I had only to listen to him, and as I had read Poe's romance over and over again, I was curious to hear what the captain had to say about it.
"And now," he resumed in a sharper tone and with a shake in his voice which denoted a certain amount of nervous irritation, "it is possible that you did not know the Pym family; that you have never met them either at Providence or at Nantucket--" "Or elsewhere." "Just so! But don't commit yourself by asserting that the Pym family never existed, that Arthur Gordon is only a fictitious personage, and his voyage an imaginary one! Do you think any man, even your Edgar Poe, could have been capable of inventing, of creating-- ?" The increasing vehemence of Captain Len Guy warned me of the necessity of treating his monomania with respect, and accepting all he said without discussion.
"Now," he proceeded, "please to keep the facts which I am about to state clearly in your mind; there is no disputing about facts.

You may deduce any results from them you like.

I hope you will not make me regret that I consented to give you a passage on the _Halbrane_." This was an effectual warning, so I made a sign of acquiescence.

The matter promised to be curious.

He went on,-- "When Edgar Poe's narrative appeared in 1838, I was at New York.
I immediately started for Baltimore, where the writer's family lived; the grandfather had served as quarter-master-general during the War of Independence.