The seven survivors wing away straight towards the point where the other gun lies hidden in the dry drain-head. Mark! Now the leading barbon checks his flight as he sees the flash of barrels beneath: but it is all too late, and down he, too, comes with a mighty crash, to earth. A third, offering only a "stern shot," continues a laboured flight, his pinion-feathers sticking out at sixes and sevens, and soon pitches on the verge of a marshy hollow where storks are dotted about in search of frogs. It was an awkward place, and necessitated moving him again: indeed, this bird gave no small trouble to secure. The sun had already set, and night drew on apace, ere the final shot, ringing out amidst gathering gloom, told that he, too, had been added to the spoils of that glorious afternoon.
CHAPTER V.
TAUROMACHIA,
The Fighting Bull of Spain.
NOTES ON HIS HISTORY: HIS BREEDS AND REARING: AND HIS LIFE UP TO THE "ENCIERRO,"—i.e., THE EVE OF HIS DEATH.
We trust the reader may not fear that he is about to suffer once more the infliction of the oft-described Spanish bull-fight. We have no intention so far to abuse his patience. The subject is exhausted: has been dilated upon by almost every visitor to this country, though nearly always with inaccuracy and imperfect knowledge.
It is customary for such writers to condemn the bull-fight[10] in toto on account of its cruelty: to denounce it without reservation, as a barbarous and brutal exhibition and nothing more. The cruelty is undeniable, and much to be deprecated; the more so as this element could, to a large extent, be eliminated. But, despite the fate of sacrificed horses, there are elements in the Spanish bull-fight that the British race are accustomed to hold in esteem—the qualities of pluck, nerve, and coolness in face of danger. To attack in single combat, on foot, and with no weapon but the sword, a powerful and ferocious animal, means taking one's life in one's hand, and relying for safety and final triumph on cool intrepid pluck, on a marvellous activity and truth of hand, eye, and limb, and on a nerve which not the peril even of the supreme moment can disturb.
There are doubtless balanced minds which, while in no way ignoring or exculpating its cruelties, can yet recognize in the toréo an unrivalled exhibition of human skill, nerve, and power, and can distinguish between the good and the bad among its heterogeneous constituents.
The bull-fight, as a spectacle, has often been described: but no English writers have attempted to trace its origin and history; to explain its firm-seated hold on the affections of the Spanish people, and to show how their keen zest for the national sport goes back to the days of chivalry. Nor has anything been written of the agricultural, or pastoral side of the question, and of the picturesque scenes amidst which the earlier stages of the drama are enacted, on broad Iberian plain and prairie: of the feats of horsemanship and "derring do" at the tentaderos, or trials, and later at the encierro on that hot summer morning when the gallant toro bravo is lured for ever from his native pastures, and led by traitor kin within the fatal enclosure of the arena.