The Island of Appledore

Front matter

Reading edition

E-text prepared by Roger Frank from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)

Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/islandofappledor00aldo

The boy had learned much of odd-sounding names and strange sea terms.

THE ISLAND OF APPLEDORE

ADAIR ALDON

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

By W. B. KING

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1917

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published, September, 1917.

FOREWORD

Any one who knows the coast of New England will know also the Island of Appledore and just where it lies. Such a person can tell you that it is not exactly the place described in this book, that it is small and bare and rocky with no woods, no meadows, no church, or mill, or mill-creek road. Perhaps all that the story tells of it that is true is that there the rocks give forth their strange deep song, “the calling of Appledore,” as warning of a storm, that there the poppies bloom as nowhere else in the world, that there the surf comes rolling in, day in and day out, the whole year through, and that there one’s memory turns back with longing, no matter how many years of absence have gone by.

There, also, you can sit for hours to watch the huge, green breakers come foaming and tumbling in endless procession up the stony beach; you can watch the nimble sandpipers and the tireless, wheeling gulls; and if you choose you can spin for yourself just such a story as this one of Billy Wentworth and Captain Saulsby and Sally Shute, a tale of mysteries and perils and midnight adventures on the shores of Appledore.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I Peering Eyes

II The Mill-Creek Road

III The Cruise of the Josephine

IV Captain Saulsby’s Watch

V The War Game

VI The Ebbing of the Tide

VII Mist and Moonlight

VIII The Stranger at the Mill

IX The Calling of the Island

X Three Quarters of a Year

XI The Watchfires of Appledore

XII The Last Voyage of Johann Happs

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The boy had learned much of odd-sounding names and strange sea terms.

“Why,” gasped Billy, “it must have been the Flying Dutchman.”

Johann shook his head in mute anguish.

“Would you believe it, there were two boys that put to sea right in the face of it?”

THE ISLAND OF APPLEDORE