“Yes, here it is!” he called out from the darkness.
“I don’t understand,” Yulia said to Dr Capri.
“I can’t understand it either,” David added. “I woke up near the entrance, and I could feel the cold air coming in from outside.”
“That’s right,” Dr Capri said without taking his eyes off the hermit.
“Bhrigu,” Debby said, unable to endure, into the hermit’s back. “Did you make this happen?”
“No, Debby,” answered Bhrigu quietly, “sometimes goddess of fortune come, but we think it’s bad.”
“You gave us something to drink yesterday. I remember!” Yulia cried out anxiously.
The doctor nodded and turned to Debby:
“I even gave you a few sips.”
“No,” David shook his head. “I didn’t drink. I saw everyone else was drinking, but I didn’t have the energy.”
“Tea,” Bhrigu nodded, “strong, maybe, but just tea.”
Jean-Pierre walked along the bank, pulling the boat up by the rope. He stepped closer to the hermit:
“You’re coming with us,” Jean-Pierre said in French. “And if there’s nothing there, you’d better be able to swim well.”
“Do you want to go there?” Dr Capri asked.
“Yes,” answered Jean-Pierre. “It’s not a hallucination. All of this. I’m sure of myself, and I’m sure of what I see. Believe me, he didn’t poison us. It’s all crazy, but that’s not what’s important.”
“So what is?” the doctor was surprised.
“If your military friends are still alive, they will have to search for us. Either they will choose the direction that seems most logical to them, or…” Jean-Pierre paused, “and I hope so, they will start searching every possible hiding place in a spiral. Starting from the crash area. But if there’s no way out, how will they find us?”
Jean-Pierre pointed to Bhrigu with a glance to get into the boat.
“We don’t have much time. We walked about 20 or 30 minutes yesterday. So we’re about one or two kilometers away from the crash point. We were going mostly toward the setting sun, so westward. And you and the pilots came from the north. How long did you walk from the helicopter before you saw me and Debby?”
“We ran, about fifteen minutes,” answered the doctor to Jean-Pierre.
“So,” Jean-Pierre wanted to make another assumption, but when he saw Bhrigu he froze. “Although now it is important that the exit is really on the other side of the lake.”
David ran to get his backpack and Yulia’s bag in the other room. He tapped the place where the passage had been yesterday and whispered, “How is that possible, isn’t a rock?” He threw the backpack into the boat and helped Yulia and Debby get in, then seated himself.