Dodd waved his hand without a word, and another man rose from the deck,
and took his place in silence, and laid his unshaking hand on the wheel
stained with that man's warm blood whose place he took.
The high ship was now scarce sixty yards distant; _she seemed to know:_
she reared her lofty figure-head with great awful shoots into the air.
But now the panting pirates got their new foresail hoisted with a joyful
shout: it drew, the schooner gathered way, and their furious consort
close on the _Agra's_ heels just then scourged her deck with grape.
"Port!" said Dodd calmly.
"Port it is."
The giant prow darted at the escaping pirate. That acre of coming canvas
took the wind out of the swift schooner's foresail; it flapped: oh, then
she was doomed! That awful moment parted the races on board her: the
Papuans and Sooloos, their black faces livid and blue with horror, leaped
yelling into the sea, or crouched and whimpered; the yellow Malays and
brown Portuguese, though blanched to one colour now, turned on death like
dying panthers, fired two cannon slap into the ship's bows, and snapped
their muskets and matchlocks at their solitary executioner on the ship's
gangway, and out flew their knives like crushed wasp's stings.
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