To skin the fish, build our fireplace, 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.