e
peculiar turn of hand necessary for operations of this kind, if he did
not get much heat out of the wood, he succeeded in getting a good deal
out of himself. In short, it was his own forehead alone which smoked
under the vapours of his own perspiration.

When Godfrey returned with his collection of eggs, he found Tartlet in a
rage, in a state to which his choregraphic exercises had never doubtless
provoked him.

"Doesn't it do?" he asked.

"No, Godfrey, it does not do," replied the professor. "And I begin to
think that these inventions of the savages are only imaginations to
deceive the world."

"No," answered Godfrey. "But in that, as in all things, you must know
how to do it."

"These eggs, then?"

"There is another way. If you attach one of these eggs to the end of a
string and whirl it round rapidly, and suddenly arrest the movement of
rotation, the movement may perhaps transform itself into heat, and
then--"

"And then the egg will be cooked?"

"Yes, if the rotation has been swift enough and the stoppage sudden
enough. But how do you produce the stoppage without breaking the egg?
Now, there is a simpler way, dear Tartlet. Behold!"

And carefully taking one of the eggs of the bernicle goose, he broke the
shell at its end, and adroitly swallowed the inside without any further
formalities.

Tartlet could not make up his mind to imitate him, and contented himself
with the shell-fish.

It now remained to look for a grotto or some shelter in which to pass
the night.

"It is an unheard-of thing," observed the professor, "that Crusoes
cannot at the least find a cavern, which, later on, they can make their
home!"

"Let us look," said Godfrey.

It was unheard of. We must avow, however, that on this occasion the
tradition was broken. In vain did they search along the rocky shore on
the southern part of the bay. Not a cavern, not a grotto, not a hole was
there that would serve as a shelter. They had to give up the idea.
Godfrey resolved to reconnoitre up to the first trees in the background
beyond the sandy coast.

Tartlet and he then remounted the first line of sandhills and crossed
the verdant prairies which they had seen a few hours before.

A very odd circumstance, and a very fortunate one at the time, that the
other survivors of the wreck voluntarily followed them. Evidently, cocks
and hens, and sheep, goats and agouties, driven by instinct, had
resolved to go with them. Doubtless they felt too l