The books were the first to engage our notice. These were rather numerous (as Nares contemptuously put it) “for a lime-juicer.” Scorn of the British mercantile marine glows in the breast of every Yankee merchant captain; as the scorn is not reciprocated, I can only suppose it justified in fact; and certainly the old country mariner appears of a less studious disposition. The more credit to the officers of the Flying Scud, who had quite a library, both literary and professional. There were Findlay's five directories of the world—all broken-backed, as is usual with Findlay, and all marked and scribbled over with corrections and additions—several books of navigation, a signal code, and an Admiralty book of a sort of orange hue, called “Islands of the Eastern Pacific Ocean,” Vol. III., which appeared from its imprint to be the latest authority, and showed marks of frequent consultation in the passages about the French Frigate Shoals, the Harman, Cure, Pearl, and Hermes reefs, Lisiansky Island, Ocean Island, and the place where we then lay—Brooks or Midway. A volume of Macaulay's “Essays” and a shilling Shakespeare led the van of the belles lettres; the rest were novels: several Miss Braddons—of course, “Aurora Floyd,” which has penetrated to every isle of the Pacific, a good many cheap detective books, “Rob Roy,” Auerbach's “Auf der Hohe” in the German, and a prize temperance story, pillaged (to judge by the stamp) from an Anglo-Indian circulating library.
“The Admiralty man gives a fine picture of our island,” remarked Nares, who had turned up Midway Island. “He draws the dreariness rather mild, but you can make out he knows the place.”
“Captain,” I cried, “you've struck another point in this mad business. See here,” I went on eagerly, drawing from my pocket a crumpled fragment of the Daily Occidental which I had inherited from Jim: “'misled by Hoyt's Pacific Directory'? Where's Hoyt?”
