Chapter I: 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.

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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

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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?”

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THE ISLAND OF APPLEDORE