After a short rest, Wei Ran and Gale once again devoted themselves to the work of clearing the snow. Even the sick Dorian and Kantan came over to help with some work within their capabilities.
"Uncle Kantan, something is wrong." Gale pushed out a bundle of dead branches from the bear cave, "There seems to be another layer below."
"Is there another floor?" Kantan was stunned, "basement?"
"may be"
Gale said uncertainly, "Victor and I have been cleaning down along the corner of the wall, but it is already almost one meter deep, and there are still a lot of burnt wood and dead branches below."
"And a wall of charred logs appeared around it."
Wei Ran, who was wearing a gas mask on his face, responded in a sullen voice, "The stone wall is outside the log wall. There seems to be a basement here."
“Looks like we’re in good luck.”
Kantan handed the dead branches and burnt wood that Gale pushed out to Dorian behind him, who loaded them into the sled bucket, and then sent them to the tent as backup fuel after gathering a cart.
.
"Uncle Kantan, how about we demolish the collapsed layer above?"
Gale, who could already stand up in the bear cave, leaned out half of his body, pointed to the slope above his head and said, "If we continue to clean it down, it will definitely collapse. We might as well tear it down and build a new one on top.
As long as we cover the roof with snow, even if the Germans stand nearby, they probably won’t notice us.”
"Cover it again?"
Wei Ran and Kantan were both stunned. The former finally knew the origin of the shelter, while the latter was shocked by this big project.
But soon, Kantan nodded, "It sounds okay, but..."
"We have a lot of time don't we?"
Gale simply asked Wei Ran to climb out, and then pointed to the slope on the wall and said, "It is not difficult to dismantle it. At most, it will just be a little more troublesome to clean up. Then we can dig out half of it and use canvas
Cover it and start other work slowly, so at least you don't have to worry about the bonfire being discovered."
"Victor, what do you think?" Kantan looked at Wei Ran.
"I think this is a good idea."
Wei Ran agreed without thinking, then pointed to the two logs in the distance and reminded, "Don't forget we also have a chain saw, and there are two logs outside that are thick and long enough, just like Gale
I mean, the hardest part may just be the cleaning work.”
Kantan looked up at the night sky where there was still no starlight, and finally nodded, "In this case, we will demolish this place now!"
Hearing this, Wei Ran immediately breathed a sigh of relief, but Gale had already hurried to the tent and fetched two pickaxes.
"Do you still have the strength?" Wei Ran asked after taking the pickaxe.
"Of course!" As Gale spoke, he had already inserted the tip of the pickaxe into the gap in the remaining stone wall and started to use force.
Seeing this, Wei Ran followed suit and found a gap on the other vertical wall and started to exert force.
As the saying goes, it is always easier to destroy than to build. It only took the two of them more than ten minutes to remove a few stones. The ruins of the building that had persisted for an unknown period of time completely collapsed with a crash.
After completing the dismantling work, everyone returned to the warm tent, each holding a lunch box filled with broth to fill their stomachs. Then they sat on the thick, soft and warm bear skin and discussed the next topic with great enthusiasm.
Construction plan.
Compared with Wei Ran who is full of physical strength and energy, these few mouthfuls of broth are absolutely crucial for Gale and others who continue to replenish their nutrition. This job of building a shelter seems to have become the three of them invisibly.
The motivation for people to live and the substitute for Quentin's worries.
In the following time, Wei Ran followed these three weak but energetic Frenchmen and devoted all his energy to the cleaning work.
Cleaning up the debris of the building, sleeping, drinking broth, eating baked potatoes, and even changing the dressing for Kantan. After the hour hand of the seized watch on Kantan's wrist turned four and a half times, most of the foundation had been cleared.
.
Today, around this foundation, which is about four meters wide and five meters long, there remains a ring of stone walls that are only less than 30 centimeters high. A ring of wooden walls arranged with logs deep into the ground has also been exposed on the inside of the stone wall.
Further inside, there are various charred wooden beams, wooden boards, and even some fragments of furniture that can barely be seen.
"I'm becoming more and more curious about what happened here." Gale bent down and picked up the barrel of a double-barreled shotgun, looked at it, and threw it away far away.
"Decades from now, some people will be curious about what happened here..."
Wei Ran muttered secretly, cleared his throat and asked, "Uncle Kangtan, how long do we have until we can rest?"
Hearing this, Kantan rolled up his sleeves and looked at it, "Half an hour. In another half hour or so, we can rest for twenty minutes."
"Speed up." Before Wei Ran could finish his words, he had already picked up a bundle of dead branches used as bedding for brown bears and handed them to Dorian.
"You have really good physical strength," Gale muttered enviously, panting, picking up a bundle of dead branches and handing it to Kantan.
With everyone's busy work, the pine branches laid out by the brown bears for hibernation were gradually cleared, and then a mixture of frozen soil and charcoal began to appear underneath.
"Look what I found!"
Gale let out a cheer after lifting up a charred wooden board. Under the dim flashlight beam, he discovered that a rusty iron bucket more than half a meter high and as thick as a washbasin was buried in the frozen soil.
The end of the iron bucket exposed from the soil had a similarly rusty handle, which could obviously be opened.
"Bring it up, it can just be used as a fireplace." After Kantan finished speaking, he said regretfully, "Forget it, there's no need to lift it up, just put it there and see what else is around."
"Let me open this iron bucket first and see what's inside."
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! Gale handed the flashlight to Wei Ran, grabbed the handle with both hands and pulled hard, and took off the lid with a loud banging noise.
When Wei Ran aimed the flashlight beam at the inside of the iron barrel, what he saw were tools such as rusty nails, axes and saws. Just from the carbonized ax handle and saw handle, you can tell that these
Things must have been burned in the fire for a long time to look like this.
"It doesn't look like there's much use for it." Gale threw away the lid in disappointment.
"This iron bucket is the best harvest."
Wei Ran looked around, then looked up at the snowflakes still flying above his head, and suggested, "Can we take a rest first and discuss how to add a cover to the basement and move it in? We can hide then.
Slowly clean up the dirt and char inside."
"Victor has a point."
Regardless of whether it was the rest time they had agreed upon before, Kantan greeted Wei Ran and Gale to leave the foundation, and together they returned to the tent not far away.
By the time Dorian poured everyone a cup of boiling pine needle water, Kantan had already used four small wooden sticks to place a word "mouth" in the snow. "This is the remaining basement of the house, and it is also the future."
Our home all winter long.”
Everyone looked at each other and smiled. Kantan picked up the fifth wooden stick and put it on it. He changed "口" to "曰" and continued, "Just like Victor suggested, we have a chain saw and two other sticks next to it.
Log. I was thinking about it just now. We can saw the relatively thin one in half vertically, and put one half in the center of the foundation as the main beam."
"Why don't we use a whole stick? That would definitely be much stronger." Dorian asked, sniffling.
"Can't lift"
Wei Ran, Gale and Kantan all gave the same answer in unison, and Kantan even took the initiative to explain, "Even the thin one is still waist thick. Even if we only use half of it, just the few of us can get it over."
It’s also a physical job.”
"That's right." Dorian touched the back of his head.
Kantan smiled and continued, "Let's divide the remaining half into two as sub-beams."
Before he finished speaking, Kantan had already added two more horizontal lines to the word "曰" placed on the ground with wooden sticks. "Then there is the thickest log. We saw it into planks and laid them on it. Finally, we put the top
The tent was disassembled and spread on top to make it waterproof, so that even if we keep burning the stove inside in the future, we don’t have to worry about water leaking down.”
"The branches we cleared out before can also be spread on them to keep warm." Gale suggested on the side. "After we move in, we can dig up all the dirt and charcoal in the basement and spread them on top.
"
"I have a question," Dorian, the youngest, said again, "Gentlemen, have we forgotten that we need a door?"
"There really needs to be a door, I almost forgot."
Kantan took a sip of the hot pine needle water and said, "We can reserve a place first and slowly dig out the door after we move in. Before that, it's enough to leave a temporary entrance and exit."
After discussing the next construction plan in a few words, everyone rested around the stove for a while. Gale immediately moved out the two-man chain saw and was the first to move towards the two crisscrossed logs not far away.
Kantan took a dead branch and measured the size, then used an ax to chop in the middle of the log, which was as thick as a 200-liter oil drum. "Saw it from here. This length is enough."
Hearing this, Gale immediately started the chain saw, and with Wei Ran's help, easily sawed it in half.
After being initially familiar with the use of this antique chain saw, the next work was much simpler for Wei Ran, who was new to it. With the cooperation of him and Gale, the two sections of logs that were cut out were all sawn into one piece.
A three- to four-centimetre-thick wooden board was opened. The slightly thinner log at the bottom was also cut into two vertically, and one of the logs was sawed vertically again into two equal pieces.
While the two of them were carpenters, the two patients, Kantan and Dorian, were also not idle. They had used axes and pickaxes to carve out depressions in the stone wall around the foundation that could fix the three main beams.
