The Last Continent

help thinking you’re working up to some sort of horrible joke about a poop deck. I’d prefer not, if it’s all the same to you.”

    “You all right, mate?”
    No one in the world had ever been so pleased to see Crocodile Crocodile before.
    Rincewind let himself be pulled upright. His hand, against all expectation, was not blue and three times its normal size.
    “That bloody kangaroo…” he muttered, using the hand to wave away the eternal flies.
    “What kangaroo waf that, mate?” said the crocodile, helping him back towards the pub.
    Rincewind looked around. There were just the normal components of the local scenery—dry-looking bushes, red dirt and a million circling flies.
    “The one I was talking to just now.”
    “I was juft fweeping up and I faw you dancing around yellin’,” said Crocodile. “I didn’t fee no kangaroo.”
    “It’s probably a magic kangaroo,” said Rincewind wearily.
    “Oh, right , a magic kangaroo,” said Crocodile. “No worrieth. I think maybe I’d better make you up the cure for drinking too much beer, mate.”
    “What’s the cure?”
    “More beer.”
    “How much beer did I have last night, then?”
    “Oh, about twenty pinth.”
    “Don’t be silly, no one can even hold that much beer!”
    “Oh, you didn’t hang on to much of it at all, mate. No worrieth. We like a man who can’t hold hif beer.”
    In the fetid fleapit of Rincewind’s brain the projectionist of memory put on reel two. Recollection began to flicker. He shuddered.
    “Was I…singing a song?” he said.
    “Too right. You kept pointing to the Roo Beer pofter and finging…” Crocodile’s huge jaws moved as he tried to remember, “Tie my kangaroo up.’ Bloody good fong.”
    “And then I…?”
    “Then you loft all your money playing Two Up with Daggy’s shearing gang.”
    “That’s…I…there were these two coins, and the bloke’d toss them in the air, and you…had to bet on how they’d come down…”
    “Right. And you kept bettin’ they wouldn’t come down at all. Faid it was bound to happen fooner or later. You got good odds, though.”
    “I lost all the money Mad gave me?”
    “Yep.”
    “How was I paying for my beer, then?”
    “Oh, the blokes were queueing up to buy it for you. They faid you were better than a day at the races.”
    “And then I…there was something about sheep…” He looked horrified. “Oh, no…”
    “Oh, yeah. You faid, ‘Ftrain the fraying crones, a dollar a time for giving fheep a haircut? I could do a beaut foft job like that with my eyes fhut, too right no flaming worries by half bonza fhoot through ye gods this if good beer…’”
    “Oh, gods. Did anyone hit me?”
    “Nah, mate, they reckoned you were a good sport, ‘specially when you wagered five hundred fquids that you could beat their best man at shearin’.”
    “I couldn’t’ve done that, I’m not a betting man!”
    “Well, I am, and if you’ve been fhootin’ a line I wouldn’t give tuppence for your chances, Rinfo.”
    “Rinso?” said Rincewind weakly. He looked at his beerglass. “What’s in this stuff?”
    “Your mate Mad faid you were this big wizard and could kill people just by pointing at ’em and shoutin’,” said Crocodile. “I wouldn’t mind feein’ that.”
    Rincewind looked up desperately and his eye caught the Roo Beer poster. It showed some of the damn silly trees they had here, and the arid red earth and—nothing else.
    “Huh?”
    “What’s that?” said Crocodile.
    “What happened to the kangaroo?” Rincewind said hoarsely.
    “What kangaroo?”
    “There was a kangaroo on that poster last night…wasn’t there?”
    Crocodile peered at the poster. “I’m better at smell,” he admitted at last. “But I got to admit, it smells like it’s gorn.”
    “Something very strange is going on here,” said Rincewind. “This is a very strange country.”
    “We’ve got an opera house,” Crocodile volunteered. “That’s cultcher .”
    “And ninety-three words for being sick?”
    “Yeah, well, we’re a very…vocal people.”
    “Did I really bet five hundred…What was it?”
    “Squids.”
    “…squids I haven’t got?”
    “Yup.”
    “So I’ll probably get killed if I lose, right?”
    “No worries.”
    “I wish people’d stop saying that—”
    He caught sight of the poster again. “That kangaroo’s back!”
    Crocodile turned around awkwardly, walked up to the poster and sniffed. “Could be,” he said cautiously.
    “And