Smilla’s discovery of Mayam aboard the Kronos turns an unexplained alteration in the ship’s interior into material proof of a smuggling operation. Behind a newly fitted plywood wall, she and the mechanic find a refrigerator packed to look like ordinary provisions; inside its rice boxes is a dense yellowish substance. The concealment connects the cargo to Tørk and Verlaine’s arrangement and helps explain how Jakkelsen’s discovery of the scheme led to his death.

The Concealed Compartment

The search begins with a discrepancy in Smilla’s measurements. The wall stands more than five feet from the hydraulic rudder system, and she wants to know why there is a generator-like object behind it. Rather than fetch the mallet Smilla points out, the mechanic examines the molding and its nail holes. The wood is fresh. He pulls away the paneling, revealing a plywood sheet about half an inch thick and six yards square, fixed with roughly fifteen nails along each side.

Behind the false wall stands a stainless-steel refrigerator six feet tall and three feet wide. Metal fittings secure it against the ship’s rolling, while a cylinder lock closes its door. The pair remove the fittings and shift the refrigerator into the room. The mechanic unscrews its back panel, carefully pocketing the screws, and exposes the cords, cooling grid, compressors, and fluid tank. The reveal is deliberately prosaic: they are looking at the ordinary machinery of a refrigerator, but its presence in this concealed space makes the appliance evidence of a second use for the ship.

Rice Boxes and Mayam

The refrigerator is filled with neatly stacked square boxes that appear to contain rice. The mechanic opens one and lifts out a boiler bag. Its contents are not rice but a vacuum-packed, dense yellowish substance. When he slices the bag open, air enters with a small sigh and dark, lumpy powder spills into his hand. Its texture is compared to melted butter mixed with hourglass sand. He checks several other boxes at random, then returns them carefully to their places.

Smilla identifies the substance as Mayam, an intermediate stage between raw opium and heroin. Its high oil content explains why the product must be refrigerated. The refrigerator is therefore not merely a hidden store: its cooling system is part of the cargo’s practical concealment and preservation. After the inspection, the mechanic replaces the back covering, pushes the refrigerator back into position, restores the plywood, and hammers the panel into place. Their attempt to leave the secret undisturbed cannot undo what they have learned.

The Smuggling Arrangement

Smilla connects the concealed Mayam to information Ravn had given her: Tørk developed the product, and it is Verlaine’s share of an agreement between the two men. She reasons that the Kronos is expected to call at a Greenland port on its return journey, perhaps Holsteinsborg or Nuuk, and considers whether Verlaine has connections through the Greenland Star. The specific port remains uncertain; what is clear to her is that the ship’s concealed cargo belongs to a commercial arrangement extending beyond the vessel.

Smilla sets that arrangement against the changing scale of trade in Greenland. Liquor and cigarettes were smuggled north only ten years earlier, she observes, but that belongs to a vanished period. Nuuk now has a large cocaine market and a Greenlandic upper class living in a European manner. In her account, the Mayam shipment is not an isolated cache but part of a larger market whose growth has made the old forms of smuggling obsolete.

Jakkelsen’s Discovery and the Cost of Knowing

The refrigerator also helps Smilla reconstruct Jakkelsen’s part in the violence surrounding the cargo. She concludes that he must have discovered the Mayam and then exposed himself: high and overconfident, he applied pressure, forcing the others to act. She says Tørk handled the telegram for them because he had to, while also emphasizing that Tørk and Verlaine hate one another. Their cooperation is tactical, sustained by mutual use rather than trust; they come from different worlds but can profit from the same scheme.

The find therefore changes the meaning of the hidden space and sharpens the stakes of Smilla’s investigation. A wall displaced from the rudder system, fresh molding, and an apparently ordinary refrigerator resolve into a system for hiding a valuable drug product. The rice boxes disguise the cargo; refrigeration accommodates its physical properties; and the Kronos provides a means of moving it toward a market. At the same time, Jakkelsen’s fate warns what can follow when someone discovers the arrangement and tries to exploit that knowledge.