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, while he was jammed up in the wind, and with his five eighteen-pounders raked him fore and aft, then paying off, gave him three carronades crammed with grape and canister; the almost simultaneous discharge of eight guns made the ship tremble, and enveloped her in thick smoke; loud shrieks and groans were heard from the schooner; the smoke cleared; the pirate’s mainsail hung on deck, his jib-boom was cut off like a carrot and the sail struggling; his foresail looked lace, lanes of dead and wounded lay still or writhing on his deck and his lee scuppers ran blood into the sea.  Dodd squared his yards and bore away.

The ship rushed down the wind, leaving the schooner staggered and all abroad.  But not for long; the pirate wore and fired his bow chasers at the now flying Agra, split one of the carronades in two, and killed a Lascar, and made a hole in the foresail; this done, he hoisted his mainsail again in a trice, sent his wounded below, flung his dead overboard, to the horror of their foes, and came after the flying ship, yawning and firing his bow chasers.  The ship was silent.  She had no shot to throw away.  Not only did she take these blows like a coward, but all signs of life disappeared on her, except two men at the wheel, and the captain on the main gangway.