eplace, and cook the chowder kept us busy
the next two hours.

The fresh air and the exercise had given us the appetites of wolves, and
we were about famished by the time the savory mixture was ready for our
clam-shell saucers.

I shall not insult the rising generation on the seaboard by telling them
how delectable is a chowder compounded and eaten in this Robinson Crusoe
fashion. As for the boys who live inland, and know not of such marine
feasts, my heart is full of pity for them. What wasted lives! Not to
know the delights of a clambake, not to love chowder, to be ignorant of
lobscouse!

How happy we were, we four, sitting cross-legged in the crisp salt
grass, with the invigorating seabreeze blowing gratefully through our
hair! What a joyous thing was life, and how far off seemed death--death,
that lurks in all pleasant places, and was so near!

The banquet finished, Phil Adams drew from his pocket a handful of
sweet-fern cigars; but as none of the party could indulge without
imminent risk of becoming ill, we all, on one pretext or another,
declined, and Phil smoked by himself.

The wind had freshened by this, and we found it comfortable to put
on the jackets which had been thrown aside in the heat of the day.
We strolled along the beach and gathered large quantities of the
fairy-woven Iceland moss, which at certain seasons is washed to these
shores; then we played at ducks and drakes, and then, the sun being
sufficiently low, we went in bathing.

Before our bath was ended a slight change had come over the sky and sea;
fleecy-white clouds scudded here and there, and a muffled moan from the
breakers caught our ears from time to time. While we were dressing, a
few hurried drops of rain came lisping down, and we adjourned to the
tent to wait the passing of the squall.

"We're all right, anyhow," said Phil Adams. "It won't be much of a blow,
and we'll be as snug as a bug in a rug, here in the tent, particularly
if we have that lemonade which some of you fellows were going to make."

By an oversight, the lemons had been left in the boat. Binny Wallace
volunteered to go for them.

"Put an extra stone on the painter, Binny," said Adams, calling after
him; "it would be awkward to have the Dolphin give us the slip and
return to port minus her passengers."

"That it would," answered Binny, scrambling down the rocks.

Sandpeep Island is diamond-shaped--one point running out into the sea,
and the other looking towa