Turk tried to bolt for the front door, but his hard fers de cheval slipped and scrabbled on the marble, and he could not build up speed. A sea-monster came down across his path, shedding a hundred rats from its crushed entrails. Turk wheeled and scrambled off toward a crowd of ladies who were doing a sort of tarantella, inspired by the belief that rats were scaling their petticoats. Then, just as Jack was convinced that the charger was going to crush the women under his hooves, Turk seemed to catch sight of a way out, and veered sideways, his hooves nearly sliding out from under him, and made for a doorway set into the back corner of the ballroom. It was a low doorway. Jack had little time to react – seeing the lintel headed for his face, decorated in the middle with a plaster d'Arcachon coat of arms, * and not wanting to have it stamped on his face forever, he flung himself backwards and fell off the horse.