Sometimes it was to defend ourselves from the hungry redshanks who itched to dig their daggers into some body, little matter whose.

Sometimes it was from rogues and vagabonds whose mouths watered at the sight of the box.

Sometimes it was from the officers, who took us one day for English spies, and the next for lords in disguise.

As for the poet, the day of our landing he had fled for his life from the terrors of the place, and so we lost him.
I cannot tell what battles we fought, what knocks we got, or what we gave in return; how night by night we slept, sword in hand, at the maiden's door; how day by day we sought to escape from the city and could not; how at length, under cover of a notable fray in the streets, we fled back to Leith, where we found a boat and so reached Falkirk.
From there, how like so many gipsies we wandered over the hills and among the deep valleys till we came to Lennox, and so once more met the sea on the other side.

Then, by what perils of storm and current, in a small row-boat, we crossed to the wild Isle of Arran, on which we were well-nigh starved with hunger and drowned with the rains.