Page:Cornelia Meigs--The island of Appledore.djvu/171

Rh sea-weed when the tide goes down. A boy who’s been on the sea, and in it and near it  and of it as you have been this summer, Billy  Wentworth, can never get away from it  again.”

“I’m not so sure,” said Billy; “of course I’ve liked it and all that but—”

“You can’t know yet,” his friend replied. “There was my garden here; for five years I thought I hated it, and now, since you drew  my notice, I find I’ve learned to love it. And you’ll find you love all this—” he swept his  arm in a wide gesture to include the rocky  shore, the high, green hill of Appledore and  the wide stretch of sunny sea—“yes, that you  love it too well to stop away. Well, good-bye; I hope you’ll have a good passage, but I fear it’s going to be a rough one.”

It was true that, although the sun was shining, there were banks of clouds in the west and signs of coming stormy weather.

“Do you hear the island singing?” Captain Saulsby said. “That means wind for sure.”

It was a strange thing about the rocks of Appledore that, when rising winds blew across them in a certain way, there was a queer, hollow, humming sound that the fisherman said