rites the end with one short stab of his
iron dagger behind the skull. The matador walks round the barriers
bowing to the cheers of the people, and behind him stalks a chulo, who
picks up for him the showers of cigars, hats, and so forth that are
showered into the ring.

A big folding gate swings back, and two teams of gaily-ribboned mules
canter in with smart teamsters running beside them. One is hitched to
the bull, and with a shout and a long sweep round the reddened sand the
bull is hauled out at full gallop, one horn drawing a wavy line in the
yellow floor, and one stiff fore-leg wagging grimly to the long lope of
the jingling mules. The dead horses are drawn out in the same way, with
the same ringing whoop, and as the gates close on the slain the _Toril_
looms open afresh, and the second bull comes forward to his death.

There are variations. Instead of receiving the charge upon the sword the
matador may achieve the "volapie" (half-volley), by running towards the
bull and driving the sword home as the two meet. Or, a favourite method,
but a difficult one, is to sever the spinal cord behind the skull with
the point of the sword as the great head goes down to toss. Yet another
variation that I have seen more than once is the tinkling of the sword
upon sand, a rapid leap, as it seems, of three feet into the air, by the
matador, and his writhing collapse upon the floor. Then a hurried flash
of red cloaks in the bull's face, to draw him from the fallen man. The
fighters are vastly plucky about their mishaps, and generally manage to
run out rather than be carried. Few of them, if they have seen much
bull-fighting, but are scarred freely with old wounds. The horn
generally enters the stomach or groin, and a terrible wound it makes.
The photograph illustrating the "death-stroke" on this page shows
Espartero, who was the most famous and most utterly reckless of toreros
during his life. His sword is up to the hilt in the bull's left
shoulder, the flag just passing over its forehead, and its right horn
shaving the matador's right knee by a few inches, The upward toss, if
the bull were just a little nearer, would bury the horn in Espartero's
waist, but those four inches were the rim between life and death, and a
second later the bull was stretched upon the sand.

Espartero was killed in the Madrid arena in July 1894. As he
administered the death-stroke, the bull, a fierce and very hardy Miura
called Perdigon, drove its horn