men take about ships. A society actress don't
go around more publicly than what a ship does, nor is more interviewed,
nor more humbugged, nor more run after by all sorts of little
fussinesses in brass buttons. And more than an actress, a ship has a
deal to lose; she's capital, and the actress only character--if she's
that. The ports of the world are thick with people ready to kick a
captain into the penitentiary if he's not as bright as a dollar and as
honest as the morning star; and what with Lloyd keeping watch and watch
in every corner of the three oceans, and the insurance leeches, and the
consuls, and the Customs bugs, and the medicos, you can only get the
idea by thinking of a landsman watched by a hundred and fifty
detectives, or a stranger in a village Down East."

"Well, but at sea?" I said.

"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