The Captain listened to the pilot's original South Carolina talk, or, as the pilot himself had called it, polished language, without exhibiting any signs of fear and trembling at its sublime dignity; yet, finding that the pilot had misconstrued the tenor of his answer, said, "You must have mistaken the intention of my reply, sir; and the different manner in which you appropriate its import may be attributed to a custom among yourselves, which makes language offensive that has no offensive meaning. We never carry pistols or any such playthings in my country. We have a moral security for our lives, and never look upon death as so great an enemy that we must carry deadly weapons to defend it. In fact, pilot," he said in a joking manner, "they're rather cumbersome little bits for a feller's pocket: I'd rather carry my supper and breakfast in my pocket. Now tell us, who do you call niggers in South Carolina?"
"Why, Captain, we call all what a'n't white folks. Our folks can tell 'em right smart. They can't shirk out if it's only marked by the seventeenth generation. You can always tell 'em by the way they look--they can't look you in the face, if they are ever so white. The law snaps 'em up once in a while, and then, if they're ever so white, it makes 'em prove it. I've known several cases where the doubt was in favor of the nigger, but he couldn't prove it, and had to stand aside among the darkies. Dogs take my skin, Cap, if theren't a Jew feller in town as white as anybody, and his father's a doctor. It got whispered round that he was a nigger, and the boarders where he stayed raised a fuss about it. The nigger's father had two of them sued for slander, but they proved the nigger by a quirk of law that'd make a volume bigger than Blackstone; and instead of the old Jew getting satisfaction, the judges, as a matter of policy, granted him time to procure further proof to show that his son wasn't a nigger. It was a very well-considered insinuation of the judges, but the young-un stands about A-1 with a prime nigger-feller."
"I should like to have 'em try me, to see whether I was a nigger or a white man. It must be a funny law, 'nigger or no nigger.' If a feller's skin won't save him, what the devil will?" said the Captain.