What we now had to do was to shorten the distance between ourselves and our antagonist as quickly as possible, and bring her within reach of our guns before we sustained any very serious damage from her long gun, if fortune would so far favour us; and I thought that possibly I might here be able to make one of the _Wasp's_ peculiarities very useful.  This peculiarity consisted in the fact--which we had by this time had many opportunities of observing--that, in smooth water, such as then prevailed, the little vessel would, if properly handled, shoot quite an extraordinary distance to windward while in stays; and I had it in my mind to utilise this peculiarity now by making a series of very short boards, getting good way upon her, and then easing her helm very gently down, allowing her to shoot the maximum possible distance to windward every time that we hove about.  I mentioned the idea to Henderson, but he had not very much faith in it; his idea being that of most old salts, that the best way to work to windward was to break tacks as seldom as possible; he agreed, however, that it might perhaps be worth while to make the experiment and see what the result would be.  We accordingly put my plan into practice, with such good effect that half-an-hour later we had actually succeeded in working up near enough to the pirate to bring her within range of our own guns.  But meanwhile she had been most assiduously pegging away at us, in the first instance with her long gun only, but latterly with her 12-pounders--of which she mounted seven in each battery--as well, and we had by no means come off scathless, having been hulled three times, and losing two men killed and five wounded before a single shot of ours had reached her, though our spars had thus far escaped, and our rigging had not suffered to any very serious extent.