By the third day the room in the ship was located very far from the sea, and very high from the water. They stayed an additional day in order to recover.
By the seventh day they started to search for a way out of the metallic box. The top had no exit. What was left to do? The sides were too thin to grab hold of, and the bottom had no where else to go. The men walked around, tried to think, tried to understand. There was no one to talk to. They all felt lonely. To them it was more than just a feeling, it was a destiny.
The sun shined brightly, but they all felt gloomy. And then the sun changed. It became red, like blood. It became late. The early evening turned into a dark night. Mabula turned to a corner and stood there. His head was down in despair. He cried.
He cried loud and cried hard. "What are we doing?" he thought. "We have no way out of here. We're trapped. We'll die here. This is the end." he thought.
He felt lonely. He felt helpless. He felt trapped. He felt like crying. He cried. He cried loud and hard, just like he did the first day.
The remaining men continued to search around the room. There was nothing to do but wait for death. And they waited. Mabula had never felt so helpless in his life. He had cried himself out. He felt exhausted.
He felt dead. He knew the end was coming. All of them knew it. The search was useless. Yet they continued to search.
Anmar turned around quickly to approach him. He looked into Mabula's eyes and asked "Are you okay?" He patted his shoulder lightly.
"Yeah yeah," Mabula replied. "I'm fine." but he sighed. The silence continued.
The men waited. And then they heard a noise. They turned to face the noise. The noise was coming from the wall, next to the door. "What is it?" said Anmar. "It's like.. a scratching noise.." he added.
They all listened to the noise. It really looked like a scratching noise, like something was drawing on the wall. "What the hell is it?" asked Anmar. He turned to face the door. "In here.. something is scratching around here." he added.
Gorat looked around the room. He took a few steps towards the wall. "It looks like.. writing.. or something." he said.
"Writing?!" exclaimed Mabula. The other men approached the wall and joined him. They all observed the writing on the wall carefully. There was indeed some kind of writing, although it was not really a language, at least not the language they knew. There were lines and lines of strange signs, of strange drawings, and of strange writing. In one corner they discovered a picture of a ship, of a strange pirate ship. At the bottom corner of the picture it was written something in the strange language. They approached the picture to decipher the writing, but Mabula stopped them.
"What is it?" asked Gorat. "What does the writing say?"
"We should not touch anything here." he replied. He shook his head.
"Why?" said another one of the men. "We need to find out what this means. Can't you read this language?"
Mabula shook his head again. He stared at the picture. There were more pictures of ships with strange writing somewhere else. Besides, in a different corner of the room, there was a picture of a plant, an unusual plant. It was strange but looked familiar. All the men looked at the pictures, but nobody dared touch them.
"It's just pictures." said Guntor, the youngest man of the group.
"Those pictures.. at least the drawing of the plant, looks familiar," replied Anmar. "But the pictures of the ships, or pirates, I don't really know. But I know what I know. We should not touch these pictures. There is no point of touching the pictures, and no point of pretending to understand something that we don't understand. It is useless."
"Can't we just take a look at the drawing of the ship?" said Duren. "If we can't understand any of it, maybe it will help.