I liked the stranger’s caution. It denoted a proper care of character, and furnished a proof of responsibility. The condition was therefore accepted on my part as frankly as it had been urged on his.
“And now, sir,” I added, when we had shaken each other very cordially by the hand, “may I presume to ask your name?”
“I am called Noah, and I don’t care who knows it. I am not ashamed of either of my names, whatever else I may be ashamed of.”
“Noah—?”
“Poke, at your service.” He pronounced the word slowly and very distinctly, as if what he had just said of his self-confidence were true. As I had afterward occasion to take his signature, I shall at once give it in the proper form—“Capt. Noah Poke.”
“Of what part of England are you a native, Mr. Poke?”
“I believe I may say of the new parts.”
“I do not know that any portion of the island was so designated. Will you have the good-nature to explain yourself?”
“I’m a native of Stunin’tun, in the State of Connecticut, in old New England. My parents being dead, I was sent to sea a four-year-old, and here I am, walking about the kingdom of France without a cent in my pocket, a shipwrecked mariner. Hard as my lot is, to say the truth, I’d about as leave starve as live by speaking their d—d lingo.”
“Shipwrecked—a mariner—starving—and a Yankee!”