The Colour of Magic

Great Nef tribesman, was much traveled and had seen many strange peoples and curious things, many of which he had subsequently enslaved or stolen. He had begun his career as a sailor on the Dehydrated Ocean in the heart of the Disc’s driest desert. (Water on the Disc has an uncommon fourth state, caused by intense heat combined with the strange dessicating effects of octarine light; it dehydrates, leaving a silvery residue like free-flowing sand through which a well-designed hull can glide with ease. The Dehydrated Ocean is a strange place, but not so strange as its fish.) The captain had never before been really frightened. Now he was terrified.
    “I can’t hear anything,” he muttered to the first mate.
    The mate peered into the gloom.
    “Perhaps it fell overboard?” he suggested hopefully. As if in answer there came a furious pounding from the oar deck below their feet, and the sound of splintering wood. The crewmen drew together fearfully, brandishing axes and torches.
    They probably wouldn’t dare to use them, even if the Monster came rushing toward them. Before its terrible nature had been truly understood several men had attacked it with axes, whereupon it had turned aside from its single-minded searching of the ship and had either chased them overboard or had— eaten them? The captain was not quite certain. The Thing looked like an ordinary wooden sea chest. A bit larger than usual, maybe, but not suspiciously so. But while it sometimes seemed to contain things like old socks and miscellaneous luggage, at other times—and he shuddered—it seemed to be, seemed to be, seemed to have …He tried not to think about it. It was just that the men who had been drowned overboard had probably been more fortunate than those it had caught. He tried not to think about it. There had been teeth , teeth like white wooden gravestones, and a tongue red as mahogany…
    He tried not to think about it. It didn’t work.
    But he thought bitterly about one thing. This was going to be the last time he rescued ungrateful drowning men in mysterious circumstances. Slavery was better than sharks, wasn’t it? And then they had escaped and when his sailors had investigated their big chest—how had they appeared in the middle of an untroubled ocean sitting on a big chest, anyway?—and it had bitt…He tried not to think about it again, but he found himself wondering what would happen when the damned thing realized that its owner wasn’t on board any longer…
    “Raft’s ready, lord,” said the first mate.
    “Into the water with it,” shouted the captain, and “Get aboard!” and “Fire the ship!”
    After all, another ship wouldn’t be too hard to come by, he philosophized, but a man might have to wait a long time in that Paradise the mullahs advertised before he was granted another life. Let the magical box eat lobsters.
    Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

    “What the hell is that?” demanded Rincewind.
    “It’s beautiful,” said Twoflower beatifically.
    “I’ll decide about that when I know what it is,” said the wizard.
    “It is the Rimbow,” said a voice immediately behind his left ear, “and you are fortunate indeed to be looking at it. From above, at any rate.”
    The voice was accompanied by a gust of cold, fishy breath. Rincewind sat quite still.
    “Twoflower?” he said.
    “Yes?”
    “If I turn around, what will I see?”
    “His name is Tethis. He says he’s a sea troll. This is his boat. He rescued us,” explained Twoflower. “Will you look around now?”
    “Not just at the moment, thank you. So why aren’t we going over the Edge, then?” asked Rincewind with glassy calmness.
    “Because your boat hit the Circumfence,” said the voice behind him (in tones that made Rincewind imagine submarine chasms and lurking Things in coral reefs).
    “The Circumfence?” he repeated.
    “Yes. It runs along the edge of the world,” said the unseen troll. Above the roar of the waterfall Rincewind thought he could make out the splash of oars. He hoped they were oars.
    “Ah. You mean the circumference ,” said Rincewind. “The circumference makes the edge of things.”
    “So does the Circumfence,” said the troll.
    “He means this,” said Twoflower, pointing down. Rincewind’s eyes followed the