The best that can be said of the siege is that it passed off very smoothly and without incident. Historically considered it was just about as valuable as the famous pyro-show of the burning of Rome, where Nero goes down beneath a falling pillar of fire. The siege of Yorktown ended with the going down of Lord Cornwallis and his 8,000 soldiers into the pyrotechnic gulf especially prepared for them.
The audience applauded and Adelaide was feeling relieved to think that all was over when a vociferous encore set in and Mr. Bombs came on the stage. He looked amazingly brilliant. He had all his jewels on surely, and more too, she thought. There seemed to be a nest of them in the curl of jet black hair on his forehead. Was he going to do that tiresome siege over again? No, he would make a bow and a speech, and that would end it certainly.
He began: “The London Pyro-king who boasts of his prowess in this country, has invented a piece which he calls ‘Eagle Screams’. Turn about is fair play. I have invented a piece which I have named ‘Johnny Bull’s Bellows.’ You will now have the pleasure or grief of looking Johnny full in the face and listening to his bellowings.”
He bowed again more politely and gracefully than before—as graceful as a—serpent, she finally put it and “polite enough to shake hands with a crab,” as the Indians say. She had never seen him look so splendid—so—startling; but she liked him less than ever.
The bull’s head that was formed while Adelaide was forming her opinions was shaped like a veritable bull’s head and outlined with stars of small magnitude. From its mouth and nostrils issued great streams of different colored fires. The bellowings were effectively but mysteriously produced.
“I can’t see faw the life of me, Mr. Bombs, just how you could have compassed all that,” Miss Drawling was saying, when something in the nature of a revelation cut short her sentence. The bellowings suddenly ceased and loud oaths and grumblings and groanings took their place. Mr. Bombs rushed behind the scenes and saw the man whom he had engaged to do the bellowing, lying in a collapsed condition on the floor of the stage with a whiskey bottle in his hand.
“Confound you!” exclaimed Bombs, “what does all this mean?”
“It means that the lungs av me have been giving out with the dress rehearsal and the play on top av it and I am sthriving to reinforce them.”
“Allow me to say that your efforts are not successful. You can be excused until further notice, and you,” he added turning to the chief Pyro, “will oblige me by winding up the spectacle without any more swearing.”
The spectacle of Johnny Bull’s Bellows was wound up according to order and Mr. Bombs appeared on the stage and gave a humorous account of the complication behind the scenes which had cut off the spectacle rather prematurely, and added that it was not quite so bad as the thing that had happened to Mr. Pang on his first presentation of the burning of Rome. He related the incident and the guests were greatly amused—almost as much, perhaps, as they would have been if “Johnny Bull’s Bellowings” had been carried out to the full extent.