“You make me tired,” retorted the captain. “What's the use--at sea? Everything's got to come to bearings at some port, hasn't it? You can't stop at sea for ever, can you?--No; the Flying Scud is rubbish; if it meant anything, it would have to mean something so almighty intricate that James G. Blaine hasn't got the brains to engineer it; and I vote for more axeing, pioneering, and opening up the resources of this phenomenal brig, and less general fuss,” he added, arising. “The dime-museum symptoms will drop in of themselves, I guess, to keep us cheery.” But it appeared we were at the end of discoveries for the day; and we left the brig about sundown, without being further puzzled or further enlightened. The best of the cabin spoils--books, instruments, papers, silks, and curiosities--we carried along with us in a blanket, however, to divert the evening hours; and when supper was over, and the table cleared, and Johnson set down to a dreary game of cribbage between his right hand and his left, the captain and I turned out our blanket on the floor, and sat side by side to examine and appraise the 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.”