round him. Then, holding out a metal tube which was attached to the front
of the costume, he presented it to his esquire, saying in the vernacular of
those stout times--

"Ho, varlet! Blow me down yon hole till there be no more breath in thy vile
bodie. Blow me hard and leally. Blow an thou burst in ye blowinge."

Whereupon the trusty varlet blew.

Thus it fell out that when the trumpet sounded and the Black Baron of
Beaumaris, his foe, rode forth from his sable pavilion, armed cap-à-pie in
a suit of highly-polished steel and bestriding a black and rather
over-dressed charger, he saw through the chinks of his lowered visor an
object which he would undoubtedly have mistaken for a diminutive
observation balloon if he had lived a few centuries later. In short, Sir
Bowles, having been sufficiently inflated by his now exhausted esquire, had
inserted his valve-pin into the tube (which he had tucked away and laced up
like an association football), and now emerged upon the lists with a
feeling of elation that he had not experienced for several days.

They approached each other. It was with some difficulty that our hero
wielded his mace, owing, first, to the inflated condition of his right arm,
and, secondly, to the unaccustomed weight of the weapon. His hold also upon
his curvetting steed was a little precarious, and he hoped that no one in
the crowd would notice the string that tied his legs together beneath the
horse's belly.

If the Baron was surprised at what he saw he made no sign, but, riding
straight at his strange antagonist, he dealt him a mighty blow on the left
side of the head, which had quite an unlooked-for result. The string which