d 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 explain