partic’lar hurry," says I, lookin’ out over the bay. There wa’n’t a breath of air stirrin’ and the water was slick and shiny as a starched shirt. The Glide runs by wind power and there’s no wind. This calm may last one hour or it may last two. As long as it lasts I stay where I am." 

What! Did I think they would stay there just because I was too lazy to get my whoopety-bang fish-dory under way? Stay there in that sand-heap—sand-heap was the politest of the names he called Crowell’s plantation—and starve? 

"Oh," says I. "I won’t starve. I’m goin’ to get dinner." 

Dinner! The very name of it was like a life-preserver to a feller who’d gone under for the second time. 

"Can you get us dinner?" roars the Major. "By George, if you can I’ll—" 

"Not for you I can’t," I says. "You live accordin’ to the Payne schedule, on prunes and pecans and such. The prune crop ’round here is a failure and I don’t see a pecan tree in Jonathan’s back yard. No, any dinner I’d get would give you compound, gallopin’ dyspepsy, and I can’t be responsible for your death—I love you too much. But I cal’late I can scratch up a meal that’ll keep folks with common insides from perishin’ of hunger. Anyhow, I’m goin’ to try." 

CHAPTER IV—HOW I MADE A CLAM CHOWDER; AND WHAT A CLAM CHOWDER MADE OF ME 

Well, sir, even the Major’s guns were spiked for a minute. I cal’late that, for once, he’d forgot all about his dietizin’ and only remembered his appetite. He gurgled and choked and glared. Before he could get his artillery ready for a broadside I walked off and left him. He’d riled me up a little and I saw a chance to rile him back. 

I went around to the back part of the Crowell house and tried the kitchen door. ’Twas locked, for a wonder, but the window side of it wasn’t. I pushed up the sash and reached in fur enough to unhook the door. Then I went into the house and begun to overhaul the supplies in the galley. I found flour and sugar and salt and pepper and coffee and butter and canned milk and salt pork—about everything I wanted. Jonathan and I was friendly enough so’s I knew he wouldn’t care what I used so long as I paid for it. If he had I’d have taken the risk, just then. 

The wood-box was full and I got a fire goin’ in the cookstove, and put on a couple of kettles of water to heat. Then I went out to the shed and located a clam hoe and a bucket. There’s clams a-plenty 

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