While he capers about before his delighted admirers, the attendants come in and draw away with some difficulty the magnificent form of the slaughtered bull.

The music broke into a loud march.  There was an interval of relaxation for the audience, to move, look about, chatter, and take refreshments.

“This is the end,” I said to Suzee; “let us go now.”

“Oh, but Treevor, that man said he had five more bulls, look, nobody is going yet,” she returned, having evidently followed in her own sharp way the sense of the Spanish speech of the administrador.

“Do you want to see any more?” I asked.  “I think it is dull and tedious, as well as horrible.”

“The killing is not nice,” she said, in deference to my opinions, I suppose; “but the music and the people are fun, I think.  Do let us stay for one more fight.  You won’t want to bring me again.”

“No, I certainly shan’t,” I answered.

“Then do let me stay now, Treevor, just one more time.”

I shrugged my shoulders and sat back in my seat, and after a second the little door opposite opened and another bull, this time apparently mad with pain, dashed into the ring.

The people applauded him and the shouts and clappings increased his excitement.

He bounded at full gallop across the sandy space and charged the hoarding that hemmed him in.

The audience were delighted, but the toreadors entered the ring and stood together at one side, looking anxious, and some of the attendants came up and received orders from them.

From the first the animal was unmanageable, out of all control.  The goading and the enraging that goes on in the dens behind the arena had been overdone apparently, for the bull, wild with rage and pain, galloped madly round, taking no notice of the pallid group of toreadors.

At last one or two came forward with their cloaks of scarlet; the bull made a dash at them, scattering them on either side, then bounded on and with one tremendous leap cleared the hoarding that separates spectators from the rings, and landed bellowing in the corridor that ran round it just below our seats.  It was full of onlookers drawn nearer than usual to the hoarding by the excitement, and they scattered and fled in all directions, while shriek upon shriek went up from the women all round us as they saw the bull clear the hoarding and come down amongst them.

With one accord they stood up.  Like a great wave breaking, they rushed upwards to the highest part of the ring, shrieks and screams on every side telling of the trampled children and injured women in the frantic panic.

Suzee rose with the rest, livid and trembling, and would have rushed after that seething mass behind us, if I had not seized her arm and forced her back to her seat.

“Sit down, stay where you are,” I said; “the bull will do you less harm than that trampling horde.”