Part 28 (1/2)
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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 deathblow to hope, Monk 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, ”Cutla.s.ses! 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 wings 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 s.h.i.+p 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 mizen top: ”Can you two hinder them from firing that gun?”
”I rather think we can,” said Fullalove; ”eh, Colonel?” and he tapped his long rifle.
The s.h.i.+p 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, s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 pa.s.sed nearly through her.
*Being disabled, the schooner's head had come round to windward, though she was drifting to leeward.
”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 eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 lateen 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 destroy her. Add to this the failing ammunition and the thinned crew!
Dodd cast his eyes all round the horizon for help.
The sea was blank.
The bright sun was hidden now; drops of rain fell, and the wind was beginning to sing, and the sea to rise a little.
”Gentlemen,” said he, ”let us kneel down and pray for wisdom, in this sore strait.”
He and his officers kneeled on the quarter-deck. When they rose, Dodd stood rapt about a minute: his great thoughtful eye saw no more the enemy, the sea, nor anything external; it was turned inward. His officers looked at him in silence.
”Sharpe,” said he at last, ”there _must_ be a way out of them both with such a breeze as this is now; if we could but see it.”
”Ay, _if,_” groaned Sharpe.
Dodd mused again.
”About s.h.i.+p!” said he softly, like an absent man.
”Ay, ay, sir!”