Col called me up, with intelligence that it was a good day for a
passage to Mull; and just as we rose, a sailor from the vessel arrived
for us. We got all ready with dispatch. Dr Johnson was displeased at
my bustling, and walking quickly up and down. He said, 'It does not
hasten us a bit. It is getting on horseback in a ship. All boys do it;
and you are longer a boy than others.' He himself has no alertness, or
whatever it may be called; so he may dislike it, as Oderunt hilarem
tristes.
Before we reached the harbour, the wind grew high again. However, the
small boat was waiting, and took us on board. We remained for some
time in uncertainty what to do: at last it was determined, that, as a
good part of the day was over, and it was dangerous to be at sea at
night, in such a vessel, and such weather, we should not sail till the
morning tide, when the wind would probably be more gentle. We resolved
not to go ashore again, but lie here in readiness. Dr Johnson and I
had each a bed in the cabbin. Col sat at the fire in the forecastle,
with the captain, and Joseph, and the rest. I eat some dry oatmeal, of
which I found a barrel in the cabbin. I had not done this since I was
a boy. Dr Johnson owned that he too was fond of it when a boy; a
circumstance which I was highly pleased to hear from him, as it gave
me an opportunity of observing that, notwithstanding his joke on the
article of oats, he was himself a proof that this kind of food was not
peculiar to the people of Scotland.