Then there was the horrid, low sound of grating horn against the ribs of the horse, the ripping of the hide; the animal was lifted into the air a moment, then fell. There was a gush of blood on the sand, blood and entrails; with a groan it staggered quivering to its feet, made a step forwards, trod on its own trailing, bleeding insides, fell again, groaning with anguish, quivering convulsively.
The people were delighted. They shouted and screamed and stood up on their seats and waved their kerchiefs, especially the women!
The picador, who picked himself up unhurt--indeed, cased in armour, he could not well be otherwise--was cheered and cheered, and bowed and smiled and took off his cap and swept it to the ground. And the band crashed loudly to drown the terrible groaning of the dying horse, struggling in agony on the sand. The bull, sorry rather than otherwise apparently, walked away to another part of the ring, tossing his head in pain as the blood dripped from it.
The people clapped delightedly. Suzee seeing all the women about her doing so, put up her little hands and clapped too.
I bent towards her and caught them and held them down in her lap.
"Be quiet," I said; "I won't have you clap such a disgusting sight."
She stopped at once. A Mexican woman on my other hand, looked daggers at me for an instant, divining my words, but she was too eager to see all the blood and the anguish in the arena, not to miss a throe of the dying horse, to turn her eyes away for more than a moment.
So, after a scowl at me, she directed them again, bulging with satisfaction, on the scene before her.
From then on, for about an hour, the same hideous thing went on; horse after horse was brought forward, pushed on the horns of the bull, torn and mangled beneath its cowardly rider, and then, if completely ripped open, dragged dead or dying from the ring; if its wound was not large enough to cause instant death, stuff or straw was thrust into it by the attendants and the dying animal kicked, lashed, and dragged to its feet to be thrown again on to the sharp horns amidst the shouts and laughs of the delighted crowd.
Once, in a general mêlée, when the bull and several picadors were in a tangled mass at one side of the ring, I saw one of these horses, terribly wounded, with its life pouring from it, emerge from the conflict and stagger unnoticed to the hoarding.