"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.