“It was Shuan bauchled* it,” I heard one say.

     * 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.