The book Arran; - Cook Clan

22 THE BOOK OF ARRAN
Loch Long to harry and burn in the Lennox country across
Loch Lomond. Then, while the main fleet lay at the Cumbraes,
on the night of Monday, October 1 (1263), the tempest
did come. By morning ships were dragging their anchors
and four had stranded at Largs, including a merchant
bark. Watchful Scots fell on their crews, but, as the wind
slackened, Hakon sent reinforcements, whereupon the Scots
retired. On Wednesday morning the Scots were again looting
the bark of its cargo, but Hakon himself landed with a
force, and the bark was almost emptied when a Scottish
army came in sight. There were about eight or nine hundred
Norse on the beach, and the Scots were calculated to be ten
times as many, of whom five hundred were knights and the
rest indifferently armed footmen. Hakon's men insisted
that he should put off to his ship, and then for the whole of
Wednesday the conflict raged, with a hillock as its central
point of struggle. The Norse were driven back to the
shingle, fighting hard on the defensive round their stranded
ships, while the violence of the storm prevented help being
sent. A small company at last managed a landing in boats,
and the Scots were now pressed back and abandoned the
hillock, which gave the hard-sted Norsemen opportunity to
get into their smaller craft and return through the storm.
Next day they came on shore to secure their dead, and on
Friday, in easier weather, the whole fleet sailed back to
Lamlash, where it lay for some nights. Hakon would have
gone to winter in Ireland, as he was invited to do, but his
people were against it, and so, after another night under
Arran, he sailed away, having made a distribution of the
islands, which he still fondly believed were his, giving Bute
to Ruari (Rudri) and Arran to Margad, and what Ewen
had possessed to Dugall and his brother Allan. By the time
the host had got to Kirkwall Hakon had fallen ill, and there,
on December 13, he died, and with him died the Norse
island empire of the west. For his successor fell in with