Could she, after all, bear the ordeal? Would she not turn and hurry out before the first picador drew the blood she had tried so hard to save? But no; she sat still, her eyes large, her face blanched, and one hand twisted in the folds of her lace mantilla as it rose and fell on her breast.
[pg 355] Before the dead was well out of the ring, and his red track sanded, the door of the toril was thrown open for the fifth bull, said never to be a coward. It was a compliment to Carmona and to Vivillo to be chosen for this position on the programme, since it has become a proverb that the pick of the corrida should be fifth on the list. It was also a compliment to Carmona that the King should wait to see how his Vivillo would die.
The buñolero sprang back as he opened the door, retiring more hastily than was his wont into the space between the barriers out of the bull's way. It was as if he, too, expected the new-comer to be something beyond the ordinary in ferocity or cunning; for Carmona's bulls, like those of the Muira breed, are famed for their terrible habit of ignoring the cloak and charging at the body of the man who holds it.
Some bulls had rushed into the arena and blindly attacked the first object which came within their dazed vision; but my heart had time to beat twice before that noble form, which I had last seen in peaceful pasture, deigned to show itself at the dark exit of the toril.
It was as if Vivillo wished to prove how he scorned the puny prick of that fish-hook dart hidden by a rosette of green and purple ribbon, supreme indifference to the strange scene which burst upon eyes accustomed for long to darkness, and haughty superiority to thirst and hunger which irritated weaker animals to frenzy. No one, seeing the great bull stand with his head up, questioning, surprised, could have mistaken his attitude for cowardice. There was something ominous, even terrible, in his pause; and it gave the waiting audience time to appreciate the magnificence of his proportions, the length and dagger-keenness of his horns, the rippling of the muscles under the brown satin of his skin, in the great chest and lean flanks.
“This is not a bull,—it is a mountain,” shouted a voice; and other voices praised Vivillo's perfections, so soon to vanish off the earth. “Grandly armed!” “He would face a battalion!” “Let Fuentes look out for himself!”
[pg 356] For Fuentes, best espada left in Spain, bravest fighter of bulls according to the classic methods, was to give Vivillo the death stroke, when picadores and banderilleros had done with him.
The yells of the vast multitude in an instant changed the bull's proud astonishment to fury. He seemed to realize that this new world, so different from the old sweet, green one, was a world of enemies, every soul against him, and he was ready to fight them all to the death. He neither pawed the sand nor bellowed, for these are puerile betrayals of temper to which the noblest bulls do not descend. Like a tornado he swept across the ring, killed a horse with a single thrust, sent the picador crashing against the barrera; and quick as a wild cat, strong as an African lion, wheeled to lift another animal and its rider on his horns. Half the length of the arena he trotted, upholding both, whilst the audience rose to him and yelled admiration of his savage strength.
“This is like the good old days. You don't see such a bull in ten thousand,” men said to each other, as Vivillo flung the dead horse on the sand, tumbling the picador over the barrera into the callijon, and raced off gamely to a third duel.
When he had killed three horses (knowing no distinction between their innocence and man's cruelty, after his shoulders had felt the lance) he was apparently as fresh as when he left the toril. At this stage of the death drama most bulls would be breathing hard; but though the brown velvet of Vivillo's neck was stained dark crimson, neither fatigue nor pain made his strong heart labour.