“The white tights turned red.  The bull was lowering his head to gore him again, but Ferrero had leaped from his place of refuge.  Cogan was with him.  Ferrero picked up the cape and flouted it in the bull’s eyes.  The bull lifted his head from Torellas, looked at the cape, and charged.  And as he did, Cogan snatched up the matador’s sword and waited.  The bull charged past Ferrero, then, wheeling quickly, made again for Torellas, and his head was lowered to gore again.  Ferrero got desperate and threw the cape from him, and it caught on the horns, and while the bull was entangled and enraged afresh, Cogan stepped close, picked out the little spot the size of a fifty-cent piece at the head of the spine, stood on his toes and came down with all his force.  It wasn’t any approved matador’s stroke, for Cogan, standing behind instead of in front of the bull’s horns, drove home in just the reverse fashion, but it wasn’t a bad stroke at that.  The knife went home.  The bull rolled over, and Cogan stood there and looked and looked.  Nobody was more surprised than he.  Not once in ten times he was saying to himself could he have done it in cold blood.  Only when Ferrero pulled him by the arm did he think to turn and bow with the banderillero to the cheering audience, especially to some blue-jackets who had now recognized him as an old shipmate and were calling him by name—­hundreds of them.

“In the middle of the excitement he looked up to see how Valera was taking it.  She and her father were both leaning far over the rail toward him—­he with both arms extended and yelling, she with her handkerchief pressed to her lips.  Her eyes met Cogan’s, and Cogan was satisfied.  His little Valera of the beach was on deck again.  No matter about the rest.  That must have been a full minute after it happened and after the surgeon had called out ‘It is well.  Torellas will live!’

“But the bull-fighters in the ring did not believe that all was well.  ‘Torellas!  Oh, Torellas!’ they were saying, and some were shedding tears, as they carried him to the dressing-room.  Torellas was now conscious.  He smiled at Ferrero, and he was smiling while they were undressing him, and he took Cogan’s hand and held it while the others were telling him how it was.  Not until the surgeon said, ’You will live, but your bull-fighting days are done,’ did he lose his nerve.  He had been pale, but he went paler then.  The globes of sweat collected on his forehead.  ‘Oh, no, no, doctor!’ he cried and fainted.

“That night Cogan slipped away from a party of American blue-jackets who wanted to paint Lima in high colors for him, and went down to see Torellas, who had been taken to his home, a fine, large house on a wide street.  A crowd was in the street, waiting for word of his condition.

“Ferrero met him at the door.  ‘They wait for you, good friend.’

“‘They?  Who?’

“‘Oh, you shall see.’  And he led Cogan to the second floor, to where a fine suite of rooms opened from the wide hall.  Her father and Juan were in the outer room.