He spoke our language with ease and yet with a foreign accent. Perhaps it was this which betrayed him to me.
"Are you not Captain Vanderdecken?" I asked as I took his hand heartily.
"So you know me?" he returned, with a mournful little laugh, as he motioned to me to sit down again.
Thus the ice was broken, and he took his seat by my side, and we were soon deep in talk.
When he learned that I was a loyal New-Yorker, his cordiality increased.
"I have relatives in New Amsterdam," he cried; "at least I had once. Diedrich Knickerbocker was my first cousin. And do you know Rip Van Winkle?"
Although I could not claim any close friendship with this gentleman, I boasted myself fully acquainted with his history.
"Yes, yes," said Captain Vanderdecken, "I suppose he was before your time. Most people are so short-lived nowadays; it's only with that Wandering Jew now that I ever have a chat over old times. Well, well, but you have heard of Rip? Were you ever told that I was on a visit to Hendrik Hudson the night Rip went up the mountain and took a drop too much?"
I had to confess that here was a fact I had not before known.
"I ran up the river," said the Hollander, "to have a game of bowls with the Englishman and his crew, nearly all of them countrymen of mine; and, by-the-way, Hudson always insists that it was I who brought the storm with me that gave poor Rip Van Winkle the rheumatism as he slept off his intoxication on the hillside under the pines. He was a good fellow, Rip, and a very good judge of schnapps, too."