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.