The Siege of the Round-House
- The captain gets impatient waiting on deck and sticks his head through the open door.
- Alan meets Hoseason with his drawn sword and tells him to prepare for a battle.
- Hoseason doesn't reply directly, but he does tell Davie that he'll remember this.
- Davie's not exactly afraid, but he's really, really keyed up: he's pretty sure they're going to lose, and he wants to make sure he takes as many of their enemies down as he can.
- The first one to rush in is Shuan, whom Alan stabs through with his sword.
- Davie shoots into a crowd of men with a battering ram, trying to break through the door that Alan is guarding. They retreat.
- Alan warns Davie that this is just the beginning: he's killed two and Davie's wounded one, but that won't be enough to stop the crew.
- Davie recharges his pistols.
- He overhears some of the sailors on deck saying that Shuan is the one who messed it all up, and they should shut up about him ("wheesht" (10.22), the Scots word for quiet) because he's dead.
- Davie warns Alan that they're coming back. Alan says there's nothing they can do but sit and wait.
- While they're sitting, Davie has time to start feeling afraid.
- Finally, Davie hears the whistle of a pipe, the signal for the second round of fighting to start. A bunch of sailors rush at the door and two guys jump in through the skylight in the roof. Davie shoots the two men, then runs over to help Alan with the group by the door.
- Alan manages just fine by himself, though. The sailors (those who still can) run away from his sword.
- Inside the round-house, there are three dead guys, one who's dying, and Alan and Davie both totally intact.
- Alan seems pretty hyped up by all of this action: he embraces Davie and says that he loves him like a brother (we've reached the "I love you, man!" stage of this bromance).
- Alan's so happy with his own performance that he bursts into song (seriously). He sings in Gaelic (the language of the Scottish Highlands), which Davie translates into English. We have to say, the lyrics are pretty snappy: they're all about Alan's overall awesomeness.
- Davie's a little annoyed now that he's writing this down, because he realizes that the song says nothing about his contribution to all of this killing. At the time, though, Davie tells us that he mostly felt sick about what he'd done. In fact, he starts to cry.
- Alan says that Davie's just tired and tells him to go to sleep; Alan plans to keep watch. The two of them trade watch duties all night, but there's not a peep from the rest of the guys on the ship.