Snuff

steaming.
    And now more people were running and chickens were running away, and there was even Ten Gallons, and Mrs Sillitoe with her daughter, looking damp, and with blankets around them, but most importantly not looking dead. Vimes, who had been holding his breath for too long, breathed out. He breathed out even further when Ten Gallons slapped him on the back, and Mrs Sillitoe gave him a kiss. ‘What about Gastric?’ he said. ‘And where’s Feeney?’
    Mrs Sillitoe smiled. ‘They’re fine, Commander Vimes, as far we can tell. They’re a bit battered, but sleeping it off. No long-term problems according to the medic. I’m sure they’ll be fine, thanks to you!’
    She stood back as a Quirmian officer handed Vimes a mug of coffee. It had sand in it, but never had sandy coffee tasted better. ‘All sorted out very well, you might say, sir. We even made sure those damn goblins caught their boat!’
    Never in the field of coffee-making had so much of the stuff been sprayed so far and over so many. Vimes stared beyond the surf where, in the distance, a ship had left the port and was making good sail. He said, ‘Fetch me Acting Captain Haddock right now!’
    Acting Captain Haddock arrived at a run six minutes later and Vimes couldn’t help noticing that he had a bit of breakfast around the edge of his mouth. ‘Our relationship with Commandant Fournier is cordial at the moment, is it not?’ said Vimes.
    Haddock grinned widely. ‘Commander, when he gets down here you may have to try hard to stop him kissing you on both cheeks. Mrs Sillitoe is his daughter.’
    ‘Was happy to be of assistance,’ said Vimes, looking around absently, ‘and so would you tell these gentlemen that I want a fast boat, one fast enough to catch that ship, and a decent squad of men to crew it, and I want them now, and while I’m waiting I’d like someone to get me a clean shirt and a bacon sandwich … without avec.’
    ‘They have a pretty swift cutter, commander, for chasing smugglers!’
    ‘Good, and get me a cutlass. I’ve always wanted to try one.’ Vimes thought for a moment and added, ‘And make that another two bacon sandwiches. And a lot more coffee. And make that one more bacon sandwich. And, Haddock, if you can scavenge a bottle of Merkel and Stingbat’s very famous old brown sauce, I swear I’ll make you a full sergeant when your term here is up, ’cos any man who can find a proper down-and-dirty Ankh-Morpork sauce in Quirm, home of five hundred bloody types of mayonnaise, without getting his eye full of spit deserves to be a sergeant in anybody’s force!’
    And then, as whatever had been holding Sam Vimes up drained away, he fell gently backwards, dreaming of bacon sandwiches and brown sauce.
    Even Constable Haddock or, as he was now, Acting Captain Haddock, would agree that he was not the sharpest knife in the box, but it was amazing, the things you could open with a blunt instrument. As he hurried away on this prestigious errand he was stopped by one of the Quirm officers, who said, ‘Hareng! 28 Have you heard of a watchman called Petit Fou Artour?’
    ‘Wee Mad Arthur? Yes, he’s one of our lads!’
    ‘Well, you had better come quickly, my friend, because he is in our Watch House. Strong little fellow, isn’t he? A few of the other officers had laughed at him, he said, but I believe that they have learned the error of their ways – the hard way, as it happened. Apparently he has been sent to find Commandant Vimes.’
    Sam Vimes awoke from a pig’s nightmare to find himself lying on a pile of sacks in a godown in the docks. He was carefully lifted to his feet by Acting Constable Haddock and led unsteadily to a crude table behind which was a chef presiding over the sizzling makings of a bacon sandwich, or rather several bacon sandwiches. ‘He screamed a bit,’ said Haddock, ‘when I insisted on no mayonnaise, but right now you can do no wrong here, commander. And I have one unopened bottle of Merkel and Stingbat’s finest, sir, the only one in the city. I’m afraid, however, that you’ll have to eat on the go, but the chef is packing the sandwiches in a hamper, with hot charcoal to keep them warm. No time to hang about, sir. The cutter will leave the dock in ten minutes.’
    A notebook was pushed under Vimes’s nose. ‘What’s this?’
    ‘Your signature to my promotion to full sergeant, commander,’ said Haddock carefully. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but you did promise.’
    ‘Good man,’