The Captain's Sculpture, parts 60 - 63

 60. I never gave those figures a thought, or even looked at them in passing, until one day I tripped as I was running down the stairs with my hands in my pockets. 

61. After I tripped, I began to fall head first down the stairs and I can remember even all these years later, how preoccupied I was with the problem of getting my two hands out of my two pockets.

62. The desire to get your hands out of your pockets when you are falling down stairs is apparently entirely instinctive, and requires no thought on your part. It happens all by itself.

63. I found myself on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, surrounded by shards of plaster. The plaster shards were the remains of the plaster shepherd figurine that, in my decent, I had knocked from its eternal perch on its windowsill.