A quarter-mile to sea the cog dropped anchor and began to lower a boat. Madame Soldinck and the girls waved their arms in excitement. Cugel wasted no time in farewells. He lowered himself over the side and floundered toward the shore.

The mud was deep, viscous, and smelled most unpleasantly. A heavy ribbed stalk terminating in a globular eye reared from the mud to peer at him, and twice he was attacked by pincer-lizards, which luckily he was able to out-distance.

Finally Cugel arrived at the shore. Rising to his feet, he found that a contingent from the cog had already arrived aboard the Galante. One of the forms Cugel saw to be Soldinck, who pointed toward Cugel and shook his fist. At this same moment Cugel discovered that he had left the total sum of his terces aboard the Galante, including the six golden centums received from Soldinck in the sale of Fuscule's worm.

This was a bitter blow. Soldinck was joined at the rail by Madame Soldinck, who made insulting signals of her own.

Disdaining response, Cugel turned and trudged off along the shore.

CHAPTER III FROM TUSTVOLD TO PORT PERDUSZ

1 THE COLUMNS

CUGEL marched along the foreshore, shivering to the bite of the wind. The landscape was barren and dreary; to the left, black waves broke over the mud-flats; to the right, a line of low hills barred access to inland regions.

Cugel's mood was bleak. He carried neither terces nor so much as a sharp stick to protect himself against footpads. Slime from the mud-flats squelched in his boots and his sodden garments smelled of marine decay.

At a tidal pool Cugel rinsed out his boots and thereafter walked more comfortably, though the slime still made a mockery of style and dignity. Hunching along the shore Cugel resembled a great bedraggled bird.

Where a sluggish river seeped into the sea, Cugel came upon an old road, which might well lead to the village Tustvold, and the possibility of food and shelter. Cugel turned inland, away from the shore.

To keep himself warm Cugel began to trot and jog, with knees jerking high. So passed a mile or two, and the hills gave way to a curious landscape of cultivated fields mingled with areas of wasteland. In the distance steep-sided knolls rose at irregular intervals, like islands in a sea of air.

No human habitation could be seen, but in the fields groups of women tended broad-beans and millet. As Cugel jogged past, they raised from their work to stare. Cugel found their attention offensive, and ran proudly past, looking neither right nor left.

Clouds sliding over the hills from the west cooled the air and seemed to presage rain. Cugel searched ahead for the village Tustvold, without success. The clouds drifted across the sun, darkening the already wan light, and the landscape took on the semblance of an ancient sepia painting, with flat perspectives and the pungko trees superimposed like scratchings of black ink.