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 a-weather, 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 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, "Cutlasses! and die hard!"
At that moment the master-gunner fired his last gun.
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