The Last Continent

the shores of some mysterious continent thousands of years before you are born?”
    “She didn’t ask many questions at the interview, I know that.”
    “Actually, we are worrying unduly,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “Sharks have a very undeserved reputation as man-eaters. There is not a single authenticated case of a shark attacking anyone, despite what you may have heard. They are sophisticated and peaceful creatures with a rich family life and, far from being ominous harbingers of doom, have reputedly even befriended the occasional lost traveler. As hunters they are of course very efficient, and a full-grown shark can bring down even a moose with…er…”
    He looked at their faces.
    “Er…I think I might perhaps have got them confused with wolves,” he mumbled. “I have, haven’t I?”
    They nodded, in unison.
    “Er…sharks are the other ones, aren’t they?” he went on. “The vicious and merciless killers of the sea that don’t even stop to chew?”
    They nodded again.
    “Oh dear. Where can I put my face…?”
    “Some distance from a shark,” said Ridcully briskly. “Come on, gentlemen. That’s our housekeeper! Do you wish to make your own beds in future? Fireballs again, I think.”
    “She’s gone too far away—”
    A red shape rocketed out of the sea beside Ridcully, curled through the air and slid below the surface again like a razorblade cutting into silk.
    “What was that? Who of you did that?” he said.
    A bow wave ripped its way to the cluster of triangular fins like a bowling ball heading down an alley. Then the water erupted.
    “Ye gods, look at the way it’s going at those sharks!”
    “Is it a monster?”
    “It’s a dolphin, surely…”
    “With red hair?”
    “Surely it’s not—”
    A stricken shark barreled past the Senior Wrangler. Behind it the water exploded again into the big red grin of the only dolphin ever to have a leathery face and orange hair all over its body.
    “Eek?” said the Librarian.
    “Well done, old chap!” shouted Ridcully across the water. “I said you wouldn’t let us down!”
    “No, actually you didn’t, sir, you said you thought—” Ponder began.
    “Good choice of shape, too,” Ridcully continued loudly. “Now, if you can sort of nudge us all together, then perhaps you could push us towards the shore? Are we all still here? Where’s the Bursar?”
    The Bursar was a small dot away on the right, paddling dreamily along.
    “Well, he’ll get there,” said Ridcully. “Come on, let’s get on to dry land.”
    “That sea,” said the Senior Wrangler nervously, staring ahead as the seeds were jockeyed towards the shore like a string of overloaded barges, “that sea…Does it look as though it’s girting to you?”
    “Certainly a very big sea,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “You know, I don’t think it’s just the rain that’s making the roaring. There may be a spot of surf.”
    “A few waves won’t do us any harm,” said Ridcully. “At least water is soft.”
    Ponder felt the board underneath him rise and fall as a long swell passed. An odd shape for a seed, he had to admit. Of course, nature paid a lot of attention to seeds, equipping them with little wings and sails and flotation chambers and other devices necessary to give them an edge over all the other seeds. These were just flattish versions of the Librarian’s current shape, which was obviously intended for moving through water very fast.
    “Er…” he said, to the universe in general. It meant: I wonder if we’ve really thought about this.
    “Can’t see any rocks ahead,” the Dean observed.
    “Girting,” mused the Senior Wrangler, as if the word was nagging at him. “That’s a very definite sort of word, isn’t it? Has a certain martial sort of sound.”
    It occurred to Ponder that water is not exactly soft. He’d never been much of a one for sports when he was a boy, but he remembered playing with the other local lads and joining in all their games, such as Push Poncy Stibbons Into the Nettles or Tie Up Stibbo and Go Home for Tea, and there had been the time at the old swimming hole when they’d thrown him in off the top of the cliff. And it had hurt .
    The flotilla gradually caught up with Mrs. Whitlow, who was holding on to a floating tree and treading water. The tree already had its fair share of occupants—birds, lizards and, for some reason, a small camel trying to make itself comfortable in the branches.
    The swell was