both sides of the House were mine and my geniality entirely returned. He might have been living to this hour had he not mentioned something about the brutality of The Island of Dr. Moreau. That settled it. I had heard that absurd charge once too often, and raising my Blaisdell binaural stethoscope I leaped upon him. With one last touch of humanity, I turned the orbicular ivory plate towards him and struck him to the earth.

At that moment fell the Fourth Crinoline.

III.

THE TEA-TRAY IN WESTBOURNE GROVE.

My wife's plan of campaign was simple but masterly. She would enlist an army of enormous bulk, march on the Wenuses in Westbourne Grove, and wipe them from the face of the earth.

Such was my wife's project. My wife's first step was to obtain, as the nucleus of attack, those women to whom the total loss of men would be most disastrous. They flocked to my wife's banner, which was raised in Regent's Park, in front of the pavilion where tea is provided by a maternal County Council.

My mother, who joined the forces and therefore witnessed the muster, tells me it was a most impressive sight. My wife, in a nickel-plated Russian blouse, trimmed with celluloid pom-pons, aluminium pantaloons, and a pair of Norwegian Skis, looked magnificent.

An old Guard, primed with recent articles from the Queen by Mrs. Lynn
Linton, marched in a place of honour; and a small squadron of confirmed
misogynists, recruited from the Athenaeum, the Travellers' and the
Senior United Service Clubs, who professed themselves to be completely
Mash-proof, were in charge of the ambulance. The members of the Ladies'
Kennel Club, attended by a choice selection of carefully-trained Chows,
Schipperkes, Whippets and Griffons, garrisoned various outposts.

The Pioneers joined my wife's ranks with some hesitation. The prospects of a world depleted of men did not seem (says my mother) to fill them with that consternation which was evident in my wife and her more zealous lieutenants. But after a heated discussion at the Club-house, which was marked by several resignations, it was decided to join in the attack. A regiment of Pioneers therefore, marching to the battle-chant of Walt Whitman's "Pioneers, O Pioneers!" brought up (says my mother) the rear.

The march of my wife's troops was a most impressive sight. Leaving Regent's Park by the Clarence Gate, they passed down Upper Baker Street, along Marylebone Road into Edgware Road. Here the troops divided. One detachment hastened to Queen's Road, by way of Praed Street, Craven Road, Craven Hill, Leinster Terrace and the Bayswater Road, with the purpose of approaching Whiteley's from the South; the other half marched direct to Westbourne Grove, along Paddington Green Road to Bishop's Road.

Thus, according to my wife's plan, the Wenuses would be between the two wings of the army and escape would be impossible.

Everything was done as my wife had planned. The two detachments reached their destination almost simultaneously. My wife, with the northern wing, was encamped in Bishop's Road, Westbourne Grove and Pickering Place. My mother, with the southern wing (my wife shrewdly kept the command in the family), filled Queen's Road from Whiteley's to Moscow Road. My mother, who has exquisite taste in armour, had donned a superb Cinque-Cento cuirass, a short Zouave jacket embroidered with sequins, accordion-pleated bloomers, luminous leggings, brown Botticelli boots and one tiger-skin spat.

Between the two hosts was the empty road before the Universal Provider's Emporium. The Wenuses were within the building. By the time my wife's warriors were settled and had completed the renovation of their toilets it was high noon.

My wife had never imagined that any delay would occur: she had expected to engage with the enemy at once and have done with it, and consequently brought no provisions and no protection from the sun, which poured down a great bulk of pitiless beams.

The absence of Wenuses and of any sound betokening their activity was disconcerting. However, my wife thought it best to lay siege to Whiteley's rather than to enter the establishment.

The army therefore waited.

The heat became intense. My wife and her soldiers began to feel the necessity for refreshment. My wife is accustomed to regular meals. The sun grew in strength as the time went on, and my wife gave the order to sit at ease, which was signalled to my mother. My mother tells me that she was never so pleased in her life.

One o'clock struck; two o'clock; three o'clock; and still no Wenuses. Faint sounds were now audible from the crockery department, and then a hissing, which passed by degrees into a humming, a long, loud droning noise. It resembled as nearly as anything the boiling of an urn at a tea-meeting, and awoke in the breasts of my wife and her army an intense and unconquerable longing for tea, which was accentuated as four o'clock was reached. Still no Wenuses. Another hour dragged wearily on, and the craving for tea had become positively excruciating when five o'clock rang out.

At that moment, the glass doors of the crockery department were flung open, and out poured a procession of Wenuses smiling, said my mother, with the utmost friendliness, dressed as A.B.C. girls, and bearing trays studded with cups and saucers.

With the most seductive and ingratiating charm, a cup was handed to my wife. What to do she did not for the moment know. "Could such a gift be guileless?" she asked herself. "No." And yet the Wenuses looked friendly. Finally her martial spirit prevailed and my wife repulsed the cup, adjuring the rank and file to do the same. But in vain. Every member of my wife's wing of that fainting army greedily grasped a cup. Alas! what could they know of the deadly Tea-Tray of the Wenuses? Nothing, absolutely nothing, such is the disgraceful neglect of science in our schools and colleges. And so they drank and were consumed.

Meanwhile my mother, at the head of the south wing of the army, which had been entirely overlooked by the Wenuses, stood watching the destruction of my wife's host—a figure petrified with alarm and astonishment. One by one she watched her sisters in arms succumb to the awful Tea-Tray.

Then it was that this intrepid woman rose to her greatest height.

"Come!" she cried to her Amazons. "Come! They have no more tea left. Now is the moment ripe."

With these spirited words, my mother and her troops proceeded to charge down Queen's Road upon the unsuspecting Wenuses.

But they had reckoned without the enemy.

The tumult of the advancing host caught the ear of the Wonderful Wisitors, and in an instant they had extracted glittering cases of their crimson cigarettes from their pockets, and lighting them in the strange fashion I have described elsewhere, they proceeded to puff the smoke luxuriously into the faces of my mother and her comrades.

Alas! little did these gallant females know of the horrible properties of the Red Weed. How could they, with our science-teaching in such a wretched state?

The smoke grew in volume and density, spread and spread, and in a few minutes the south wing of my wife's army was as supine as the north.

How my wife and mother escaped I shall not say. I make a point of never explaining the escape of my wife, whether from Martians or Wenuses; but that night, as Commander-in-Chief, she issued this cataleptic despatch:

"The Wenuses are able to paralyse all but strong-minded women