Her humours appealed to him, even though he could not possibly understand them completely. Everything she did, and the way she did it, and indeed everything connected with her, was coming to have a vital interest for him. He could not know how the anguished fear in that mother-seal's eyes had touched her heart, how she had yearned to pick up that sleek little baby and fondle it in her arms, how she had been hoping and longing to see them again, how great her disappointment had been. She felt bereft and went off early to bed. Wulf lay smoking and thinking till night fell, and then went up to do sentry. He paced the deck till midnight, saw no sign of movement aboard the 'Jane and Mary,' and went below and was soon sound asleep. He woke once with a start, believing he had heard a footstep. Then a ripple clop-clopped against the side of the ship and he lay down again satisfied. He was awakened again by a hand gripping his shoulder, and, starting up, found a ghostly white figure bending over him, and The Girl's voice in his ear, "There is something wrong. Can you not smell it?" For a moment he imagined her dreaming. Then his nose warned him that she was right. There was something unusual in the atmosphere. Even when their fire was no more than a heap of gray ashes with a golden core, and one of their lee ports was open, the faint, not unpleasant smell of wood smoke hung about the cabin. But this was quite different,--an acrid, pungent smell as of burning fat. He glanced at the fire and raked his mind for an explanation of it. "It is worse in my room," she said, and he went quietly to the sacred little passage off which her sleeping-apartment opened. Yes, it was worse there, and what it meant he could not imagine. "You have not been burning anything?" he asked. "Nothing. The horrid smell wakened me." He turned and ran up the companion-steps, with a vague idea that something in the hold might have caught fire, though how that could be was beyond him. There was nothing there but their reserve stores, and certainly nothing that could take fire of its own accord. Besides, it was two days since he had been down there, and he never took a light, as the hatch, when shoved askew, gave all that was needed. He fumbled the bolts of the little doors open, but the doors seemed jammed. He pushed. They remained firm. He made sure of the bolts again and put his shoulder to the doors. They resisted all his efforts. "Good Lord!" he said, in something of a panic. "What's all this?" He brushed hastily down past The Girl again, groped for his boots by the side of his blankets, pulled them on, and picked up his axe, with the certainty in his mind that something wrong was toward and it was as well to be fully armed. Then he smashed away at the woodwork till it was in fragments, and he could climb up through the bristling splinters and over an unexpected plank that had somehow got across the doors and prevented their opening.