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.
The small crowd in the street, however, seemed in no mind to hinder us. Possibly experience had taught them composure. At any rate they were apathetic, though curious enough to follow us down to the quay and stand watching whilst we embarked our unconscious burdens. A lamp burned foggily at the head of the steps by which we descended to the waterside, and looking up I saw the child who had called herself Meliar-Ann standing in the circle of it, and gazing down upon the embarkation with dark unemotional eyes. Hartnoll spied her too, and waved his recovered dirk triumphantly. She paid him no heed at all.
"But look here," said the lieutenant, turning on me, "we can't take you on board to-night—and without your chests. Oh yes—I have your names; Rodd and Hartnoll… and a deuced lucky thing for you we tumbled upon you as we did. But Captain Suckling's orders were—and I heard him give 'em, with my own ears—to fetch you off to-morrow morning. From the Blue Posts, eh? Well, just you run back, or Blue Billy,"—by this irreverent name, as I learned later, the executive officers of his Majesty's Navy had agreed to know Mr. Benjamin Sheppard, proprietor of the Blue Posts: a solid man, who died worth sixty thousand pounds—"or Blue Billy will be sending round the crier."
"But, sir, we don't know where to find the Blue Posts!"
He stared at me, turning with his foot on the boat's gunwale. "Why, God bless the boy! you've only to turn to your left and follow your innocent nose for a hundred and fifty yards, and you'll run your heads against the doorway."
We watched the boat as it pushed off. A few of the crowd still lingered on the quay's edge, and it has since occurred to me to wonder that, as Hartnoll and I turned and ascended the steps, no violence was offered to us. We had come out to flaunt our small selves in his Majesty's uniform. Here, if ever, was proof of the respect it commanded; and we failed to notice it. Meliar-Ann had disappeared. The loungers on the quay-head let us pass unmolested, and, following the lieutenant's directions, sure enough within five minutes we found ourselves under the lamp of the Blue Posts!
The night-porter eyed us suspiciously before admitting us. "A man might say that you've made a pretty fair beginning," he ventured; but I had warned Hartnoll to keep his chin up, and we passed in with a fine show of haughty indifference.
At eight o'clock next morning Hartnoll and I were eating our breakfast when the waiter brought a visitor to our box—a tallish midshipman about three years our senior, with a face of the colour of brickdust and a frame that had outgrown his uniform.
"Good-morning, gentlemen," said he; "and I daresay you guess my business. I'm to take you on board as soon as you can have your boxes ready."
We asked him if he would do us the honour to share our breakfast: whereupon he nodded.