Rites of Passage in Classic Literature for Boys, Part 2: Kidnapped
By David Churchill Barrow
“The round-house was like a shambles; three were dead inside, another lay in his death agony across the threshold; and there were Alan and I victorious and unhurt. He came up to me with open arms. ‘Come to my arms!’ he cried, and embraced and kissed me hard upon both cheeks. ‘David,’ said he, ‘I love you like a brother. And O, man,’ he cried in a kind of ecstasy, ‘am I no’ a bonny fighter?’ Thereupon he turned to the four enemies, passed his sword clean through each of them, and tumbled them out of doors one after the other.”
Thus ended “the siege of the round-house” onboard the brig Covenant in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, and the beginning of David Balfour’s journey from boy to man.
