Stark visions flashed before Jack’s eyes. His sister as a little girl making daisy chains for him in the summer sun … His mother embracing him with soft warm arms after he’d fallen and scraped his knee … His father standing proudly on the ship’s deck showing him how to use a sextant and compass … The green baleful eye of the ninja Dokugan Ryu looming out of the darkness … The bright gleam of the legendary Shizu blade as his guardian Masamoto gifted him his own samurai swords … His friend Yamato plunging to his death from the balcony of Osaka Castle … Yori folding a paper crane … Akiko bowing, her back to the setting sun …

As Jack felt the last of his life ebb away, Mad Bob crouched before him at the edge of the crowd like a demon waiting to drag him to hell. Through the ringing in his ears, Jack heard the lunatic cry, ‘Here comes that birdie!’ followed by a fluttering swish overhead. Then he was falling … falling …

He hit the ground hard with a thump. The noose round his neck loosened. Coughing and spluttering, Jack sucked in a painful stab of air. He blinked back to life and saw the rope lying in the dirt, the end of it now cut and frayed. Above him, quivering in the nearest wooden post of the gallows, was a hawk-feathered arrow.

As Jack’s befuddled mind registered this, a small cloaked figure darted forward and helped him to his feet. Pulling a knife from the folds of his cloak, he cut away at Jack’s wrist bonds.

‘SEIZE ’EM!’ bellowed the hangman, a thunderous expression on his ruddy face.

But the crowd were either too shocked or too entertained by the daring escape to react.

‘Fly away, birdies, fly away!’ Mad Bob chirped as the hangman charged towards them.

The cloaked figure bundled Jack towards the front of the cart, where the driver stood beside his horses, open-mouthed and dumbstruck. Then an ear-splitting ‘YAH!’ was heard and the driver flopped to the ground like a sack of grain. Taking up the discarded reins, Jack’s rescuer jumped into the driver’s seat, his hood falling away.

‘Come on!’ cried Yori, offering his hand to Jack. Still weak and disorientated from his strangulation, Jack barely had the strength to clamber aboard. The hangman was almost upon him when someone leapt from the crowd. It was Mad Bob, blathering, ‘Judgement Day is upon us all! The world is –’

‘Out of my way!’ the hangman roared, stumbling over the scrawny lunatic and sprawling headlong in the dirt.

Jack fell into the passenger seat. Yori flicked the reins and urged the horses on. As the cart pulled away, Jack glanced back at Mad Bob, who shot him a wink before vanishing into the writhing mass of onlookers.