The Admiral looked nonplussed. He couldn't stop looking at Jack's shoes. Jack kicked off the sabots and they tumbled on the stones with pocking footstep-noises. He wanted to make some kind of insightful point, here, about how the shoe thing was just another example of Frogs' obsession with form over substance – a point worth making here and now, because it related to their (presumed) inability to appreciate what a fine mount Turk was. But in his present state of mind, he couldn't even get that out in English.