In a few moments Allan Redmain was at Aasta's side. She bade him stand behind her. Harald the hostage, not seeing him, walked back towards the boat bearing the two oars over his shoulder. Then suddenly Allan confronted him.
"So, my brave viking, you would escape, eh?" he said, smiling at the lad's discomfiture.
Harald frowning and with flashing eyes laid the oars across the boat's thwarts, and grasping the gunwale tried to launch her. Aasta, making pretence to help him, pulled the opposite way and the boat did not move. Then seeing that he was intercepted the lad promptly whipped out his dirk and sprang towards Allan with his weapon raised.
Allan stepped aside, yet did not attempt to unsheathe his sword. Harald followed upon him, but in an instant Aasta had leapt behind him and flung her plaid in a loop over his head. With a vigorous tug at the two ends of the garment she pulled him over and he fell upon his back. Allan seized the dirk that dropped from the lad's hand and threw it aside. Grasping Harald's two wrists he then turned him over, planting his knee upon his back.
"Now, Aasta," said Allan calmly, "methinks we had best secure his arms with my plaid. Give me an end of it that we may twist it; so. Now lace it well under his arms while I bring it round his legs. There; he will not readily draw himself out of that noose. I will leave him in your care until I launch Ronald Gray's boat."
Then, as Allan pushed the little craft into the water, Aasta bent by the young Norseman's side, running her fingers through his flaxen hair.
"So bold a spirit," said she, "is not oft inclosed in so fair a head. But ah, my young master, beware how you let that spirit escape. 'Twill do you no manner of good to have thus avoided the castle of Rothesay, for there in that castle are dungeons deeper than Loch Ascog, and colder than the snowy peak of Goatfell."
"Oh, deceitful woman that you are!" muttered the youth, "to tell me that you were not of the people of this land. Had it not been for you I might even now have been afloat!"
"Had it not been for me," said Aasta, "you would even now have been dead, for if I had let you use your dirk as you intended, Allan Redmain, whose prisoner you now are, would certainly have slain you."
"That would I," said Allan, now bending down and taking hold of the lad in his strong arms and carrying him to the boat.