Churchill laughed again, this time with a cheerfulness that really made Jack want to kill him. He got up and plucked the empty pipe from Jack's mouth, and – as stables were notoriously inflammable, and he did not wish to be guilty of having set fire to the duc's – went over to the little horseshoe-forge, now cold and dark, and whacked the ashes out of the pipes. 'Try to concentrate. You're a galley slave chained to a post in a stable in Paris. Be troubled by that. Bon voyage, Jack.'