p bearing down in full sail. Nothing
easier than to slip out of her way could they get the foresail to draw;
but the time was short, the deadly intention manifest, the coming
destruction swift. After that solemn silence came a storm of cries and
curses, as their seamen went to work to fit the yard and raise the sail;
while their fighting men seized their matchlocks and trained the guns.
They were well commanded by an heroic able villian. Astern the consort
thundered; but the _Agra's_ response was a dead silence more awful than
broadsides.

For then was seen with what majesty the enduring Anglo-Saxon fights.

One of the indomitable race on the gangway, one at the foremast, two at
the wheel, conned and steered the great ship down on a hundred
matchlocks, and a grinning broadside, just as they would have conned and
steered her into a British harbor.

"Starboard!" said Dodd, in a deep calm voice, with a motion of his hand.

"Starboard it is."

The pirate wriggled ahead a little. The man forward made a silent signal
to Dodd.

"Port!" said Dodd, quietly.

"Port it is."

But at this critical moment the pirate astern sent a mischievous shot,
and knocked one of the men to atoms at the helm.

Dodd waved his hand without a word, and another man rose from the deck,
and took his place in silence, and laid his unshaking hand on the wheel
stained with that man's warm blood whose place he took.

The high ship was now scarce sixty yards distant: _she seemed to know_:
she reared her lofty figurehead with great awful shoots into the air.

But now the panting pirates got their new foresail hoisted with a joyful
shout: it drew, the schooner gathered way, and their furious consort
close on the _Agra's_ heels just then scourged her deck with grape.

"Port!" said Dodd, calmly.

"Port it is."

The giant prow darted at the escaping pirate. That acre of coming canvas
took the wind out of the swift schooner's foresail; it flapped: oh, then
she was doomed! . . . CRASH! the Indiaman's cut-water in thick smoke beat
in the schooner's broadside: down went her masts to leeward like
fishing-rods whipping the water; there was a horrible shrieking yell;
wild forms leaped off on the _Agra_, and were hacked to pieces almost ere
they reached the deck--a surge, a chasm in the ear, filled with an
instant rush of engulfing waves, a long, awful, grating, grinding noise,
never to be forgotten in this world, all along under the ship's keel--an