The Wazir and the Witch

Начало книги

Begin at the beginning.

Bolfrigalaskaptiko.

A curse word?

No, it is not a curse word, though it comes within a couple of syllables of being obscene in the extreme.

Bolfrigalaskaptiko.

Is this perhaps a dish of fried seagull livers mixed with a touch of basilisk gall and served with side helpings of baked yams and diamond-shaped segments of dried jelly-fish?

A good guess.

But wrong.

For tolfrigdalakaptiko is the word which denotes the above-mentioned dish of seagull livers, and the mystery which here confronts us is bolfrigalaskaptiko.

Give up?

Very well.

All will now be revealed, and your education will thus be made complete.

Take down your atlas and open it to a map of the continent of Yestron. Run your finger down the western coast of that continent until you reach the equator. Here you will find the huge lagoon known as Manamalargo. What vast and slovenly river of fever fogs and predatory crocodiles empties itself into this lagoon? Why, the River Ka, of course. And what is the city of marshlands and malaria which lies just upstream from the estuary of that river?

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