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 death-blow
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. It sent a chain
shot on board the retiring pirate, took off a Portuguese head and spun it
clean into the sea ever so far to windward, and cut the schooner's
foremast so nearly through that it trembled and nodded, and presently
snapped with a loud crack, and came down like a broken tree, with the
yard and sail; the latter overlapping the deck and burying itself, black
flag and all, in the sea; and there, in one moment, lay the _Destroyer_
buffeting and wriggling--like a heron on the water with its long wing
broken--an utter cripple.
The victorious crew raised a stunning cheer.
"Silence!" roared Dodd, with his trumpet.
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