The first thing he saw when he got on deck was a faint glow about the main-hatch opening, and smoke pouring out of it. Running to it, a glance showed him a fierce fire roaring somewhere down below. A cry of dismay at his side told him that The Girl had scrambled up after him. "The buckets," he jerked, and she sped back, tearing skin and garment on the splintered doors, while he sought and found a length of rope. His voice was steady again, though his hands shook with agitation, as he slipped one end of the rope through the handle of the bucket and held the two ends, while the bucket hung in the bight and so could be released instantly by loosing one end of the rope. He filled both buckets and with a hasty, "Hand them down to me and fill again as I throw them up," lowered himself into the hold. The fire was burning fiercely against the after starboard bulkhead, which, as it happened, was the one nearest The Girl's sleeping-cabin. Their lighter stores had been moved from their usual places and heaped about it and were blazing furiously. The bulkhead itself was on fire, but had apparently only just caught. Wulf flung his first bucketful at it, and it answered with a hiss like a snarling curse, and showed a red-starred black blotch amid the crawling yellow flames. He tossed the empty bucket up on deck, and gave the bulkhead another dose with his second, and as he tossed that one up the first came dangling down filled again. "Good girl!" he shouted exultantly, to reassure her. "Plenty more! We shall do it all right," and the full buckets came dangling down as fast as he could empty them. A score or so of bucketfuls ended it, and he climbed up, black with smoke and streaked with steam and sweat, and very grateful to be in fresh air again. The night was just thinning towards the dawn. The Girl was sitting on the coaming of the hatch in a state of collapse, her wet garment clinging clammily about her, her head in her hands, her slender figure shaken with convulsive sobs. His anger boiled furiously at thought of the malice that had planned her suffering--her possible death. Love and pity swelled his heart for her. She looked so utterly forlorn and broken with the fight. "It is all right, dear!"--he could not help it, it slipped out in spite of him. "Come away down to the cabin. You are shivering. You are wet through and torn to pieces. You have done splendidly, but it was an upsetting piece of business all round. Come!" and he put his arm under hers and drew her up. She was so limp, however, that he had almost to carry her, and the feel of her unconscious sobs under his enfolding arm quickened his blood again. At the companion-doors he had to release her and go back for his axe. A stout plank had been cunningly bound against the doors by a rope tied round the companion. His lips tightened sternly as he chopped the rope through and the plank fell to the deck.