"Nor yet no Mrs. Tickle nor Mrs. Pottle," said the other. Whereupon each took another drink at the rumbullion to calm their nerves, which, in truth, needed little calming, since this was not the first battle, or rather bombardment, in which these good ladies had taken part. For, in those days of a century and a half ago, it was common enough for the wives of the petty officers and the lower-deck men to sail on board ships with their husbands, they doing much such work therein as, in these days, is done by soldier's wives who are on the "strength of the regiment." They could also turn their hands to other things, even as Mrs. Tickle and Mrs. Pottle were now doing. For they were almost always excellent nurses, understanding much about wounds and fevers and other complaints, and quite capable of working under, and sometimes of advising, the raw sawbones whom the Admiralty sent into the ships of war to cure--or kill--the sailors. "Is the battle over?" Mrs. Thorne asked feebly, opening her eyes now as she spoke, and endeavouring in her newly-developed maternal love, to turn them down upon the tiny mite lying on her breast. "Over, deary!" said Mrs. Tickle, sinking the character of the inferior woman who was in the presence of the superior, and speaking only as a good-hearted, motherly creature, which indeed she was, to another who needed her care. "Not yet, poor lamb. Lawk's sakes," she whispered to her comrade, "can't she hear the guns a-belching? Ah! drat you all," she muttered, as at this moment a larboard broadside bellowed forth, causing the ship to tremble at her keelson; "that's them lower deck twenty-four pounders at it again. Poor dear, she don't seem to hear or feel them, anyhow." She should have done so, indeed she must have done so, since even as the roaring continued, while the _Ariadne_ was brought round so that now her starboard broadside could be fired, she lifted her arms feebly and enfolded more tightly to her breast than she had done before the little atom she had but recently brought into the world. "My child," she moaned, "my child! Oh what can your future be with such a beginning as this? What shocks and tempests must threaten the existence that commences in such turbulence and throes as these." "You 'ear," said the master-at-arms' wife to the wife of the ship's corporal, "you 'ear! She is quite calm and full of understanding. Ah! poor dear." Whereupon she stretched out her hand once more for the can of rumbullion.