thin reach of our
guns before we sustained any very serious damage from her long gun, if
fortune would so far favour us; and I thought that possibly I might here
be able to make one of the _Wasp's_ peculiarities very useful. This
peculiarity consisted in the fact--which we had by this time had many
opportunities of observing--that, in smooth water, such as then
prevailed, the little vessel would, if properly handled, shoot quite an
extraordinary distance to windward while in stays; and I had it in my
mind to utilise this peculiarity now by making a series of very short
boards, getting good way upon her, and then easing her helm very gently
down, allowing her to shoot the maximum possible distance to windward
every time that we hove about. I mentioned the idea to Henderson, but
he had not very much faith in it; his idea being that of most old salts,
that the best way to work to windward was to break tacks as seldom as
possible; he agreed, however, that it might perhaps be worth while to
make the experiment and see what the result would be. We accordingly
put my plan into practice, with such good effect that half-an-hour later
we had actually succeeded in working up near enough to the pirate to
bring her within range of our own guns. But meanwhile she had been most
assiduously pegging away at us, in the first instance with her long gun
only, but latterly with her 12-pounders--of which she mounted seven in
each battery--as well, and we had by no means come off scathless, having
been hulled three times, and losing two men killed and five wounded
before a single shot of ours had reached her, though our spars had thus
far escaped, and our rigging had not suffered to any very serious
extent.

With our arrival within range of our own guns, however, matters began to
be a little more lively; we were fortunate enough to have some
half-a-dozen very excellent shots among us, and these men now began to
make play, each man being evidently anxious to win for himself the proud
distinction of being the champion shot of the ship, with the result that
daylight began to show here and there through the pirate schooner's
canvas, severed ropes streamed out from the spars, and the splinters
began to fly on board her. Then a particularly lucky shot struck her
main-masthead fair, just above the nip of her lower rigging, and the
next moment down came her main-topmast, with its huge gaff-topsail,
while the peak of her mainsail drooped until th