Tartlet shook his head, then he gave utterance to a hoarse exclamation, followed by incoherent words. Godfrey shook him violently. Tartlet then opened his eyes, passed his left hand over his brow, lifted his right hand and assured himself that his precious kit and bow, which he tightly held, had not abandoned him. "Tartlet! My dear Tartlet!" shouted Godfrey, lightly raising his head. The head with his mass of tumbled hair gave an affirmative nod. "It is I! I! Godfrey!" "Godfrey?" asked the professor. And then he turned over, and rose on to his knees, and looked about, and smiled, and rose to his feet! He had discovered that at last he was on a solid base! He had gathered that he was no longer on the ship's deck, exposed to all the uncertainties of its pitches and its rolls! The sea had ceased to carry him! He stood on firm ground! And then Professor Tartlet recovered the aplomb which he had lost since his departure; his feet placed themselves naturally, with their toes turned out, in the regulation position; his left hand seized his kit, his right hand grasped his bow. Then, while the strings, vigorously attacked, gave forth a humid sound of melancholy sonorousness, these words escaped his smiling lips,-- "In place, miss!" The good man was thinking of Phina. CHAPTER IX. IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT CRUSOES DO NOT HAVE EVERYTHING AS THEY WISH. That done, the professor and his pupil rushed into one another's arms. "My dear Godfrey!" exclaimed Tartlet. "My good Tartlet!" replied Godfrey. "At last we are arrived in port!" observed the professor in the tone of a man who had had enough of navigation and its accidents. He called it arriving in port! Godfrey had no desire to contradict him. "Take off your life-belt," he said. "It suffocates you and hampers your movements." "Do you think I can do so without inconvenience?" asked Tartlet. "Without any inconvenience," answered Godfrey. "Now put up your fiddle, and let us take a look round." "Come on," replied the professor; "but if you don't mind, Godfrey, let us go to the first restaurant we see. I am dying of hunger, and a dozen sandwiches washed down with a glass or two of wine will soon set me on my legs again." "Yes! to the first restaurant!" answered Godfrey, nodding his head; "and even to the last, if the first does not suit us." "And," continued Tartlet, "we can ask some fellow as we go along the road to the telegraph office so as to send a message off to your Uncle Kolderup. That excellent man will hardly refuse to send on some necessary cash for us to get back to Montgomery Street, for I have not got a cent with me!" "Agreed, to the first telegraph office," answered Godfrey, "or if there isn't one in this country, to the first post office. Come on, Tartlet." The professor took off his swimming apparatus, and passed it over his shoulder like a hunting-horn, and then both stepped out for the edge of the dunes which bordered the shore.