Old John Barleycorn, he ain’t what he used to be ain’t what he used to be—­ ain’t what he used to be!  Old John Barleycorn, he ain’t what he used to be, Many a year ago.

The great volume of gusty sound, hurled aloft by these thousands of sky-pointing mouths, created an air-pocket in which the bombing plane tilted dangerously.  For a moment, Bleak, who was watching the plane, thought it was going to careen into a tail-spin and crash down fatally.  Then he saw Quimbleton, still recognizable by an adhering shred of whisker, lean over the side of the fuselage.

A small dark object dropped through the air, fell with a loud Pop on the street a few yards in front of the Bishop.  A faint green vapor arose, misting for a moment the proud figures of Chuff and his horse.  At the same instant the other two planes, throbbing down the line of the parade, discharged a rain of similar projectiles along the vacant strip of paving between the marching chuffs and the police-lined curb.  An eddying emerald fume filled the street, drifting with the brisk air down through all the ranks of the procession.  There were shouts and screams; the clanging bands squawked discordantly.

“Holy cat!” shouted the cartoonist—­“Poison gas!”

“Nix!” said Bleak, revealing Quimbleton’s secret in his excitement.  “Gooseberry bombs.  Every chuff that inhales it will be properly soused.  Oh, boy, some story!  Look at the Bish!  He’s got a snootful already—­his face has turned black!”

“The whole crowd has turned black,” said the cartoonist, almost falling off his perch in a frantic effort to see more clearly through the olive haze that filled the street.

It was true.  Above the thousands of white figures, as they emerged from the intoxicating cloud-bank of gooseberry gas, grinned ghastly, inhuman, blackened faces, with staring goggle eyes.  The Bishop was most frightful of all.  His horse was prancing and swaying wildly, and the Bishop’s transformed features were diabolic.  His whole profile had altered, seemed black and shapeless as the face of a tadpole.  The amazing truth burst upon Bleak.  Chuff and his paraders were wearing gas-masks.  These were what they had carried in their knapsacks.  Indomitable Chuff, who had foreseen everything!

“Poor Quimbleton,” said Bleak.  “This will break his heart!”

“His neck too, I fancy,” said one of the others, pointing to the sky, and indeed one of the three planes was seen falling tragically to earth behind the tower of the City Hall.