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The air was balmy, the motion of the boats pleasant, the moonlight scene inspiring, so that the men forgot their fatigues, and burst into song, and chorus after chorus, joined in by the entire flotilla, broke the silence. A piper, on his way to join his regiment, broke in at intervals and the colonel ordered the fife and drum corps to strike up. The boat in which Morton sat brought up the rear, and softened by distance and that inexpressible quality which a calm stretch of water gives to music, he thought he had never heard anything finer, and he could not decide whether the singing of the men, the weird strains of the pibroch, or the martial music of the fifes and drums was to be preferred. About an hour had been spent thus, when the captain of the boat shouted to shift the sail, and putting up the helm, the little barque fell out of line and headed for an eminence on the south shore, so sharp and smooth in outline, that Morton took it to be a fortification. When their leaving was noted, the men in the long lines of boats struck up Auld Lang Syne, the fifes and drums accompanying, and when they had done, the piper succeeded. Morton listened to the strain as it came faintly from the fast receding flotilla, it was that of Lochaber no More.