rushes out from his den beneath us with
smoking breath and low carnivorous roar, we
see a thread of blood running down his left
shoulder from a red and blue cockade fastened
to a spike, which has been pinned into
him as he charges out of his pen. This is
the devisa which the matador will wear
tonight as a trophy, and give to his querida,
or sweetheart; who now, in white mantilla
and with red pinks in her black hair, is
probably looking on from some snug part of
the sombra which is now dividing the Plaza
into two segments of golden sunshine and
dark shade.

"Brave son of Guzman, chosen of ten
thousand!" cries Monoculus to the picador.

The picador waits to receive Taurus in the
middle of the ring. This is the most dangerous
place. The bull, with one angry look
right and left, one paw at the ground, charges
round the ring; but at no one in particular.
The chulos stand in a waiting band, or leap
up on the stone rim of the fence of the round
arena. Now he sees a victim. With head
down, and eyes shut, he drives full butt at
the first picador's horse. The spear slips from
Taurus's broad sinewy neck, and his great
crescent horn tears sideways into the white
horse's belly.

"Wounded," says Spanker. "Dead, by Jove."

It was as if you had tapped a wine-cask with
a blacksmith's heaviest hammer. One stroke,
and the blood flooded out. The white horse
reels, staggers, topples, falls. A sob, a heave:
he is dead.

"Bravo toro!" burst out in a rebellion of
sound. The ladies smile and put their heads
together, as if they were taking wine with
each other. The great fan works like an
institution. The conch-shells bray out as the
bull, like a greeted champion, charges round
triumphantly, shaking his neck, because the
cockade stings him. His small malicious eyes
get redder. He must have more blood.

Monoculus turned pale. We looked down
on the dead creature, and thought over this
new reading of the old mystery. Death is
terrible; even to think of when it is but a fly
we crush.

But what of the fallen picador? He—heavy,
lumbering, and helpless as a hog in armour;
unwieldy, in fact, as a mediæval knight—has
been drawn from under the dead horse, no
longer white, but shining with wet and
crimson blood, his spear restored to him: but
he is bruised and shaken, and limps from
the field at a funeral pace, between the two
chulos.

Number two picador advances, lance in
rest: he does not rush at the bull, because the
law of the game is to wait for him; but he
puts his lance in rest under his arm, and,
reining his frightened horse, pushes onward.
Taurus needs no excitement. He comes with
the impetus of an avalanche; but the lance
grinds in his neck the full inch deep, and
turns him.

The question is, was Taurus, a little calf,
to be discouraged by one dig of the garrocha;
or will it only be as fresh fire and powder
to his devil-blood, already hot for
manslaughter? Now the chulos skim round him
in a kaleidoscope intersection of colours,
trailing their cloaks, and drawing him off, to
give picador time. Taurus plunges this way,
and that way; first at blue cloak, then at yellow.
His fury, quoth Monoculus, is brutal and
blind as that of the one-eyed Polyphemus when
searching the ground with rolling rocks for
the wily Ulysses. But I, remembering some
Buccaneer reading, comfort myself with the
old saying, that an enraged cow is more
dangerous than a bull; because the female charges
with her eyes open, the male with his eyes
shut. Woe to the men, were it not for this
mad blindness! But for this, such a bull as
our friend would charge through an army,
or clear a city of armed horsemen.

Again Taurus thunders on towards picador
number two, who stands ready and quiet. No,
not thunders: stops suddenly; stares fiercely
round and then forward; puts down its
head; waits to get impetus, and then, bears
down heavily on the foe like a landslip. He
braves the lance three times. He grapples
with the horse, and ploughs him in the chest
with his horn, that comes out of the wound
each time red and shining as an autumn moon.
There is a rush, a scuffle, and they separate.
The chulos draw Taurus off, to fire him into a
series of mad, fruitless rushes at waving and
trailing cloaks. Again a whirl and race of
black and orange, green and gold, blue and
silver, red and green. His dun hide smokes.
Every now and then, he lets drive at a
chulo, chases him up to the outer fence;
and, just as a neat shoe and plump silk-
stocking are clearing the paling, pierces the
fence with his angry horn. You hear the
sharp prick, and shake of the blow; but
the chulo has vaulted over in a twinkling,
like a harlequin.

As the wounded horse limps painfully and
bravely round the circus, picador number
three, rides up and confronts the butchering
bull; who, stolidly cruel, and easy to be
outwitted as the giant in fairy-books, does not
yet shrink from punishment. He believes in
his strength, and remembers his victory. The
fresh picador, gripping his heavy lance under
his right arm, pushes on to the right and
turns his horse; when Taurus, receiving the
point, is rebutted to the left. I see his neck
shake in fierce, impatient agony. He drives
on the wounded horse, lifts him in the air,
fierce as a mad rhinoceros, and stabs with his
insatiable horn at the fallen, tumbled man;
who hides his face with his arms.

The chulos, headed by El Tato, lure the
bull off, and perform daring feats of contemptuous
defiance; such as sitting down on the
ground, and waiting till his spears, as the
horns are called, all but touch them.

"Sometimes the bulls will not fight," says