heir persecutors. Some Gascons, with timely caution, pick their women
out and depart, running a terrible fire of gallantries.

In hope of truce, a new call is raised for the bull: "The bull! the
bull!--hush!"

In a tier near the ground a man is standing and calling--standing head
and shoulders above the rest--calling in the _Americaine_ tongue.
Another man, big and red, named Joe, and a handsome little Creole in
elegant dress and full of laughter, wish to stop him, but the
flatboatmen, ha-ha-ing and cheering, will not suffer it. Ah, through
some shameful knavery of the men into whose hands he has fallen, he is
drunk! Even the women can see that; and now he throws his arms wildly
and raises his voice until the whole great circle hears it. He is
preaching!

Ah! kind Lord, for a special providence now! The men of his own
nation--men from the land of the open English Bible and temperance cup
and song--are cheering him on to mad disgrace. And now another call for
the appointed sport is drowned by the flatboatmen singing the ancient
tune of 'Mear.' You can hear the words--

"Old Grimes is dead, that good old soul--"

from ribald lips and throats turned brazen with laughter, from singers
who toss their hats aloft and roll in their seats; the chorus swells to
the accompaniment of a thousand brogans--

"He used to wear an old gray coat
All buttoned down before."

A ribboned man in the arena is trying to be heard, and the Latins raise
one mighty cry for silence. The big red man gets a hand over the
parson's mouth, and the ribboned man seizes his moment.

"They have been endeavoring for hours," he says, "to draw the terrible
animals from their dens, but such is their strength and fierceness,
that--"

His voice is drowned. Enough has been heard to warrant the inference
that the beasts cannot be whipped out of the storm-drenched cages to
which menagerie-life and long starvation have attached them, and from
the roar of indignation the man of ribbons flies. The noise increases.
Men are standing up by hundreds, and women are imploring to be let out
of the turmoil. All at once, like the bursting of a dam, the whole mass
pours down into the ring. They sweep across the arena and over the
showman's barriers. Miguel gets a frightful trampling. Who cares for
gates or doors? They tear the beasts' houses bar from bar, and, laying
hold of the gaunt buffalo, drag him forth by feet, ears, and tail; and
in the midst of th