"Very little, certainly."

"All will be made clear; let us not gossip and theorize, or waste time in idle verbalizing; like Drofo, I am a man of deeds, not rhetoric."

"Just so," said Cugel coldly.

With a twitch of sly mockery on his lips, Lankwiler said: "From the peculiar style of your hat I deduce that you derive from a far and exotic region."

"True," said Cugel.

"And how do you find the Land of Cutz?"

"It has interesting aspects; still I am anxious to return to civilization."

Lankwiler sniffed. "I am from Tugersbir sixty miles to the north, where civilization is also rife. Now then: here are Wagmund's straddles. I think that I will borrow this set with the silver conches; you may choose from among the others. Be careful; Wagmund, like a bald-headed man in a fur hat, is proud and vain, and childishly meticulous with his gear. Briskly now, unless you are ready for another barrage of Drofo's dogma." The two took their gear to the deck. With Drofo in the lead they disembarked from the Galante and marched north along the dock to a long pen where a number of enormous tubular creatures, seven to nine feet in diameter and almost as long as the Galante itself, lay placidly afloat.

Drofo pointed. "Yonder with the yellow knobs, Lankwiler, are the beasts which were assigned into your care. As you see, they are in need of attention. Cugel, the two beasts at the extreme left, with the blue knobs, are Wagmund’s fine worms which now come under your supervision."

Lankwiler made a thoughtful suggestion. "Why not let Cugel supervise the worms with the yellow knobs, while I command the Blues? This scheme has the advantage of affording Cugel valuable training in basic procedures at a formative time in his career."

Drofo ruminated a moment. "Possibly so, possibly so. But we lack time to analyze the matter in all its aspects; therefore we will abide by the original plan."

"This is correct thinking," said Cugel. "It conforms with the Second Axiom of our trade: 'If Worminger A despoils his beasts, then Worminger A must restore them to health, not blameless hard-working Worminger B'.

Lankwiler was discomfited. "Cugel may have learned thirty different axioms from a book, but, as Drofo himself pointed out, these are no substitute for experience."

"The original plan will hold," said Drofo. "Now then: bring your beasts to the ship and clamp them into their cinctures: Cugel to port, Lankwiler to starboard."

Lankwiler quickly recovered his composure. "Aye, aye, sir," he cried heartily. "Come along, Cugel; shake a leg, now! We'll have those worms clamped up in jig-time, Tugersbir-style!"

"So long as you tie none of your peculiar Tugersbir knots," said Drofo. "Last trip Captain Baunt and I pondered the complications of your easy-off hitch for half an hour."

Lankwiler and Cugel descended to the pens where a dozen worms idled at the surface of the water, or moved slowly to the thrust of their caudal flukes. Some were pink or even scarlet-rose; others were pale ivory or a sour and sulfurous yellow. The head parts were complicated; a short thick proboscis, an optical bump with a single small eye and immediately behind, a pair of knobs on short stalks. These knobs, painted in different colors, denoted ownership, and functioned as directional apparatus.