“That’s probably why we hit that reef,” Rincewind added. “We got pulled off course during the night.”
“Would you like something to eat?” asked Twoflower. He began to rummage through the bundle that he had tied to the rail, out of the damp.
“Don’t you understand?” snarled Rincewind. “We are going over the Edge, godsdammit!”
“Can’t we do anything about it?”
“No!”
“Then I can’t see the sense in panicking,” said Twoflower calmly.
“I knew we shouldn’t have come this far Edgewise,” complained Rincewind to the sky, “I wish—”
“I wish I had my picture box,” said Twoflower, “but it’s back on that slaver ship with the rest of the Luggage and—”
“You won’t need luggage where we’re going,” said Rincewind. He sagged, and stared moodily at a distant whale that had carelessly strayed into the rimward current and was now struggling against it.
There was a line of white on the foreshortened horizon, and the wizard fancied he could hear a distant roaring.
“What happens after a ship goes over the Rimfall?” said Twoflower.
“Who knows?”
“Well, in that case perhaps we’ll just sail on through space and land on another world.” A faraway look came into the little man’s eyes. “I’d like that,” he said.
Rincewind snorted.
The sun rose in the sky, looking noticeably bigger this close to the Edge. They stood with their backs against the mast, busy with their own thoughts. Every so often one or other would pick up a bucket and do a bit of desultory bailing, for no very intelligent reason.
The sea around them seemed to be getting crowded. Rincewind noticed several tree trunks keeping station with them, and just below the surface the water was alive with fish of all sorts. Of course—the current must be teeming with food washed from the continents near the Hub. He wondered what kind of life it would be, having to keep swimming all the time to stay exactly in the same place. Pretty similar to his own, he decided. He spotted a small green frog which was paddling desperately in the grip of the inexorable current. To Twoflower’s amazement he found a paddle and carefully extended it toward the little amphibian, which scrambled onto it gratefully. A moment later a pair of jaws broke the water and snapped impotently at the spot where it had been swimming.
The frog looked up at Rincewind from the cradle of his hands, and then bit him thoughtfully on the thumb. Twoflower giggled. Rincewind tucked the frog away in a pocket, and pretended he hadn’t heard.
“All very humanitarian, but why?” said Twoflower. “It’ll all be the same in an hour.”
“Because,” said Rincewind vaguely, and did a bit of bailing. Spray was being thrown up now and the current was so strong that waves were forming and breaking all around them. It all seemed unnaturally warm. There was a hot golden haze on the sea.
The roaring was louder now. A squid bigger than anything Rincewind had seen before broke the surface a few hundred yards away and thrashed madly with its tentacles before sinking away. Something else that was large and fortunately unidentifiable howled in the mist. A whole squadron of flying fish tumbled up in a cloud of rainbow-edged droplets and managed to gain a few yards before dropping back and being swept away in an eddy.
They were running out of world. Rincewind dropped his bucket and snatched at the mast as the roaring, final end of everything raced toward them.
“I must see this—” said Twoflower, half falling and half diving toward the prow.
Something hard and unyielding smacked into the hull, which spun ninety degrees and came side-on to the invisible obstacle. Then it stopped suddenly and a wash of cold sea foam cascaded over the deck, so that for a few seconds Rincewind was under several feet of boiling green water. He began to scream and then the underwater world became the deep clanging purple color of fading consciousness, because it was at about this point that Rincewind started to drown.
He awoke with his mouth full of burning liquid and, when he swallowed, the searing pain in his throat jerked him into full consciousness.
The boards of a boat pressed into his back and Twoflower was looking down at him with an expression of deep concern. Rincewind groaned, and sat up.
This turned out to be a mistake. The edge of the world was a few feet away.
Beyond it, at a level just below that of the lip of the endless Rimfall, was something altogether magical.