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 around 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 with such a
breeze as this is now; if we could but see it."

"Ay, _if_," groaned Sharpe.

Dodd mused again.

"About ship!" said he, softly, like an absent man.

"Ay, ay, sir!"

"Steer due north!" said he, still like one whose mind was elsewhere.

While the ship was coming about, he gave minute orders to the mates and
the gunner, to ensure co-operation in the delicate and dangerous
manoeuvres that were sure to be on hand.

The wind was W.N.W.: he was standing north: one pirate lay on his lee
beam stopping a leak between wind and water, and hacking the deck clear
of his broken masts and yards. The other fresh, and thirsting for the
easy prey, came up to weather on him and hang on his quarter, pirate
fashion.

When they were distant about a cable's length, the fresh pirate, to meet
the ship's change of tactics, changed his own, luffed up, and gave the
ship a broadside, well aimed but not destructive, the guns being loaded
with ball.

Dodd, instead of replying immediately, put his helm hard up and ran under
the pirate's stern, w