k fired again; and just then a pale face came close to
Dodd's, and a solemn voice whispered in his ear: "Our ammunition is
nearly done!"

Dodd seized Sharpe's 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 its 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 bows, 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.

He hailed the mizzen 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 no sooner crossed the schooner's bows than a Malay ran forward
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 bow-chaser, 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 eyeball