spoils.

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?"

"Let's look into that," said Nares. "I got that book on purpose for this
cruise." Therewith he fetched it from the shelf in his berth, turned to
Midway Island, and read the account aloud. It stated with precision that
the Pacific Mail Company were about to form a depot there, in preference
to Honolulu, and that they had already a station on the island.

"I wonder who gives these Directory men their information," Nares
reflected. "Nobody can blame Trent after that. I never got in company
with squarer lying; it reminds