"His masts!  Fire at his masts!" roared Dodd
to Monk, through his trumpet; he then got the
jib clear, and made what sail he could without
taking all the hands from the guns.

This kept the vessels nearly alongside a few
minutes, and the fight was hot as fire. The
pirate now for the first time hoisted his flag. It
was black as ink. His crew yelled as it rose: the
Britons, instead of quailing, cheered with fierce
derision; the pirate's wild crew of yellow
Malays, black chinless Papuans, and bronzed
Portuguese, served their side guns, 12-pounders,
well and with ferocious cries; the white Britons,
drunk with battle now, naked to the waist,
grimed with powder, and spotted like leopards
with blood, their own and their mates', replied with
loud undaunted cheers, and deadly hail of grape
from the quarter deck; while the master-gunner
and his mates, loading with a rapidity the mixed
races opposed could not rival, hulled the
schooner well between wind and water, and then
fired chain shot at her masts, as ordered, and
began to play the mischief with her shrouds and
rigging. Meantime, Fullalove and Kenealy, aided
by Vespasian, who loaded, were quietly butchering
the pirate crew two a minute, and hoped to
settle the question they were fighting for;
smooth bore v. rifle: but unluckily neither fired
once without killing; so "there was nothing
proven."

The pirate, bold as he was, got sick of fair
fighting first; he hoisted his mainsail and drew
rapidly ahead, with a slight bearing to windward,
and dismounted a carronade and stove
in the ship's quarter-boat, by way of a parting
kick.

The men hurled a contemptuous cheer after
him; they thought they had beaten him off. But
Dodd knew better. He was but retiring a little
way to make a more deadly attack than ever: he
would soon wear, and cross the Agra's defenceless
bows, to rake her fore and aft at pistol-shot
distance; or grapple, and board the
enfeebled ship two hundred strong.

Dodd flew to the helm, and with his own hands
put it hard a weather, to give the deck guns one
more chance, the last, of sinking or disabling the
Destroyer. As the ship obeyed, and a deck gun
bellowed below him, he saw a vessel running out
from Long Island, and coming swiftly up on his
lee quarter.

It was a schooner. Was she coming to his
aid?

Horror! A black flag floated from her foremast
head.

While Dodd's eyes were staring almost out of his
head at this death blow to hope, Monk fired again;
and just then a pale face came close to Dodd's,
and solemn voice whispered in his ear: "Our
ammunition is nearly done!" It was the first mate.

Dodd seized his hand convulsively, and pointed
to the pirate's consort coming up to finish them;
and said, with the calm of a brave man's despair,
"Cutlasses! and die hard!"

At that moment the master gunner fired his
last gun. It sent a chain shot on board the
retiring pirate, took off a Portuguese head and
spun it clean into the sea ever so far to windward,
and cut the schooner's foremast so nearly through
that it trembled and nodded, and presently snapped
with a loud crack, and came down like a broken tree,
with the yard and sail; the latter overlapping
the deck and burying itself black flag and all in
the sea; and there, in one moment, lay the
Destroyer buffeting and wriggling—like a heron on
the water with his long wing broken—an utter
cripple.

The victorious crew raised a stunning cheer.

"Silence!" roared Dodd, with his trumpet.
"All hands make sail!"

He set his courses, bent a new jib, and stood
out to windward close hauled, in hopes to make a
good offing, and then put his ship dead before
the wind, which was now rising to a stiff breeze.
In doing this he crossed the crippled pirate's
stern, within eighty yards; and sore was the
temptation to rake him; but his ammunition
being short, and his danger being imminent from
the other pirate, he had the self-command to
resist the great temptation. The pirates, though
in great confusion, and expecting a broadside,
trained a gun dead aft.

Dodd saw, and hailed the mizen top: "Can
you two hinder them from firing that gun?"

"I rather think we can," said Fullalove, "eh,
colonel?" and tapped his long rifle.

The ship's bows no sooner crossed the
schooner's stem than a Malay ran aft with a
linstock. Pop went the colonel's ready carbine,
and the Malay fell over dead, and the linstock
flew out of his hand. A tall Portuguese, with a
movement of rage, snatched it up, and darted to
the gun: the Yankee rifle cracked, but a moment
too late. Bang! went the pirate's gun, and
crashed into the Agra's side, and passed nearly
through her.

"Ye missed him! Ye missed him!" cried
the rival theorist, joyfully. He was mistaken:
the smoke cleared, and there was the pirate
captain leaning wounded against the mainmast
with a Yankee bullet in his shoulder, and his crew
uttering yells of dismay and vengeance. They
jumped, and raged, and brandished their knives,
and made horrid gesticulations of revenge; and
the white eyeballs of the Malays and Papuans
glittered fiendishly; and the wounded captain
raised his sound arm and had a signal hoisted to
his consort, and she bore up in chase, and
jamming her fore latine flat as a board, lay far
nearer the wind than the Agra could, and sailed
three feet to her two besides. On this superiority
being made clear, the situation of the Merchant
vessel, though not so utterly desperate as before
Monk fired his lucky shot, became pitiable
enough. If she ran before the wind, the fresh
pirate would cut her off; if she lay to windward,
she might postpone the inevitable and fatal
collision with a foe as strong as that she had only
escaped by a rare piece of luck; but this would
give the crippled pirate time to refit and unite to