him a shot."

The carronade was fired with a tremendous report, but no visible effect.
The pirate crept nearer, steering in and out like a snake to avoid the
carronades, and firing those two heavy guns alternately into the devoted
ship. He hulled the _Agra_ now nearly every shot.

The two available carronades replied noisily, and jumped as usual; they
sent one thirty-two pound shot clean through the schooner's deck and
side; but that was literally all they did worth speaking of.

"Curse them!" cried Dodd; "load them with grape! They are not to be
trusted with ball. And all my eighteen-pounders dumb! The coward won't
come alongside and give them a chance."

At the next discharge the pirate chipped the mizzen mast, and knocked a
sailor into dead pieces on the forecastle. Dodd put his helm down ere
the smoke cleared, and got three carronades to bear, heavily laden with
grape. Several pirates fell, dead or wounded, on the crowded deck, and
some holes appeared in the foresail; this one interchange was quite in
favor of the ship.

But the lesson made the enemy more cautious; he crept nearer, but steered
so adroitly, now right astern, now on the quarter, that the ship could
seldom bring more than one carronade to bear, while he raked her fore and
aft with grape and ball.

In this alarming situation, Dodd kept as many of the men below as
possible; but, for all he could do four were killed and seven wounded.