War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 293 The Second Cave

When the snowstorm lasted to the 24th hour, Eric, who had moved to the cave, also fell into anxiety.

"Victor, I'm going to find Leo." Eric said abruptly after Wei Ran changed the medicine for the wound on his head, "It doesn't matter if I can't find Jonas, at least I have to find Leo." return."

"How do you find it? Where do you look for it? Are you sure you can find it?" Wei Ran asked like a cannonball while packing up the medical box.

"But."

"Eric"

Wei Ran interrupted the other party before he had time to say, "You should believe in Leo, at least believe that Leo is more likely to survive in this environment than Professor Jonas. So instead of thinking about it, you should find something for yourself Do, for example, remake those meteorological data.”

Eric opened his mouth, walked to the table in the middle of the cave and sat down, lit the two kerosene lamps, and silently flipped through the meteorological data that he had no intention of managing now.

Seeing that the other party finally calmed down, Wei Ran turned off the fuel generator outside the door, and with the light provided by the two kerosene lamps on the table, he continued to repair the two old radios that were destroyed by Professor Jonas tower.

He didn't know whether the three of them didn't have any communication tools for external communication for the sake of keeping secrets or for other reasons, but right now, the only hope is these two old antiques that were obviously destroyed recently.

But under the premise of missing key parts, he has no confidence to make it work with the radio knowledge he learned at the Hongqi Forest Farm.

With the sound of the shutter of the camera and Wei Ran's busyness, time passed silently, and the sky outside the cave also changed from pitch black to dim and then dark again.But the raging blizzard did not abate in the slightest.

Compared with Leo who hasn't returned for a long time and the blizzard that hasn't stopped for a long time, Wei Ran is worried about another thing. There is enough fuel in this cave, whether it is gasoline or the coking coal frozen at the door, it can keep them going for one or two Months are no problem.

But compared with fuel, they have not much food stored in the cave.Most of the food was moved into Jonas and Eric's tent to prevent the avalanche from burying the cave.But since the former escaped, not only the tent was blown away, but even the food was still in place.

But even if the food is still buried in the snow, it can only keep them here for a week.Maybe after a week, they can only rely on hunting to fill their stomachs.

However, their only weapon at this time is the pistol that Wei Ran kept in the metal book.And obviously, Eric was not aware of this more serious problem at this time.

Glancing at Eric who was still flipping weather data, Wei Ran got up and walked into the inner cave, randomly picked up some venison, vegetables and bread, and cooked some simple meals with the charcoal-burning cast iron stove.

Taking advantage of the time when the venison was simmering in the small stainless steel pot, he started the fuel generator outside the two wooden doors again, and then switched on the power to the wireless station on the table.

After trying the radio, it still couldn't work, Wei Ran cut off the power supply helplessly, and then turned off the fuel generator.

"Eric, why didn't you bring a radio?"

Eric stopped his work and said regretfully, "Professor Jonas said that the use of radio was likely to be monitored by Norway or the Soviet Union, and we might be arrested as spies."

"So you didn't bring it?" Wei Ran looked at the other party helplessly.

"Originally Leo wanted to take it," Eric spread his hands, "but Jonas insisted on refusing to take risks. Now it seems that he was probably ready to escape without permission."

"But how should he escape?" Wei Ran frowned and asked, "Didn't your cousin Leo find the fishing boat?"

"It was indeed Leo who found it"

Eric's expression was also full of doubts, "Unless he hides other ships on this island, it is impossible to escape from this island."

other boats?

Wei Ran shook his head secretly, if there were other ships, if Professor Jonas was ready to leave them and escape, then he could have sneaked over without Eric and Leo at the beginning.

Regardless of the uselessness of thinking so much at the moment, his return mission is to live to the end, not to come here to unravel the cocoons of this one after another conspiracy.

What's more, as early as the beginning of deciding to participate in this historical event, Wei Ran had the two major goals of learning Norwegian and seeing Katenka's investigative ability. Right now, neither Norwegian nor French is his favorite language. After learning, naturally there will be no motivation.

"Victor, I just had a new idea." Eric stood up with surprise in his tone.

"What do you think?" Wei Ran looked at the other party in confusion.

"Whether there are other ships on this island we don't know, but there must be a cave on this island where the second weather station was once used!"

Eric said excitedly, "Remember what Jonas said when we just arrived here? He said that on the highest peak of Bear Island, there is a signal tower relay station established by the Germans during World War II. Since there is a relay station, There must be maintenance there, and since it needs maintenance, there is likely to be such a cave there!"

"Do you want to go there?" Wei Ran looked at the other party and asked.

"Maybe there is no second boat, but what if Professor Jonas is hiding in that possible cave?"

Eric said excitedly, "As long as we catch Professor Jonas, at least we can ask him if he saw Leo. Besides, even if he didn't see Leo, didn't he take two reindeer with him? As long as We have those two reindeer, so it will be much easier to find Leo."

After hesitating for a moment, Wei Ran sat opposite Eric, poured him a cup of hot coffee and asked, "Eric, tell me in detail what you plan to do."

"We have to prepare the materials needed to find another cave that may exist before the blizzard stops. If Leo hasn't returned after the blizzard stops, we will set off immediately."

Eric wrote on the paper while saying, "Also, if we can't find that cave, or if there is no Professor Jonas in that cave, we have to go to the pier west of Bear Island to wait for the fishing boat and borrow the other party's boat. radio alarm, or even if there is a working radio station in that cave, we can try to call the police directly."

"Call the police?"

"Of course we need to call the police!" Eric pointed to the wooden box on the table, "Compared with these precious weather data, Leo's safety is more important."

In the quiet and warm cave, Wei Ran let out a long breath, "What do you need me to do?"

"I'm here to find out if there is a cave under another signal tower from those materials. How about you prepare the supplies?" Eric asked in an almost pleading tone, "I know I shouldn't take you to risk, but if we If you want to get out of here alive, this may be the only way,"

Wei Ran nodded, and happily agreed, "Okay, I'll prepare the supplies."

Hearing this, Eric was obviously relieved, and immediately got up and walked to the shelf, looking for clues about another cave that didn't know whether it existed or not.

Glancing at Eric who seemed to have regained hope, Wei Ran shook his head secretly, got up and walked towards the entrance of the cave, and moved the frozen canvas tent on the sleigh into the cave with difficulty. The fire was baking the icicles on it.

Under the busy work of the two, the canvas tents and sleeping bags weighing more than 30 kilograms gradually became dry and soft, and the few ingredients in the inner cave were all cooked, and then brought outside to freeze. An ice cube that immediately enters the mouth.

Even the tent where Eric and Professor Jonas lived was dug up by the two against the blizzard, and some cooked and frozen seafood and a large box were dug out from the snow that was a meter thick. Preservable vegetables and a few unopened bottles of potato wine.

When another short day fell, Eric, who had almost turned the entire cave upside down, finally let out a cheer.

"Victor look at this!"

Eric held a notebook with a plastic cover and shouted excitedly, "Relay station maintenance records! There really is a relay station there! And it seems that there is really a maintenance warehouse!"

"Is there a specific location?" Wei Ran came up and asked.

"Yes! Of course there is!"

Eric flipped through the plastic leather book excitedly, showing the obviously hand-painted map on the last page and said, "We just need to follow this map to find it, and it even shows the locations where avalanches are prone to occur and precautions!"

"Wait for the blizzard to stop now"

Wei Ran took the notebook and looked at it. The content recorded in it is extremely detailed, such as which day of the year the routine maintenance of the relay station was carried out, the battery was replaced, or an avalanche was encountered during the routine maintenance , who was injured or who was buried under the snow and was not rescued, etc.

It can be seen that the people working in this weather station at that time were very serious and boring at the same time, otherwise, they wouldn't have used such ignorant rumors such as "I found a few arctic foxes dancing in circles under the aurora by the way" Put that bullshit in the maintenance log.

Returning the plastic leather book to Eric, the latter thought for a while, and tore off a blank sheet of paper from the last page of the book, then took out a pen and wrote something in Norwegian, which Wei Ran could not understand.

Seeing Wei Ran looking at him curiously, Eric put away his pen and explained, "If Leo comes back and finds that we are gone, he will definitely go to us, so I will leave a message for him in advance, so that if he comes back , at least you don’t have to look for us anymore, then we will never be able to touch each other.”

"If you had been so careful earlier, you wouldn't have ended up in this situation." Wei Ran muttered to himself, and simply changed the topic to the blizzard outside the cave that still didn't stop.

While the two waited patiently, two full days passed before the wind outside the cave gradually weakened, and finally stopped completely, and even above their heads, a strange aurora surged.

The two didn't dare to waste time. After eating and drinking enough and changing the medicine for the wound on Eric's head, they immediately lit up the four kerosene lamps they had found from the cave in advance and hung them around the sleigh cart full of supplies. , Then the two put on their snowshoes and each picked up a thumb-thick climbing rope, pulled the sled car all the way north, and left the valley and the warm cave along the slowly rising terrain.

(End of this chapter)