It was half full of plunder of all sorts, and there was barely room, if soft stowage, for us.
"Well," I said to Dalfin, "if we can sleep, let us do so.

I know that every word we speak can be heard on deck." Whereon he answered me in Erse, and I could understand him well, for the old tongues of Scot of Ireland and Scot of Caithness are the same, if ages have wrought some changes in the way of speaking them here and there.
"Let these Danes make what they can of that," he said.

"It will take a man born to the Gaelic to catch aught of it through yon hole, if he thinks he understands it in the open." So in the Erse we spoke for a little while, and it was a hopeless talk at best.

Only we agreed that we would stand by one another through whatever might come, and that the first chance of escape was to be taken, be it what it might.
All the while that we talked thus the noise of the men who drank grew wilder and more foolish.

It was a cask of our old heather ale which they had broached, and that is potent, if to the unwary it seems harmless enough.