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put here for?” said Ponder.
    “There you go again,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
    “Says here it’s girt by sea,” said the Senior Wrangler.
    He looked up at their stares.
    “This continent EcksEcksEcksEcks,” he added, pointing at a page. “Says here ‘Little is known about it save that it is girt by sea.’”
    “I’m glad to see someone has their mind on the task in hand,” said Ridcully. “You two get on with some studyin’, please. Right, then, Senior Wrangler…girt by sea, is it?”
    “Apparently.”
    “Well…it would be, wouldn’t it,” said Ridcully. “Anything else?”
    “I used to know a Gert,” said the Bursar. The terror of the Library had sent his somewhat erratic sanity on a downward slide into the calm pink clouds again.
    “Not…very much,” said the Senior Wrangler, flicking through the pages. “Sir Roderick Purdeigh spent many years looking for the alleged continent and was very emphatic that it didn’t exist.”
    “Quite a jolly gel. Gertrude Plusher, I think her name was. Face like a brick.”
    “Yes, but he once got lost in his own bedroom,” said the Dean, thumbing through another book. “They found him in the wardrobe.”
    “I wonder if it’s the same Gert?” said the Bursar.
    “Could be, Bursar,” said Ridcully. He nodded at the other wizards. “No one’s to let him have any sugar or fruit.”
    For a while there was no sound but the splash of water behind the door, the turning of pages and the Bursar’s randomized humming.
    “According to this note in Wasport’s Lives of the Very Dull People ,” said the Senior Wrangler, squinting at the tiny script, “he met an old fisherman who said in that country the bark fell off the trees in the winter and the leaves stayed on.”
    “Yes, but they always make up that sort of thing,” said Ridcully. “Otherwise it’s too boring. It’s no good coming home and just saying you were shipwrecked for two years and ate winkles, is it? You have to put in a lot of daft stuff about men who go around on one big foot and The Land of Giant Plum Puddings and nursery rubbish like that.”
    “My word!” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, who had been engrossed in a volume at the other end of the table. “It says here that the people on the island of Slakki wear no clothes at all and the women are of unsurpassed beauty.”
    “That sounds quite dreadful,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies primly.
    “There are several woodcuts.”
    “I’m sure none of us wish to know that,” said Ridcully. He looked around at the rest of the wizards and repeated, in a louder voice, “I said I’m sure none of us wish to know that . Dean? Come right back here and pick up your chair!”
    “There’s a mention of EcksEcksEcksEcks in Wrencher’s Snakes of All Nations ,” said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. “It says the continent has very few poisonous snakes…Oh, there’s a footnote.” His finger went down the page. “It says, ‘Most of them have been killed by the spiders.’ How very odd.”
    “Oh,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “It also says here that ‘ The denizens of Purdee Island also existeth inne a State of Nature ’”—he struggled with the ancient handwriting—“‘ yette is in Fine Healthe & of Good Bearing & Stature & is Trulee a … knobbly Savage …’”
    “Let me have a look at that,” said Ridcully. The book was passed down the table. The Archchancellor scowled.
    “It’s written ‘knoble,’” he said. “ Noble savage. Means you…act like a gentleman, don’tcher-know…”
    “What…go fox-hunting, bow to ladies, don’t pay your tailor…That sort of thing?”
    “Shouldn’t think that chap owes his tailor very much,” said Ridcully, looking at the accompanying illustration. “All right, chaps, let’s see what else we can find…”
    “He’s having rather a long bath, isn’t he?” said the Dean, after a while. “I mean, I like to be as well scrubbed as the next man,