CHAPTER X
THEY got to the wounded captain and raised him: he revived a little; and, the moment he caught sight of Mr. Sharpe, he clutched him, and cried, “Stunsels!”
“Oh, captain,” said Sharpe, “let the ship go; it is you we are anxious for now.”
At this Dodd lifted up his hands and beat the air impatiently, and cried again in the thin, querulous voice of' a wounded man, but eagerly, “STUNSELS! STUNSELS!”
On this, Sharpe gave the command.
“Make sail. All hands set stunsels 'low and aloft!”
While the unwounded hands swarmed into the rigging, the surgeon came aft in all haste; but Dodd declined him till all his men should have been looked to: meantime he had himself carried to the poop and laid on a mattress, his bleeding head bound tight with a wet cambric handkerchief, and his pale face turned towards the hostile schooner astern. She had to hove to, and was picking up the survivors of her blotted-out consort. The group on the Agra's quarter-deck watched her to see what she would do next; flushed with immediate success, the younger officers crowed their fears she would not be game to attack them again. Dodd's fears ran the other way: he said, in the weak voice to which he was now reduced, “They are taking a wet blanket aboard; that crew of blackguards we swamped won't want any more of us: it all depends on the pirate captain: if he is not drowned, then blow wind, rise sea, or there's trouble ahead for us.”
As soon as the schooner had picked up the last swimmer, she hoisted foresail, mainsail, and jib with admirable rapidity, and bore down in chase.
The Agra had, meantime, got a start of more than a mile, and was now running before a stiff breeze with studding sails alow and aloft.
In an hour the vessels ran nearly twelve miles, and the pirate had gained half a mile.