And even now, as each of these women in the cabin listened to the uproar without, that uproar seemed to increase. Half a dozen vessels were firing at once; the battery which had been constructed ashore by those who had landed overnight was adding to the tumult; the bo'sun's pipes were heard whistling like some shrill-voiced bird that sings its loudest amidst the violence of a summer storm; the master-gunner's voice was heard on board the _Ariadne_ giving his orders. And there came too, the sound of a hideous crash in the vessel, the rending of timbers, the shrieks of sailors, who were doubtless wounded--bellows, shouts and curses. "The ship is struck," said Mrs. Tickle, calm and tranquil as became a sailor's wife who had been in battle before. "Pray Heaven 'tis not below the water-line." "Nor that the magazine is set afire," said Mrs. Pottle, also with heroic coolness. "Otherwise we have got our passage to Davy Jones. Yet," she continued, the woman rising above the Amazon, "I have three poor little children at home in Portsmouth town. And one is a'most blind. God help them, what shall they do if Pottle and I have got our discharge!" While, even as she spoke of her children, that other child, the newly-born babe present in the cabin, set up a piteous infantine wail. Little, unconscious creature as it was, bearing a brain but an hour old, it seemed to recognise, to have some glimmering of the terrors that enveloped it. And while it did so the ship listed to starboard, causing Mrs. Thorne's body to move somewhat, and, at the same moment, the white, delicate hands seemed to strain the infant closer to her; the liquor can, too, was upset, whereby the drink went slopping over the cabin carpet. But the other two matrons were not to be stopped, even at that moment, from doing their duty. Mrs. Tickle sprang up and held the ailing woman tightly in her berth, as she muttered-- "The ship has listed four degrees. Yet she goes no further. They have stopped the water from pouring in. Go, Pottle, and find the surgeon. He must come here, even though he quits the wounded for an instant." Whereon Mrs. Pottle went forth, a heroine still, though a white, pale-faced one. A heroine, not thinking of her own life--now in deadly peril!--but only of the little children at home in Portsmouth town. Above all, she thought of the half-blind one who could never do aught for itself when it grew up. She thought of it, and wondered who would protect it when she and her husband were gone. "My husband, my husband!" wailed Mrs. Thorne, as she and the other woman were left alone. "My husband! Will he not come to me? To me. To his wife and new-born babe. Oh! my husband. Why comes he not?" "Dear heart," exclaimed Mrs. Tickle, "he cannot come. His duty is on deck. Duty before all." Then she bent her head a little nearer to the other's, and said, "We are sailors' wives. Our duty first. Duty before all," she repeated.