Jingo

dripped off it as it rose against the stars.
    It stood on a cross-shaped perch.
    There seemed to be a letter on each of the four ends of the cross.
    Solid held the torch closer.
    “What the—”
    Then he pulled the oar free and sat down beside his son.
    “Row like the blazes, Les!”
    “What’s happening, Dad?”
    “Shut up and row! Get us away from it!”
    “Is it a monster, Dad?”
    “It’s worse than a monster, son!” shouted Solid, as the oars bit into the water.
    The thing was quite high now, standing on some kind of tower…“What is it, Dad! What is it? ”
    “It’s a damned weathercock!”

    There was not, on the whole, a lot of geological excitement. The sinking of continents is usually accompanied by volcanoes, earthquakes and armadas of little boats containing old men anxious to build pyramids and mystic stone circles in some new land where being the possessor of genuine ancient occult wisdom might be expected to attract girls. But the rising of this one caused barely a ripple in the purely physical scheme of things. It more or less sidled back, like a cat who’s been away for a few days and knows you’ve been worrying.
    Around the shores of the Circle Sea a large wave, only five or six feet high by the time it reached them, caused some comment. And in some of the very low-lying swamp areas the water swamped some villages of people that no one else cared about very much. But in a purely geological sense, nothing very much happened.
    In a purely geological sense.

    “It’s a city , Dad! Look, you can see all the windows and—”
    “I told you to shut up and keep rowing!”
    The seawater surged down the streets. On either side, huge, weed-encrusted buildings boiled slowly out of the surf.
    Father and son fought to keep some way on the boat as it was dragged along. And, since lesson one in the art of rowing is that you do it while looking the wrong way, they didn’t see the other boat…
    “You lunatic!”
    “Foolish man!”
    “Don’t you touch that building! This country belongs to Ankh-Morpork!”
    The two boats spun in a temporary whirlpool.
    “I claim this land in the name of the Seriph of Al-Khali!”
    “We saw it first! Les, you tell him we saw it first!”
    “We saw it first before you saw it first!”
    “Les, you saw him, he tried to hit me with that oar!”
    “But Dad, you’re waving that trident—”
    “See the untrustworthy way he attacks us, Akhan!”
    There was a grinding noise from under the keel of both boats and they began to tip as they settled into the sea-bottom ooze.
    “Look, Father, there is an interesting statue—”
    “He has set his foot on Klatchian soil! The squid thief!”
    “Get those filthy sandals off Ankh-Morporkian territory!”
    “Oh, Dad —”
    The two fishermen stopped screaming at each other, mainly in order to get their breath back. Crabs scuttled away. Water drained between the patches of weed, carving runnels in the gray silt.
    “Father, look, there’s still colored tiles on the—”
    “Mine!”
    “Mine!”
    Les caught Akhan’s eye. They exchanged a very brief glance which was nevertheless modulated with a considerable amount of information, beginning with the sheer galactic-sized embarrassment of having parents and working up from there.
    “Dad, we don’t have to—” Les began.
    “You shut up! It’s your future I’m thinking about, my lad—”
    “Yes, but who cares who saw it first, Dad? We’re both hundreds of miles from home! I mean, who’s going to know , Dad?”
    The two squid fishermen glared at one another.
    The dripping buildings rose above them. There were holes that might well have been doorways, and glassless apertures that could have been windows, but all was darkness within. Now and again, Les fancied he could hear something slithering.
    Solid Jackson coughed. “The lad’s right,” he muttered. “Daft to argue. Just the four of us.”
    “Indeed,” said Arif.
    They backed away, each man carefully watching the other. Then, so closely that it was a chorus, they both yelled: “Grab the boat!”
    There was a confused couple of moments and then each pair, boat carried over their heads, ran and slithered along the muddy streets.
    They had to stop and come back, with mutual cries of “A kidnapper as well, eh?” to get the right sons.
    As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot home first. If it is