CHAPTER X

THE SIEGE OF THE ROUND-HOUSE

But now our time of truce was come to an end. Those on deck had waited
for my coming till they grew impatient; and scarce had Alan spoken, when
the captain showed face in the open door.

“Stand!” cried Alan, and pointed his sword at him. The captain stood,
indeed; but he neither winced nor drew back a foot.

“A naked sword?” says he. “This is a strange return for hospitality.”

“Do ye see me?” said Alan. “I am come of kings; I bear a king’s name. My
badge is the oak. Do ye see my sword? It has slashed the heads off mair
Whigamores than you have toes upon your feet. Call up your vermin to
your back, sir, and fall on! The sooner the clash begins, the sooner
ye’ll taste this steel throughout your vitals.”

The captain said nothing to Alan, but he looked over at me with an ugly
look. “David,” said he, “I’ll mind this;” and the sound of his voice
went through me with a jar.

Next moment he was gone.

“And now,” said Alan, “let your hand keep your head, for the grip is
coming.”

Alan drew a dirk, which he held in his left hand in case they should run
in under his sword. I, on my part, clambered up into the berth with
an armful of pistols and something of a heavy heart, and set open the
window where I was to watch. It was a small part of the deck that I
could overlook, but enough for our purpose. The sea had gone down, and
the wind was steady and kept the sails quiet; so that there was a
great stillness in the ship, in which I made sure I heard the sound of
muttering voices. A little after, and there came a clash of steel upon
the deck, by which I knew they were dealing out the cutlasses and one
had been let fall; and after that, silence again.

I do not know if I was what you call afraid; but my heart beat like a
bird’s, both quick and little; and there was a dimness came before my
eyes which I continually rubbed away, and which continually returned. As
for hope, I had none; but only a darkness of despair and a sort of anger
against all the world that made me long to sell my life as dear as I was
able. I tried to pray, I remember, but that same hurry of my mind, like
a man running, would not suffer me to think upon the words; and my chief
wish was to have the thing begin and be done with it.

It came all of a sudden when it did, with a rush of feet and a roar, and
then a shout from Alan, and a sound of blows and some one crying out
as if hurt. I looked back over my shoulder, and saw Mr. Shuan in the
doorway, crossing blades with Alan.

“That’s him that killed the boy!” I cried.

“Look to your window!” said Alan; and as I turned back to my place, I
saw him pass his sword through the mate’s body.

It was none too soon for me to look to my own part; for my head was
scarce back at the window, before five men, carrying a spare yard for
a battering-ram, ran past me and took post to drive the door in. I had
never fired with a pistol in my life, and not often with a gun; far less
against a fellow-creature. But it was now or never; and just as they
swang the yard, I cried out: “Take that!” and shot into their midst.

I must have hit one of them, for he sang out and gave back a step, and
the rest stopped as if a little disconcerted. Before they had time to
recover, I sent another ball over their heads; and at my third shot
(which went as wide as the second) the whole party threw down the yard
and ran for it.

Then I looked round again into the deck-house. The whole place was full
of the smoke of my own firing, just as my ears seemed to be burst with
the noise of the shots. But there was Alan, standing as before; only
now his sword was running blood to the hilt, and himself so swelled
with triumph and fallen into so fine an attitude, that he looked to be
invincible. Right before him on the floor was Mr. Shuan, on his hands
and knees; the blood was pouring from his mouth, and he was sinking
slowly lower, with a terrible, white face; and just as I looked, some of
those from behind caught hold of him by the heels and dragged him bodily
out of the round-house. I believe he died as they were doing it.

“There’s one of your Whigs for ye!” cried Alan; and then turning to me,
he asked if I had done much execution.

I told him I had winged one, and thought it was the captain.

“And I’ve settled two,” says he. “No, there’s not enough blood let;
they’ll be back again. To your watch, David. This was but a dram before
meat.”

I settled back to my place, re-charging the three pistols I had fired,
and keeping watch with both eye and ear.

Our enemies were disputing not far off upon the deck, and that so loudly
that I could hear a word or two above the washing of the seas.

“It was Shuan bauchled[15] it,” I heard one say.

[15] Bungled.

And another answered him with a “Wheesht, man! He’s paid the piper.”

After that the voices fell again into the same muttering as before. Only
now, one person spoke most of the time, as though laying down a plan,
and first one and then another answered him briefly, like men taking
orders. By this, I made sure they were coming on again, and told Alan.

“It’s what we have to pray for,” said he. “Unless we can give them a
good distaste of us, and done with it, there’ll be nae sleep for either
you or me. But this time, mind, they’ll be in earnest.”

By this, my pistols were ready, and there was nothing to do but listen
and wait. While the brush lasted, I had not the time to think if I was
frighted; but now, when all was still again, my mind ran upon nothing
else. The thought of the sharp swords and the cold steel was strong in
me; and presently, when I began to hear stealthy steps and a brushing
of men’s clothes against the round-house wall, and knew they were taking
their places in the dark, I could have found it in my mind to cry out
aloud.

All this was upon Alan’s side; and I had begun to think my share of the
fight was at an end, when I heard some one drop softly on the roof above
me.

Then there came a single call on the sea-pipe, and that was the signal.
A knot of them made one rush of it, cutlass in hand, against the door;
and at the same moment, the glass of the skylight was dashed in a
thousand pieces, and a man leaped through and landed on the floor.
Before he got his feet, I had clapped a pistol to his back, and might
have shot him, too; only at the touch of him (and him alive) my whole
flesh misgave me, and I could no more pull the trigger than I could have
flown.

He had dropped his cutlass as he jumped, and when he felt the pistol,
whipped straight round and laid hold of me, roaring out an oath; and at
that either my courage came again, or I grew so much afraid as came to
the same thing; for I gave a shriek and shot him in the midst of the
body. He gave the most horrible, ugly groan and fell to the floor. The
foot of a second fellow, whose legs were dangling through the skylight,
struck me at the same time upon the head; and at that I snatched another
pistol and shot this one through the thigh, so that he slipped through
and tumbled in a lump on his companion’s body. There was no talk of
missing, any more than there was time to aim; I clapped the muzzle to
the very place and fired.

I might have stood and stared at them for long, but I heard Alan shout
as if for help, and that brought me to my senses.

He had kept the door so long; but one of the seamen, while he was
engaged with others, had run in under his guard and caught him about the
body. Alan was dirking him with his left hand, but the fellow clung like
a leech. Another had broken in and had his cutlass raised. The door was
thronged with their faces. I thought we were lost, and catching up my
cutlass, fell on them in flank.

But I had not time to be of help. The wrestler dropped at last; and
Alan, leaping back to get his distance, ran upon the others like a
bull, roaring as he went. They broke before him like water, turning, and
running, and falling one against another in their haste. The sword
in his hands flashed like quicksilver into the huddle of our fleeing
enemies; and at every flash there came the scream of a man hurt. I was
still thinking we were lost, when lo! they were all gone, and Alan was
driving them along the deck as a sheep-dog chases sheep.

Yet he was no sooner out than he was back again, being as cautious as he
was brave; and meanwhile the seamen continued running and crying out as
if he was still behind them; and we heard them tumble one upon another
into the forecastle, and clap-to the hatch upon the top.

The round-house was like a shambles; three were dead inside, another
lay in his death agony across the threshold; and there were Alan and I
victorious and unhurt.

He came up to me with open arms. “Come to my arms!” he cried, and
embraced and kissed me hard upon both cheeks. “David,” said he, “I love
you like a brother. And O, man,” he cried in a kind of ecstasy, “am I no
a bonny fighter?”

Thereupon he turned to the four enemies, passed his sword clean through
each of them, and tumbled them out of doors one after the other. As he
did so, he kept humming and singing and whistling to himself, like a man
trying to recall an air; only what _he_ was trying was to make one. All
the while, the flush was in his face, and his eyes were as bright as a
five-year-old child’s with a new toy. And presently he sat down upon the
table, sword in hand; the air that he was making all the time began to
run a little clearer, and then clearer still; and then out he burst with
a great voice into a Gaelic song.

I have translated it here, not in verse (of which I have no skill) but
at least in the king’s English.

He sang it often afterwards, and the thing became popular; so that I
have heard it and had it explained to me, many’s the time.

“This is the song of the sword of Alan;
The smith made it,
The fire set it;
Now it shines in the hand of Alan Breck.

“Their eyes were many and bright,
Swift were they to behold,
Many the hands they guided:
The sword was alone.

“The dun deer troop over the hill,
They are many, the hill is one;
The dun deer vanish,
The hill remains.

“Come to me from the hills of heather,
Come from the isles of the sea.
O far-beholding eagles,
Here is your meat.”

Now this song which he made (both words and music) in the hour of our
victory, is something less than just to me, who stood beside him in
the tussle. Mr. Shuan and five more were either killed outright or
thoroughly disabled; but of these, two fell by my hand, the two that
came by the skylight. Four more were hurt, and of that number, one (and
he not the least important) got his hurt from me. So that, altogether,
I did my fair share both of the killing and the wounding, and might have
claimed a place in Alan’s verses. But poets have to think upon their
rhymes; and in good prose talk, Alan always did me more than justice.

In the meanwhile, I was innocent of any wrong being done me. For not
only I knew no word of the Gaelic; but what with the long suspense of
the waiting, and the scurry and strain of our two spirts of fighting,
and more than all, the horror I had of some of my own share in it, the
thing was no sooner over than I was glad to stagger to a seat. There was
that tightness on my chest that I could hardly breathe; the thought
of the two men I had shot sat upon me like a nightmare; and all upon a
sudden, and before I had a guess of what was coming, I began to sob and
cry like any child.

Alan clapped my shoulder, and said I was a brave lad and wanted nothing
but a sleep.

“I’ll take the first watch,” said he. “Ye’ve done well by me, David,
first and last; and I wouldn’t lose you for all Appin--no, nor for
Breadalbane.”

So I made up my bed on the floor; and he took the first spell, pistol
in hand and sword on knee, three hours by the captain’s watch upon the
wall. Then he roused me up, and I took my turn of three hours; before
the end of which it was broad day, and a very quiet morning, with a
smooth, rolling sea that tossed the ship and made the blood run to and
fro on the round-house floor, and a heavy rain that drummed upon the
roof. All my watch there was nothing stirring; and by the banging of the
helm, I knew they had even no one at the tiller. Indeed (as I learned
afterwards) there were so many of them hurt or dead, and the rest in so
ill a temper, that Mr. Riach and the captain had to take turn and turn
like Alan and me, or the brig might have gone ashore and nobody the
wiser. It was a mercy the night had fallen so still, for the wind had
gone down as soon as the rain began. Even as it was, I judged by the
wailing of a great number of gulls that went crying and fishing round
the ship, that she must have drifted pretty near the coast or one of
the islands of the Hebrides; and at last, looking out of the door of the
round-house, I saw the great stone hills of Skye on the right hand, and,
a little more astern, the strange isle of Rum.