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“Hands off!” I gasped, half-choked, but fighting to break away.

“All right, my game-cock!” A man’s knuckles pressed themselves firmly into the nape of my neck. “Hullo! By gosh, sir, if it ain’t a midshipman!”

“A midshipman?” said a voice of command. “Slew him round here. . . . So it is, by George! . . . and a nice time of night! Hold him up, bo’sun–you needn’t be choking the lad. Now then, boy, what’s your name and ship?”

“Rodd, sir–of the Melpomene–and there’s another inside–” I began.

“The Melpomene!”

“Yes, sir: and there’s my friend inside, and for all I know they’re murdering him. . . . A lot of men dressed up as women. . . . His name’s Hartnoll–” I struggled to make away for another rush at the door, and had my heel against it, when it gave way and Hartnoll came flying out into the night. The officer, springing past me, very cleverly thrust in a foot before it could be closed again.

“Men dressed as women, you say?”

“It’s an old trick, sir,” panted the bo’sun, pushing forward. “I’ve knowed it played ever since I served on a press. If you’ll let the boys draw covert, sir . . . they’ve had a blank night, an’ their tempers’ll be the better for it.”

He planted his shoulder against the door, begging for the signal, and the crew closed up around the step with a growl.

“My dirk!” pleaded Hartnoll. “I was getting it away, but one of ’em half-broke my arm and I dropped it again in the passage.”

“Hey? Stolen your dirk–have they? That’s excuse enough. . . . Right you are, men, and in you go!”

He waved his cocked hat to them as a huntsman lays on his hounds. In went the door with a crash, and in two twos I was swept up and across the threshold and surging with them down the passage. By reason of my inches I could see nothing of what was happening ahead. I heard a struggle, and in the midst of it a hand went up and smashed the lamp over the stairway, plunging us all in total darkness. But the lieutenant had his lantern ready, and by the rays of it the sailors burst open the locked door at the end and flung themselves upon the Amazons before the candles could be extinguished. At the same moment the lieutenant called back an order over my head to his whippers-in, to find their way around and take the house in the rear.

The women, though overmatched, fought like cats–or like bull-dogs rather. They were borne down to the floor, but even here for a while the struggle heaved and swayed this way and that, and I had barely time to snatch up one of the candles before table, bottles, glasses, went over in a general ruin. Above the clatter of it and the cursing, as I turned to stick the candle upright in a bottle on the dresser, I heard a cheer raised from somewhere in the back premises, and two men came rushing from the inner room–two men in feminine skirts, the one naked to the waist, the other clad about his chest and neck with a loose flannel shirt and a knotted Belcher handkerchief.

They paused for just about the time it would take you to count five; paused while they drew themselves up for the charge; and the lieutenant, reading the battle in their faces–and no ordinary battle either–shouted to close the door. He shouted none too soon. In a flash the pair were upon us, and at the first blow two sailors went down like skittles. There must have been at least twenty sailors in the room, and all of them willing, yet in that superb charge the pair drove them like sheep, and the naked man had even time to drag the dresser from the clamps fastening it to the wall and hurl it down between himself and three seamen running to take him in flank. The candle went down with it: but the lieutenant, skipping back to the closed door, very pluckily held up his lantern and called on his men, in the same breath forbidding them to use their cutlasses yet. In the circumstances this was generous, and I verily believe he would have been killed for it–the pair being close upon him and their fists going like hammers–had not one of the seamen whipped out a piece of rope and, ducking low, dived under the naked man’s guard and lassoed him by the ankles. Two others, who had been stretched on the floor, simultaneously grabbed his companion by the skirts and wound their arms about his knees: and so in a trice both heroes were brought to ground. Even so they fought on until quieted by two judicious taps with the hilt of the boatswain’s cutlass. I honestly thought he had killed them, but was assured they were merely stunned for the time. The boatswain, it appeared, was an expert, and had already administered the same soothing medicine to two or three of the more violent among the ladies; though loath to do so (he explained), because it sometimes gave the crowd a wrong impression when the bodies in this temporary state of inanition were carried out.