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!"

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