“A man must never think reading a book makes him special. Speaking of that, what book is it that inside your coat?”
Hines played dumb but Davenport never could countenance liars, or dumb liars, and went on without mercy: “There is a certain way a man carries himself with a book on one side, and the outline through the material of an inexpensive coat is a distinctive one. I noticed when you first came down the stairs into the captain’s room our first evening. Yours is a thin volume, and a small edition, no doubt, perhaps poetry. I’ve found the man who carries a book in his coat pocket relies upon it with passion and a dependence as a captain of a ship does upon a compass on a moonless night. A book that changed your life.”
“What nonsense you speak!”
“Show me,” ordered Davenport.
We both waited. The motion of the ship rocked us left and then right. There was nothing more the man could say. The wrath on his face drifted into submission. Hines reached into his coat and slowly pulled out a slender book, just as Davenport described. The bookaneer passed it to me.
“Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman,” I said, rotating it in my hands. “The pages have been cut with a careful touch. The leaves have been turned many times but none torn. This book has been wonderfully treasured.”
Hines stood with his head hung low. “I should thank you for my property back.”
Davenport put down his cigar and took the book from me. He leaned his face close to the merchant’s. “Books inspire a man to embrace the world or flee it. They start wars and end them. They make the men and women who write and publish them vast fortunes, and nearly as quickly can drive them into madness and despair. Stay away from what you do not fathom from now on, and we will like each other better.”
He reached into Hines’s coat and slipped the book inside. Hines did not look at either of us. He walked over to the table and drew his arm across it with a grunt, sending books flying to the floor, before exiting.
I began to try to thank Davenport but he spoke over me.
“Excellent,” he said to himself. “An excellent development.” His voice was almost pleased (giddy, really, for Davenport).
I was confused. “How did you even know I needed help down here?”
“Help?” He seemed to be considering my meaning. “I was listening to the pleasing sounds of the storm from the passageway, imagining what horrible screams one would hear if a ship scuttled, when I saw Hines with a marching step and a rather pitiful look of rage on his face on the move in this direction. Knowing you have been spending time in here as a sort of sailing librarian, and having taken note of his amusing dislike for you, I presumed there was the possibility of a confrontation.”
“You were precisely right. Well, I do appreciate your help,” I reiterated, a little less sure.
He still seemed perplexed by my sentiment. “Did you not see it, Fergins?”
“See what?”
“When I remarked that books could start wars, his eyes fell like a rock, however unconsciously, on this.”
He pointed to a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, a standard in the library of any ship where there were young men among the sailors. In fact, a book that had made more than its share of sailors.
“Treasure Island?” I asked.
“Not the book, but the name of the author drew his unconscious thoughts,” Davenport noted with an air of satisfaction. “I have suspected that Hines, as a merchant with dealings in Samoa for some years, would have some knowledge of what Stevenson is involved in there. Of course, I do not want to draw attention to our interest by asking direct questions. But now he has begun to reveal his impression of Stevenson’s role on the island, and to add knowledge that I believe will make my mission successful.”
“You came into the library to see if the man would reveal something about Stevenson?”
“Indeed. And very much worth the effort.”
He gave a proud nod, rising to his feet. As I sat frozen with astonishment, he started to walk toward the door but stopped when his eyes landed on a book, one of the volumes knocked down by Hines and now sliding across the slanting floor. His bottom lip quivered slightly and he closed his eyes before he stepped around the book and continued out.
V