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[Illustration: The boy had learned much of odd-sounding names and
strange sea terms.]
THE ISLAND OF APPLEDORE
by
ADAIR ALDON
With Illustrations by W. B. King
New York
The Macmillan Company
1917
Copyright, 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
CHAPTER I
PEERING EYES
Two big willow-trees guarded the entrance to Captain Saulsby’s place,
willow-trees with such huge, rough trunks and such thick, gnarled
branches that they might almost have been oaks. For fifty years they had
bent and rocked before the furious winter storms, had bowed their heads
to the showers of salt spray and had trembled under the shock of the
thundering surf that often broke on the rocks below them. They had seen
tempests and wrecks and thrilling rescues upon that stretch of sea
across which they had looked so long, they had battled with winds that
had been too much for more than one of the ships flying for shelter to
the harbour of Appledore. It was no wonder that they showed the stress
of time.
Billy Wentworth stood hesitating at the gap in the wall, looked up at
the swaying, pale-green branches above him and down at the green and
white surf rolling in on the shore below, sniffed at the keen salt
breeze and tried to tell himself that he did not like it. He was so
thoroughly angry and discontented that he could see nothing pleasant in
the sunny stretch of open water, the glitter of the tossing whitecaps
and the line of breaking waves about the lighthouse a mile away.
“To spend the summer on a little two-by-four island with an old-maid
aunt,” was his bitter reflection, “to have nothing on earth to do and no
one to do it with—it’s just too hard. I won’t stand it long.”
He stumped the toes of his boots in the dust of the narrow path with as
much obstinate sulkiness as though he were six years old instead of
sixteen. Perhaps it made him even more angry than he was before, to
discover that, in spite of what he had been thinking, he had stood
staring for some minutes at the big, curling waves as they rolled in,
receded, and came foaming up among the rocks again. Indeed he had been
watching with such fascination that he could scarcely tear his eyes
away. He had seen the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in his life only
a few hours ago, and he was still trying, with some success, to convince
himself that he did not like it and never would.
He strolled aimlessly along the path which he had been told led to
“Cap’n Saulsby’s little house down on the point.” There was a vague
desire in his mind to look upon a live sea-captain since he had never
seen one before. The feeling was not strong, only just enough to bring
him along the shore road and through the willow-guarded gateway. He had
no thought, as he walked slowly between the two big trees, that they
marked the door to a new phase in his life, that they were to prove the
entrance to adventures and perils of an unknown kind. He merely trudged
along, frowning at the sun that shone too brightly on the dazzling blue
water and at the wind that blew too sharply in his face.
Somebody was walking up the path before him; so he slackened his pace a
little, having no wish to overtake him. As far as he could judge it was
a boy of about twenty-one or so, very fair-haired, with broad shoulders
and well-shaped hands hanging from sleeves a trifle too short. He
carried a bag of tools and was whistling gaily some intricate tune of
trills and runs as he walked along. As he turned to look out to sea,
Billy saw that he had a pleasant face, cheerful, intelligent and rather
sensitive. He stood for a minute, though without seeing Billy, then
walked on again, swinging his bag and piping his music in the very best
of spirits.
A bobolink was swinging on the branch of a bush that leaned over the
wall. The gay black-and-white fellow was a new bird to Billy, so he
stopped to look at it more closely. Certainly it was the bird that
caught his attention not the unaccountable rustle that he heard
immediately after, for that sound he might never have noticed save for
the strange thing that followed.
For the rustle was repeated; then a hand rose over the wall, slipped
across one of the big lichen-covered rocks and rapped upon it sharply
with something metallic. The boy ahead of him stopped dead, hesitated a
second, then turned slowly toward the sound. Billy could see now that
there was a man there behind the wall, crouching among the bushes, some
one rather small, narrow-shouldered and with stiff black hair. He seemed
to be peering intently at the boy on the path but did not move or speak.
The boy, also, said nothing but presently went upon his way again,
swinging his bag and once more trying to whistle. But such a trembling,
broken tune as came forth in place of the former cheerful music! The lad
looked back once, but was gazing so eagerly at the wall that he did not
notice Billy at all. He showed a face turned suddenly gray-white with
terror, drawn, haggard and anxious. It was plainly visible that his
knees shook under him as he tried to stride onward at his former gait,
and that it was because of the trembling of his hands that his bag of
tools dropped twice upon the grass.
What could have been in that man’s face that had alarmed him so? The boy
looked like a vigorous, spirited sort of person, Billy thought, one that
it might be nice to know and be friends with, not a coward. The mild
interest that had brought him through the gate now gave place to extreme
curiosity as he hurried up the path.
Around the curve of a low knoll Captain Saulsby’s house came into view.
It was an oddly-shaped little dwelling, so surrounded with trees and
bushes that there was not much to be seen of it except bits here and
there: a peering chimney, patches of red-stained roof, a portion of gray
wall and the front door painted a bright, cheerful blue. Sloping away to
the rocky point lay Captain Saulsby’s garden, with its rows of
vegetables and shrubs and flowers. Captain Saulsby himself was sitting
in an armchair on the wide, stone doorstep, but alas he did not look in
the least as Billy had expected.
He had pictured old sailors as being white-haired, but sturdy and
upright, dressed in blue clothes and moving with a rolling walk or
sitting to stare out to sea through a brass telescope. Captain Saulsby’s
hair was not exactly white, it was indeed no particular color on earth;
he wore shabby overalls a world too big even for his vast figure and he
had carpet slippers instead of picturesque sea-boots. Yet the flavour of
the sea somehow clung to him after all, brought out, perhaps, by the
texture of his face which was red and weather-beaten with the skin
wrinkled and thickened to the consistency of alligator leather, and by
his huge rough hands that resembled nothing so much as the gnarled and
stunted willow-trees at his gate.
Instead of grasping a telescope, he was holding a bright blue sock which
he was mending as deftly as though well used to the task. The darning
needle seemed lost between his big fingers, but it went in and out with
great speed, pushed by a sailor’s palm instead of a thimble. That, Billy
thought disappointedly, was the only really nautical thing about him.
“Good afternoon, Johann Happs,” the captain called cheerily as the first
of his visitors came near. Then peering over his spectacles at Billy, he
added, “Who is that behind you?” The boy whom he called Johann wheeled
suddenly and turned upon Billy a look that he could never forget.
Terror, desperation and defiance all were written on his unhappy face
and in his startled eyes. When he saw, however, that it was not the
black-haired man who had peered over the wall, but only a boy from the
summer colony at the hotel, his evident bewilderment and relief might
have been almost ridiculous had they not been pathetic. He laughed
shakily and turned to the captain.
“I do not know who it is,” he said, “Perhaps someone to buy
strawberries.”
“You’re Miss Mattie Pearson’s nephew, now I’ll be bound,” remarked the
old man, surveying Billy carefully from head to foot as he came closer.
“She told me all about you, where you had meant to go this summer and
how you came here instead and maybe weren’t going to like us here on
Appledore Island. Johann, look at that frown on his face; I don’t think
he has sized us up very fair so far, do you? Well, he’ll learn, he’ll
learn!”
Billy frowned more deeply than ever, partly because he had no taste for
being made sport of by a stranger and partly because the memory of his
recent disappointments came back to him with a fresh pang. His plan for
this summer had been to camp out in the Rockies, to climb mountains, to
ride horseback, fish in the roaring, ice-cold little trout streams and
to shoot grouse when the season came around. His father and mother had
promised him just such a program; they were all three to carry it out
together, being the three most congenial camping comrades that ever
lived. However, sudden developments of business, due to the war in
Europe and the necessity of turning in other directions for trade, had
called his father to South America at just the season when Billy could
not leave school to go also. It was during the Easter vacation that he
had travelled from his school in the Middle West to New York, to see his
father and mother off on their long voyage; then he had gone back
unwillingly to face continuous days of missing them and of rebelling
vainly against the destruction of his hopes for the summer.
When Miss Mattie Pearson, his mother’s sister, had invited her reluctant
nephew to stay at Appledore, she must have realized that the resources
of the hotel and the little fishing village that the Island boasted,
would scarcely be sufficient to satisfy him. She seemed to have been
thinking of Captain Saulsby even when she wrote her first letter, for
she had said, “I hope you will find one companion, at least, who will
interest you.” She had a great affection for the queer, gruff, bent, old
sailor, and must have felt that he and the boy were bound to become
friends. And now Billy, standing before the captain himself, shifting
uneasily from foot to foot and looking into those small, twinkling blue
eyes, was beginning, much to his surprise, to feel the same thing.
“There are some strawberries down yonder in the best patch that I have
been saving for your Aunt,” the old man went on. “I’m glad you came
along, for this isn’t one of my spry days and I couldn’t carry them up
to the hotel myself. I have been expecting Jacky Shute to take them, but
the young monkey hasn’t turned up. You didn’t see him, did you, Johann,
as you came along?”
“No,” replied Johann hastily, much too hastily, Billy thought, “I saw no
one, not anyone at all.”
Billy looked at him in amazement. He did not seem at all like the kind
of person who could tell such a lie. Nor did he appear to enjoy telling
it, for he stammered, turned red, picked up his bag of tools and set
them down again.
“I will go in and mend the clock now, if you don’t mind, Captain
Saulsby,” he said, perhaps in the desire to escape further questioning.
“Go right in and do anything you like to it,” the old man returned, “and
meanwhile this young fellow and I will go down and get the berries. Just
reach me that basket of boxes, will you, and give me a hand up out of
this chair, and we’ll be off. The clock is ticking away as steadily as
old Father Time himself, but I suppose you will find some tinkering to
do.”
He took up the heavy wooden stick that leaned against his chair and that
looked as rough and knobby and weather-worn as himself. With Johann’s
help he rose slowly from his seat, making Billy quite gasp at the full
sight of how big he was. Yet he would have been much bigger could he
have stood upright, for he was bent and twisted with rheumatism in every
possible way; his shoulders bowed, his back crooked, his knees and
elbows warped quite out of their natural shape. He wrinkled his forehead
under the stress of evident pain and breathed very hard as he stumped
down the path, but for a few moments he said nothing.
“Kind of catches me a little when I first get up,” he remarked
cheerfully at last. “There have been three days of fog and that’s always
bad for a man as full of rheumatics as I am. I hope you won’t mind very
much gathering the berries yourself. I—I—” his face twisted with real
agony as he stumbled over a stone. “I find it takes me a pretty long
time to stoop my old back over the rows and some folks would rather not
wait.”
“Indeed I don’t mind,” replied Billy with cordial agreement to the plan.
He had no reluctance in owning to himself that, however discontented he
was with things in general, here was one person at least whom he was
going to like.
“Now,” said Captain Saulsby as they reached the strawberry patch at the
foot of the garden, “eat as many as you can and fill the boxes as full
as you can carry them away. That is what berries are made for, so go to
it.”
This invitation was no difficult one to accept. The berries were big and
ripe and sweet, and warm with the warmth of the pleasant June day. It
was still and hot there in the sun, with no sound except the booming of
the surf along the shore, and the shrill call of a katydid in the hedge
at Billy’s elbow.
The glittering sea stretched out on each side of them, for Captain
Saulsby’s garden lay along the point that formed the northernmost end of
Appledore Island. A coasting schooner, her decks piled high with new,
yellow lumber, came beating into the wind on one side of the rocky
headland, finally doubled it and, spreading her sails wing-and-wing,
went skimming away before the breeze. Billy, whose whole knowledge of
boats included only canoes and square, splashing Mississippi River
steamers, sat back on his heels watching, open-mouthed, as the graceful
craft sped off as easily as a big bird.
“Say, young fellow, your aunt will be waiting a long time for those
berries,” was Captain Saulsby’s drawling reminder that brought him back
to his senses. He blushed, recollected quickly that he was the boy who
hated the Island of Appledore and everything belonging to it, and fell
to picking strawberries again with his back to the schooner. The little
katydid began to sing again.
“That’s a queer fellow, that Johann Happs,” the old sailor remarked
reflectively as he sat watching Billy’s vigorous industry. “He is a
German; at least his father was, although Johann was born in this
country and is as American as any one of us. He is as honest and
straightforward a boy as I have ever known and has been a friend of mine
as long as I have lived here. But there is something wrong with him
lately that he is keeping from me. I wish I could manage to guess what
it is.”
“Did you say he mends clocks for a living?” Billy asked. He decided that
he would not betray Johann’s secret, little as he knew of it, and much
as he desired to learn more.
“No, clock-mending is his recreation, not his business. He is a
mechanic, and a good faithful worker, but when he wants to be really
happy he just gets hold of a bunch of old rusty wheels and weights, that
hasn’t run for twenty years, and works at them by the hour. To see him
tinkering would show you where his real genius is. He gave me a clock
that belonged to his father, a queer old thing with gold roses on the
face and with wooden wheels, but it runs like a millionaire’s watch. He
comes around once in so often to see if it is doing its duty, and has
six fits if it has lost a second in a couple of weeks. He’s a queer
fellow.”
“Then he isn’t a fisherman,” commented Billy. “I thought that every one
who lived on the Island was that.”
“Almost every one is, except that boy and me,” answered the Captain.
“No, Johann isn’t a fisherman, but you never saw any one in your life
who can sail a boat the way he can. That’s his little craft anchored off
the point there; she’s the very apple of his eye. Just see how he keeps
her; I do believe he would give her a new coat of paint every week if he
could afford it. He’s surely proud of her! He was so happy with her a
little while back that I can’t understand what has come over him now.”
He sat staring at the little boat, until Billy finally had filled his
boxes and had risen to his feet.
“I have picked all these for Aunt Mattie,” he said, “and have eaten
about twice as many besides. Now won’t you let me pick some for you?”
“Why, that’s good of you,” returned the old man gratefully. “I won’t
deny that it is easier work sitting here and watching you gather them
than to try to get the pesky things myself. I don’t need any myself but
I did want to send some to Mrs. Shute, over beyond the creek. They are
just right for putting up now and will be almost too ripe in another
day. That rascal Jacky should have taken them, but there’s no knowing
where he is.”
“I’ll pick them and take them to her, if you will tell me the way,”
Billy assured him. “Don’t say no; I would really like to.”
The boxes filled rapidly, to the accompaniment of much earnest talk
between Billy and his new friend. He learned how little to be relied
upon was Jacky Shute, the Captain’s assistant gardener; what an unusual
number of summer visitors on the Island there were, owing to the war in
Europe and the impossibility of people’s going abroad; what a cold,
windy spring it had been, very bad for vegetables and for the poppies
that were the pride of Appledore gardens but—
“Great for sailing,” the old man concluded wistfully.
When the berries were ready, the Captain came with Billy to the edge of
the garden to show him the way. Beyond the point, on its western
shore-line, was a stretch of curving beach, cut into a deep harbour by
the mouth of a little stream.
“You cross that meadow above the rocks,” the Captain directed, “and go
straight on down to the creek. You will find a row of stepping stones
that makes almost a bridge; the tide is nearly dead low so it will
certainly be uncovered and you can cross without trouble. The stream is
the mill creek, and that building you see on the other side, among the
trees, is the old mill. You go up from the creek right past the mill
door and follow the road that leads through the woods. The first lane
that turns off from that will take you to the Shutes’, so you see you
can’t miss the way. They have a nice girl, Sally Shute; I hope she’ll be
at home for I know you’ll like her. She is worth twenty of Jacky, that
worthless young brother of hers.” He turned back to the garden. “Well,
good-bye; I know you won’t have any trouble getting there but don’t stay
too long, the tide is pretty quick to cover the causeway over the creek
and then you would have to walk five miles around by the highroad. I
will see you when you come back and I surely am obliged to you.”
Billy set off with his load of boxes under his arm, stepping carefully
through the tall grass of the meadow where daisies nodded in white
profusion and bayberries and brambles grew thickly along the stony edge
of the field. He came presently in sight of the stream and the
bridge-like stepping stones, finding them, as Captain Saulsby had said,
just uncovered by the dropping tide. One huge rock jutted far out into
the water at the edge of the little harbour, and here he found himself
tempted to stop a minute, staring at the foaming green water, then to
climb down from ledge to ledge and finally to seat himself just above
where the surf was breaking.
How cool and deep the tumbling waves were, how they came rolling
solemnly in, and then seemed to hesitate for one short second before
they broke and sent spattering showers up to his very feet. He must go
on, of course; it was really a shame to delay longer; he would just
watch another breaker come in, and then another—and another, so that he
might see again those shining rainbows that came and went in the sunlit
spray.
He heard something scurry and scuttle across the rock near by him and,
as he looked over the edge, saw a slim, brown mink come out of a hole
and stop to look up at him. It must have had a nest near by, for it was
fierce in its anger at his intrusion and seemed quite unafraid. Its
wicked little eyes fairly snapped with rage, and it made a queer hissing
sound as it tried, with tiny fury, to frighten him away. He laughed and
turned to go, then started back suddenly as he spied a face peering out
at him for a moment from behind the big, grey rock above him. It struck
him, startled as he was, that the human face was something like the
mink’s; the same narrow cruel jaw, the same retreating forehead, the
little beady black eyes and stiff black hair. With a great effort,
although his heart hammered at his ribs and his knees shook a little, if
the truth must be told, he climbed up to the jutting rock and looked
behind it. There was no one there. He drew a sigh of relief at the
thought that he must have been mistaken, then checked it sharply when he
saw a black shadow, thin, lithe and quickly-moving, slip across the
surface of the rocks and vanish.