is deck.

"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
quarterdeck; 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 aweather, 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, Mon