looked around. They were in a brick pit with dry fir branches at the bottom. The top was about three meters up, the sky overhead was still blue.
"Quite a deep one!" the boy sighed. "It's all three meters high."
"Vanya, where are we, ah?" Masha asked.
"I cannot be absolutely sure, but, most likely, we fell down in a sort of a mine. In any case, this pit is man-made."
"What should we do now?" Masha began to whimper again, huddled herself up in a corner and lapped the shabby and dirty doll.
"First of all, it's too late to whimper." Vanya told. "You should have thought earlier, when you ran into the forest."
"You must have also thought, when hopped over the tree," the girl replied to the brother's reproach and started to sob even more. "This ugly bear can have already eaten mommy and daddy. Now it will come here and eat us. Mom! Mommy!"
Vanya suddenly understood that it was not the right time to give his little sister a lecture. She was already really frightened, mazed and depressed."
"Please, don't say that," he told. "Our parents are alive. We didn't see anything and we don't know, where the bear headed, when we ran away. Maybe it got back in the wood at once. You must have seen how I hit the bear right in its nose, when it tried to get into the cabin!"
"We'll never know. We'll never get out of here."
"We'll soon figure out something," Vanya did not give up.
"Aha, we'll wait till the bear comes here!"
"Don't be afraid, Masha. If only it comes here, I will also break its tooth or gouge out its eye with a stone," the boy showed heroism tapping the walls of the earth jail. "Let's better try to get out of here. Now, I'm about 145 centimeters tall. And you?"
"120," replied Masha wiping tears on her cheeks.
"It means, in total we have… we have 145 plus 120–265 centimeters. Thus, we need plus 35 centimeters to get three meters."
"So what?"
"We'll compensate the shortage in height with bricks. There!" Vanya bent down, searched under the branches and pulled out a brick. "You see, if we collect six more of these and put them one onto another, we'll get the missing 35 centimeters. Did you get it?"
"Got it, got it."
"If you got it, let's search."
Vanya and Masha started creeping across the pit searching for other bricks. They crept through the length and breadth of the pit, examined the whole bottom. Eventually, they found five more bricks.
"One brick is missing," the boy concluded. "This doesn't mean anything. It must work without that one."
Vanya piled the bricks at the wall forming a small tower.
"Now, let's try," Vanya said kneeling. "Masha, get on my shoulders."
Holding on to the wall, Masha carefully got on Vanya's shoulders. After he felt that his little sister is standing securely, Vanya first slowly stood up on his feet, then in the same way got on the bricks.
"Well, do your hands reach the end of the pit?"
"I can reach it with my fingers, but that is not enough," Masha told from above.
"Heck! Try to raise yourself on tiptoes."
Masha tried to reach out on her tiptoes, but did not have much success. Two additional centimeters did not change the situation.
"I still cannot grip hands on it."
"What is to do, what is to do? What is to do?" Vanya started repeating feverishly, trying to find an answer at the back of his mind. Suddenly, an idea struck him and Vanya even shuddered. "What a fool I am! You are standing on my shoulders, but you can get onto my head. Try it! Just be careful."
Masha with great caution stepped onto the top of her brother's head and instantly with confidence gripped hands on the end of the pit.
"I did it!" Masha cried joyfully.
"Now chin up, get out of the pit and look for a long stick so that I could climb out of here," Vanya explained.
Masha tried to chin up, but she could not do it. She tried many times, but the girl only grunted and puffed.
"I cannot get up. I have weak hands," the girl confessed in the end and asked: "Maybe, you'll get on my shoulders and I'll support you?"
"Aha, I'm too heavy for you. Get down then," Vanya told Masha. "Enough dancing on my head."
"I'll stand it," Masha told confidently and jumped off on the soft bottom of the pit.
"Just forget it."
"Vanya, I'll really stand it."
"What have I done to get it!" Vanya cried out grabbing one of the bricks he found and throwing it at the far-end wall of the pit.
The brick making wide rolls and somersaults flew over the whole three-meter pit and hit the wall. But the hit was quite strange. It sounded like the brick hit something made of iron.
When Vanya heard that sound, he instantly grew suspicious. He came to the place of the hit, examined it carefully, tested it thoroughly and then started to hop as if he had made a great discovery.
"Indeed, a hatch! Masha, there is a hatch here."
"Why should a hatch be here?"
"I don't know why, but it is here!" Vanya said and tapped at the iron. "Maybe, it was a drain previously."
Vanya pulled the hatch one time than another. It did not accede at once, but after all opened unwillingly with a nasty squeal. A fresh wind could be smelled inside.
"We must check what's in there," Vanya waved at the darkness of the hatch. "I'll check quickly, and you wait me here. OK?"
"No way, I will not stay here alone!"
"OK, let's get in there together. I'll be the first, and you follow me!"
"Why is that?" Masha opposed. "Why will you be the first? Maybe, I want to be the first?!"
"No problems," the brother replied calmly taking out a flashlight brought to be on the safe side from the backpack. "Be the first. Only it's tight, dark and fearsome in there, and if you meet a horde of fat hungry rats or man eater spiders, you'll fight them yourself."
"Yuck!" the girl made a wry face. "No, I've changed my mind, I'll follow you."
"That's it," Vanya looked into the dark tunnel, sighed and put his backpack on his shoulders again. Then he switched on the flashlight and crept into the mysterious tunnel.
"Keep up!" he told disappearing in the dark. Masha rushed after him.
The tunnel was neatly lined with wine-dark flat stones. When light beams fell on the stones, they reflected moonlight gleams, and then like charged with their heat, the stones continued to gleam by themselves.
The corridor was long and often twisted, so the children had to take one turn or another. That way they covered a distance of several tens of meters.
"Ah, when will it come to an end?" Ivan heard girlish grizzle again behind his back. "Ouch, I've already skinned my knees and torn my favorite dress. What if there is a dead end ahead?"
"Then we turn back, it's not that we've already crept ten kilometers. Not a big deal! And now we…"
Bam! A bump against something hard sounded. This was Vanya who being carried away by a conversation with his sister bumped against another hatch. The flashlight fell out of his hand.
"What is it? What's happened? Rats? Spiders? Va-a-nya!" Masha madly pulled he brother by his pant leg.
"Nothing special," he said sadly scratching his bruised head. "It's just that I found… found another door."
"Well, come on, open it," the sister whinged in impatience. "Why are you so slow? Now, I should have been the first to go."
"The door stuck!"
"Pull the handle," the girl advised weightily.
"And what do you think I am doing,