurried to extinguish a lamp. At the same time he noticed the fluctuating, amplifying, growing dim reddish light on the cave arches. Such light could proceed only from a fire.
– It seemed to you – the male deep voice answered. – Shadow play… Yes, so I also speak – continued a male voice after a small pause. – Me as Chekhovian Epikhodov, twenty two misfortunes pursue…
Vanyushka heard not only human voices, but also reaching from where a buzzing, wind noise, storm howl… Everything spoke simply; Vanyushka, having made an arch, wrapped all the time on the left, had to leave to edge of a mountain chain in which there were caves. In mountains, obviously, was available several caves connected with each other by internal transitions. People also came into one of these caves, taking cover from a storm as well as Vanyushkina friends. But what people are?! Vanyushka crept to the edge of a rocky ridge and glanced, taking cover between stones.
It uvidat a big cave. Through a narrow entrance opening wind rushed and shook a fire flame. Closer to an exit, at a fire, the person covered with a fragmentary tulupchik lay; judging by legs in blue trousers and the Chinese footwear, it was the Chinese. On other side of a fire the tall broad-shouldered person – bald, with shortly cut moustaches and black eyebrows sat. This person held on a stick over a fire a teapot.
“The odd fellow – Vanyushka thought. – And tea plainly is not able to boil, and too, on caves gads”.
And even closer to Vanyushka against the background of a flame of a fire the figure of the woman or girl, average height who is well put in a short skirt and a kepi on the head was accurately allocated. Vanyushka saw only a black silhouette. With arms akimbo and having raised the head up, the girl looked at the cave arch, obviously expecting whether the strange light thing will repeat.
“Young and, probably, beautiful” – Vanyushka solved.
Without hanging the raised head, the girl took several steps forward and suddenly screamed: her legs touched water, cold, transparent to invisibility.
– There is water! Who could think? – the girl with astonishment told, drawing aside a leg.
“And you came across this focus, my dear” – Vanyushka thought and, without having restrained, quietly laughed.
– Ah! – scaredly the girl screamed. – Here someone is! I heard laughter.
– Everything seems to you, Alenka. I did not think that you are such coward – the man with a teapot told. – You would help me to hold a teapot better. The hand was tired. This echo here it. You shouted, the echo repeated.
– But I shouted “ah”, and the echo repeated “ha-ha-ha” – on the contrary moreover cubed. So does not happen.
– And well, shout! – the man offered. The girl shouted shortly and abruptly again: “Ah!” Vanyushke came to have fun a thought. He suddenly answered, lowering tone: “Ah-ah!”
The girl raised hands to the head, and the man dropped a teapot in a fire. The Chinese under a fragmentary short fur coat zavorochatsya, rose and began to listen.
– Strange echo! – the man told, trying to pick up a stick a teapot for the handle. – What misfortune! Alenka! Because of your echo I dropped a teapot.
– It not an echo – the girl answered. – The echo cannot change tone height. There is a person. – And, having taken several steps forward, she asked: – Who there?
Vanyushka quietly moaned, then suddenly thumbed the big black nose and round glasses of points because of stones. The girl shouted and moved back. The Chinese with lamentations ran out from a cave; the man at a fire sat, having widely opened eyes and having even slightly opened a mouth. Then felt at himself in a hip-pocket, took out the revolver, grabbed burning головню and rushed to a stone ridge behind which Vanyushka was.
What to do? To shout “do not shoot” or to run away? Vanyushka decided to play up to the end a role of “cave spirit”. He suddenly ran to the lake and plunged into the water.
Having fallen by a bottom, turned back to the coast and watched that will be. The man ran up to water, aimed and shot. Thanks to refraction of beams in water the bullet did not hit the mark. Vanyushka waved hands, turned and disappeared in the tunnel.
“Tomorrow I will see these people and I will tell them everything – he thought. – For now let poudivlyatsya”.
Vanyushka returned to a cave where there were Volkov, Guzik and Konobeev.
Makar Ivanovich continued to snore; Guzik as Buddha’s statue, sat with the drawn-in legs and with the stone look turned in space depths. Volkov dozed off near Konobeev, but woke up at Vanyushki’s entrance.
– Where