We were delighted with his suggestion, and wrote a hurried letter home
advising our people there of this addition to our journey, and our
friend volunteered to post the letter for us at Wick. It was about six
o'clock in the morning when we neared that important fishery town and
anchored in the harbour, where we had to stay an hour or two to load and
unload cargo. Our friend the Scot had to leave us here, but we could not
allow him to depart without some kind of ceremony or other, and as the
small boat came in sight that was to carry him ashore, we decided to
sing a verse or two of "Auld Lang Syne" from his favourite poet Burns;
but my brother could not understand some of the words in one of the
verses, so he altered and anglicised them slightly:

An' here's a haund, my trusty friend,
An' gie's a haund o' thine;
We'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
For the sake o' auld lang syne.

Some of the other passengers joined in the singing, but we never
realised the full force of this verse until we heard it sung in its
original form by a party of Scots, who, when they came to this
particular verse, suited the action to the word by suddenly taking hold
of each other's hands, thereby forming a cross, and meanwhile beating
time to the music. Whether the cross so formed had any religious
significance or not, we did not know.

Our friend was a finely built and intelligent young man, and it was with
feelings of great regret that we bade him farewell and watched his
departure over the great waves, with the rather mournful presentiment
that we were being parted from him for ever!