Knights in armour tumbled over their own steeds, donkeys ran snorting about, ladies shrieked.—Page 295.
How long this foolery would have gone on I know not, but just as the ceremony was being performed of investing the conqueror knight with the silken scarf a loud cracking was heard under the platform. Mr. Mumbles looked red, Mrs. Mumbles looked pale, the company stood aghast, the music ceased, the uproar was quelled, and the applause subsided. Crack, snap, bang! What was the matter? The fireworks placed underneath the scaffolding, and which were to have concluded the evening's entertainments, had by some means or other ignited. Presently a rocket with a loud roar made a sweep in a slanting direction through the canvas at the top of the canopy, to the consternation of all. Before the alarm subsided, and before anyone could make his or her escape by flight, another and another rocket rushed from beneath the scaffolding with prodigious roar and flame. The alarm became general; Mrs. Mumbles fainted; Mr. Mumbles roared out 'Fire, fire!' as loud as he was able. But now the indiscriminate ignition of rockets, crackers, squibs, Catherines, fiery fountains, flaming cascades, sparkling arbours, and gunpowder and nitre pillars, and suns, stars, and comets enveloped the whole throne and its appurtenances in a blaze of fiery splendour. Rockets shot out on every side, fiery squibs ran along the ground, Catherine wheels danced on every shoulder, and crackers banged at every heel. Such a scene of confusion followed as is seldom witnessed. Knights in armour tumbled over their own steeds, donkeys ran snorting about, ladies shrieked, and fell over gentlemen, and gentlemen tumbled over ladies in pell-mell havoc and confusion, amid smoke and steam and hissing and cracking and banging and roaring.
It was with the greatest difficulty that Mr. and Mrs. Mumbles were extricated from the danger that threatened them—namely, being burnt alive. But Mrs. Mumbles was carried home in a wheelbarrow in a state of insensibility, while Mr. Mumbles had the same attention bestowed upon him through the intervention of a well-disposed hurdle and four of the marrow-bone and cleaver musicians.
Such was the untoward end of the Mumblonian tournament, an event not to be easily forgotten in the locality in which it took place. It was subsequently found out, as it ought to have been discovered before, that both Mr. and Mrs. Mumbles had driven themselves mad by novel and romance reading, and they were both obliged to be sent to a madhouse for some time before they could be cured of their egregious folly. But as they were cured, it may be said that the circumstances which I have related were 'all for the best.'