The people clapped delightedly.  Suzee seeing all the women about her doing so, put up her little hands and clapped too.

I bent towards her and caught them and held them down in her lap.

“Be quiet,” I said; “I won’t have you clap such a disgusting sight.”

She stopped at once.  A Mexican woman on my other hand, looked daggers at me for an instant, divining my words, but she was too eager to see all the blood and the anguish in the arena, not to miss a throe of the dying horse, to turn her eyes away for more than a moment.

So, after a scowl at me, she directed them again, bulging with satisfaction, on the scene before her.

From then on, for about an hour, the same hideous thing went on; horse after horse was brought forward, pushed on the horns of the bull, torn and mangled beneath its cowardly rider, and then, if completely ripped open, dragged dead or dying from the ring; if its wound was not large enough to cause instant death, stuff or straw was thrust into it by the attendants and the dying animal kicked, lashed, and dragged to its feet to be thrown again on to the sharp horns amidst the shouts and laughs of the delighted crowd.

Once, in a general melee, when the bull and several picadors were in a tangled mass at one side of the ring, I saw one of these horses, terribly wounded, with its life pouring from it, emerge from the conflict and stagger unnoticed to the hoarding.

It came close to the wall of the ring and looked over; its glazed, anguished eyes gazed from side to side as if asking:  “Is there no escape, no mercy anywhere?”

A spectator on the audience side of the hoarding raised his hand and struck it between the eyes.  It tottered, staggered, and sank within the ring.

Eight horses had now been rendered useless, the arena was black and red with blood, in spite of the assiduous sprinkling of fresh sand, and there was a pause in the entertainment.  The picadors had had their turn, the banderilleros were ready to appear, but the people were thoroughly enjoying themselves now and they stamped and roared “Caballos” till they were hoarse.  That horrid cry for more and more horses to be produced that alarms the administrador, or manager, of the bull-fight.

In vain the attendants lashed and goaded the dying horses in the arena.  They could not get them to their feet again.  There is a limit to man’s sway, the tortured life at last escapes him.  The bodies were dragged away, more sand, and then the administrador himself, pale as ashes, stepped out before the audience howling for more blood.

“Senors,” he commenced, “it is impossible to supply more than eight horses for one bull; there are five more bulls to be dispatched.  They are more savage than this one.  I must keep horses for them.  Let the senors be reasonable and allow the show to continue.”

At this promise of five more bulls there was general applause.  The band rolled out fresh music.  There was a thunder of drums and the banderilleros came on, gorgeous in velvet, glittering in spangle and tinsel.