One of the most famous
Scrooge McDuck stories. Scrooge, the supposed richest duck in the world, meets
South African Flintheart Glomgold on a ship. Flintheart also considers himself to be the world's richest duck. They spend an entire night comparing their wealth, and determine that their fortunes are equal to the penny, with the exception of who has the largest
ball of string. To find out who has the largest ball (they both have
enormous balls), they stage a competition in which they will roll their balls, side by side, across
Africa to see whose is the longest.
Locusts, stampedes of animals, fires, and other catastrophes result in the balls being quite whittled down over the competition until at last both string collections are about 6 feet long! The competitors roll out the string balls and measurement determines that the string lengths are precisely equal! It would appear that the ducks are doomed to never find out who is truly the richest, until Scrooge pulls out of his pocket his "Number One Dime", which has a small piece of string attached to it. With that, Scrooge obtains the title of The World's Richest Duck, and with it the lifetime enmity of Glomgold.