This time Ed Mason and I could join in Captain Bannister's mirth. The captain, still chuckling, led the way across the yard and sat down on the stone doorstep, warm in the noon sunshine. Ed and I perched on a grass banking beside him to hear the further adventures of Silas Winkley.
"Well, Silas he kep' havin' bad luck. His fust mate, Andy Spauldin', was took down sick pretty soon with yaller janders, an' that left Silas an' my father to navigate the ship. It was my father's fust v'yge as an officer, an' I guess he wa'n't no great shakes navigatin',—though he was most as good as Silas was, at that."
"In 'bout two weeks they made what Silas thought was Fayal. Silas sailed into harbor as proud as Nebberkernezzar, when one of the men come up an' says, says he, 'That ain't Fayal, Cap'n,' but Silas told him to shut his mouth, he guessed he knew where he was without no Joppa clam-digger tellin' him his business. Yer see Silas he was born over to Ipswich, an' terrible proud of it,—I dunno why. But after he'd come to anchor, an' he'd got on his shore clothes, he got into the boat an' went ashore. It didn't take him long to find out that the feller was right; it wa'n't Fayal, it wa'n't even one of the Azores, he hadn't made no east'ard at all,—hee, hee, hee! Hee, hee, hee! It was—hee, hee, hee!"
The captain's laughing was so prolonged this time, he was so doubled up with excruciating merriment as to cause us some anxiety. He coughed and strangled, and his usually red face became deep purple. Finally he managed to control himself enough to gasp faintly:—
"It was one of the West Injies! Yessir, Silas had sailed pretty nigh due south after the gale was over, an' here he was on one of the West Injy Islands. I dunno what one: my father said Silas wouldn't never tell 'em, though he reckoned it might 'a' been Cubia. Joe Noyes was in the crew, an' he said it was further to the east'ard than Cubia, but it was one of the West Injies all right. The story got out, of course, when the Nanny got back here, an,' when Silas come down to live on this lane with his mother's folks,—for Melvin Bailey didn't ask him to command no more ships,—why then they began to call this West Injy Lane. That wa'n't its name,—'twas Plummer's Lane, but folks has called it West Injy Lane ever since,—'cept these cotty-dummers that want it called Washington Avenue. Yessir, that's the way it happened."
And then the captain added, somewhat irrelevantly:—
"So yer see I know all 'bout that tree, an' yer don't want to believe any of them poets!"