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.
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.