He somberly shook his head. "When at last the crew was able to haul me out, by the hourglass I had thrashed in the sea for nearly an hour. Yes, ladies and gentlecolts, though the black doors of Tartarus stood open wide to receive me, I stubbornly refused to pass the threshold. Yet my defiance angered the dark spirits below, and they slammed the gates shut on my hind hoof, so entangled with cable and battered by the heavy tackle that it was ruined beyond recovery, and so the ship's surgeon told me that it would have to go."