But the bull-fighter did not respond to these exclamations of enthusiasm. He put his hands on his abdomen, bent over in an attitude of pain, and took a few hesitating steps with lowered head. Twice he raised it and looked toward the door of exit—as if he feared he could not find it, staggering blindly as though intoxicated.
Suddenly he fell upon the sand—contracted like an enormous worm of silk and gold. Four mozos of the plaza slowly lifted him up until they raised him on their shoulders. Nacional joined the group holding the swordsman's ghastly head with its glassy eyes showing through their half-closed lashes.
The public made a movement of surprise, ceasing their applause. Every one gazed about, undecided as to the gravity of the event. But suddenly optimistic news circulated, coming from no one knew where; that anonymous opinion, which all heed and which at certain moments fires a multitude or causes it to remain motionless. It was nothing. A wound in the abdomen that deprived him of his senses. No one had seen blood.
The crowd, suddenly tranquillized, began to be seated again, turning its attention from the wounded bull-fighter to the wild beast, which was still on its feet, resisting the agonies of death.
Nacional helped to place his maestro on a bed in the infirmary. He fell on it like a sack, inanimate, his arms hanging outside the couch.
Sebastián, though he had often seen his maestro wounded and bleeding, and had kept his serenity in spite of it, now felt an agony of fear, seeing him inert and of a greenish white color, as if he were dead.
"By the life of the blue dove!" he moaned. "Are there no doctors? Is there nobody here?"
The man in charge of the hospital, after sending away the mangled picador, had rushed back to his box in the plaza.
The banderillero was in despair; the seconds seemed hours; he screamed to Garabato and to Potaje who had followed after him, not sure what he was trying to tell them.
Two doctors came and after closing the door so that no one could disturb them, they stood undecided before the swordsman's inanimate body. He must be undressed. Garabato began to unbutton, rip, and tear the bull-fighter's clothing, by the light that entered through a window in the ceiling.