"I will take the remainder of your watch, Rob," said the ensign, with a glance at his watch. "You only had a few minutes to serve anyway, and the next round of duty is mine." "Very well," said Rob; "to tell the truth, a nap would feel pretty good. I hope things will have cleared by the time I wake up." The boys went below, leaving the officer on the fog-circled deck. The mist gleamed on everything, the rays of the candle-lamp making them glisten as if water had been newly poured on them. Far off the hoarse hooting of the ship that had so nearly run them down was to be heard. "Narrow escape, that! Narrower than I quite care to admit, even to myself," mused the young officer. "I wonder if those lads realize how bad a fix we are in. I must confess I don't like the look of things at all." He fell to pacing the deck, and then decided to have a cigar. For this purpose he produced a perfecto from his pocket and lighted it. Then he fell to pacing the deck once more, thinking deeply. His cigar finished, he tossed it aside. Possibly it was his worry over their predicament that made him absent-minded in this regard, but instead of observing the rule of the sea to cast all such things overboard, he threw it to the deck. A lurch of the _Good Hope_ caused the glowing butt of the cigar to go rolling across the deck and to drop into the hold below. It was some time later that Paul Perkins came on deck to take his turn at the night vigil. As he came forward he was startled to see what appeared to be a ghostly figure, slightly darker than the fog, slip from the forward hold and glide across the deck toward the ensign, who was pacing up and down. Much startled, Paul called out aloud, and at the same instant a peculiar acrid odor came to his nostrils. "Something's burning!" he cried. Simultaneously he had come up to the side of the hatch and saw that smoke was pouring from it. What he had taken for a ghostly figure was a whirl of smoke. "Fire! Something's on fire below!" cried the boy, dashing forward. The ensign reached the edge of the hold as quickly. Together they peered over into the great open space below. Both involuntarily recoiled with a cry of horror and alarm at what they saw. The _Good Hope's_ hold was a mass of flames! To gaze into them was like looking into a red hot furnace. Adrift in a blinding fog, on a burning ship, and without boats, was a predicament the like of which their adventurous lives had never before encountered! The cigar so carelessly cast aside by the ensign had fallen upon a pile of sacking, grease-soaked and inflammable, lying in the former whaler's hold. Like all whale ships the timbers of the _Good Hope_ were literally soaked with grease, the result of whale oil and blubber. Such timbers burn like matchwood. Small wonder that, brave man as he was, and schooled against emotional display in the stern school of the Navy, the ensign should yet cry out: "If help does not arrive, we are doomed to die like rats!"