E-text prepared by Roger Frank
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Internet Archive
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The boy had learned much of odd-sounding names and strange sea terms.

Any one who knows the coast of New England will know also the Island ofAppledore and just where it lies. Such a person can tell you that it isnot exactly the place described in this book, that it is small and bareand rocky with no woods, no meadows, no church, or mill, or mill-creekroad. Perhaps all that the story tells of it that is true is that therethe rocks give forth their strange deep song, “the calling ofAppledore,” as warning of a storm, that there the poppies bloom asnowhere else in the world, that there the surf comes rolling in, day inand day out, the whole year through, and that there one’s memory turnsback with longing, no matter how many years of absence have gone by.

There, also, you can sit for hours to watch the huge, greenbreakers come foaming and tumbling in endless procession up the stonybeach; you can watch the nimble sandpipers and the tireless, wheelinggulls; and if you choose you can spin for yourself just such a story asthis one of Billy Wentworth and Captain Saulsby and Sally Shute, a taleof mysteries and perils and midnight adventures on the shores ofAppledore.