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 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 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!