As the cuadrilla entered, a regimental band played El Hymno Nacional, the National Anthem, while the vast audience roared and shrieked a welcome to the gladiators.
Marching to the time of the music in long tragic strides, heads proudly erect, right arms swinging and shoulders slightly swaying in the challenging swagger which toreadores affect, the cuadrilla crossed the arena and halted, close to the barrier, in front of the Presidente's box, bared their heads, gracefully saluted the Presidente, and received the key to the bull pen and his permission to begin the fight. And as El Tigre's eyes fell from the salute to the Presidente they rested upon Sofia, doubtless from some subtle telepathic message, for it was a veritable hill of faces he confronted. There she sat on the second bench-row above the top of the barrier, matured and fuller of figure but radiant as at their Utreran parting; there she sat, her gloved hands tightly clenched, her lips trembling, her great blue eyes pouring into his messages of a love so deep and pure that it needed all his self-command to keep from leaping the barrier and falling at his feet.
For a moment he stood transfixed, staggered, almost overcome with surprise and delight again to see her, thrilled with the joy of her message, blazing with revolt at the painful consciousness that she was and must remain another's. His emotions well-nigh stopped the beating of his heart. And so he stood gazing into Sofia's eyes until, self-possession recovered, he gravely bowed, turned, and waved his men to their posts.
Instantly all was action, swift action. Cloaks were tossed to attendants, each footman received a red cape, the two picadores took position one on either side of the bull pen gate, the band struck up a tune, the gate was opened and a great Utreran bull bounded into the arena, maddened with the pain of a short banderilla, with long streaming ribbons, stuck in his neck as he entered, by an attendant perched above the gate.
His equal had never been seen in a Mexican bull ring. While typical of his Utreran brothers, all princes of bovine fighting stock, this coal-black monster was by the spectators voted their King. Relatively light of quarters and shallow of flank and barrel, he was unusually high and humped of withers, broad and deep of chest and heavy of shoulders—indeed a well-nigh perfect four-legged type of a finely trained two-legged athlete, with a pair of peculiarly straight-upstanding horns that were long and almost as sharp as rapiers. Evidently by his build, he was of a strong strain of East Indian Brahminic blood. For his great weight, his activity was phenomenal—his leaps like a panther's, his turns as quick.
Dazed for an instant by the crash of the music and the brilliant banks of color about him, he stood angrily lashing his tail and pawing up the sand in clouds—"digging a grave," as Texas cowboys used to call it—his eyes blazing and head tossing, but only for a moment. Then he charged the nearest picador, literally leaped so high at him that head and cruel horns crossed above the horse's neck, his own great chest striking the horse just behind the shoulder with such force that man and mount hit the ground stunned and helpless.
Barely were they down when he was upon them and with a single twitch of his mighty neck, had ripped open the horse's barrel and half amputated one of the rider's legs. Then, diverted by the capadores, he whirled upon the second picador and in another ten seconds had left his horse dead and the rider badly trampled. Next the banderilleros tackled him, but such was his speed and ferocity that all three funked the work, and not one of them fastened his flag in the black shoulders.
When the bull had entered the ring, El Tigre left the arena—a most unusual proceeding. Now he returned, clad in snow-white from head to foot, a white cap covering head and hair, his face heavily powdered. He slipped in behind and unseen by the bull to the centre of the arena, and there stood erect, with arms folded, motionless as a graven image.
Presently the bull turned, saw El Tigre, and charged him straight. El Tigre was not even facing him, for the bull was approaching from his left. But there he stood without the twitch of a muscle or the flicker of an eye lid, still as a figure of stone.
A great sob arose from the audience, and all gave him up for lost, when, at the last instant before the bull must have struck, it turned and passed him. Once more the bull so charged and passed. Whether because it mistook him for the ghost of a man or recognized in him a spirit mightier than its own, only the bull knew.
Before the audience had well caught its breath, El Tigre, wearing again his usual costume, was striding again to the middle of the arena, carrying a light chair, in which presently he seated himself, facing the bull, a show banderilla, no more than six inches long, held in his teeth. And so he awaited the charge until the bull was within actual arm's-reach, when with a swift rise from the chair and a turn of his body quick as that of a fencer's supple wrist, he bent and stuck the teeth-held banderilla in the bull's shoulder as he swept past.
Now was the time for the kill.
El Tigre received his sword, muleta, and cape. The muleta is a straight two-foot stick over which the cape is draped, and, held in the matador's left hand, usually is extended well to the right of his body. Thus in an ordinary fight the bull is actually charging the blood-red cape, and not the matador. But, with Sofia an onlooker, determined to make this the fight of his life, El Tigre tossed aside the muleta, wrapped the crimson cape about his body, and stood alone awaiting the bull's charge, his malleable sword-blade bent slightly downward, sufficiently to give a true thrust behind the shoulder, a down-curve into heart or lungs.
With a bull of such extraordinary activity the act was almost suicidal, but El Tigre smilingly took the chance. By toreador etiquette, the matador must receive and dodge the first two charges; not until the third may he strike. On the first charge El Tigre stood like a rock until the bull had almost reached him, and then lightly leaped diagonally across his lowered neck. The second charge, come an instant after the first, before most men could even turn, he dodged. The third he swiftly side-stepped, thrust true, and dropped the great Utreran midway of a leap aimed at his elusive enemy.
It was a deed magnificent, epic, and the plaza rung with plaudits while hats, fans, and even purses and jewels showered into the arena—all of which, by toreador etiquette, were tossed back across the barrier to their owners.
Then the teams entered and quickly dragged the dead from the arena; the ugly, dangerously slippery red patches were fresh sanded, and the second bull was admitted. Thus, with more or less like incident, three more bulls were fought and killed.
The fifth and last, however, proved a disgrace to his race. Bluff he did, but fight he would not; the noise and crowd unnerved him. At last, frenzied with fear and seeking escape, he made a mighty leap to mount the barrier directly in front of the box of the Presidente. And mount it he did, and down it crashed beneath his weight, leaving the bull for a moment half down and tangled in the wreckage, struggling to regain his feet.
Directly in front of the bull, not six feet beyond the sharp points of his deadly horns, sat Sofia. Indeed none about her had risen; all sat as if frozen in their places. And just as well they might have been, for escape into or through the dense mass of spectators about them was utterly impossible. Whatever horror came they must await, helpless.
But at the bull's very start for the barrier, El Tigre, realized Sofia's peril and instantly sprang empty-handed in pursuit; for it was early in this the last corrida and he did not have his sword,
Leaping the wreckage, El Tigre landed directly in front of the bull, happily at the instant it regained its feet, where, with his right hand seizing the bull by the nose—his thumb and two fore-fingers thrust well within its nostrils—and with his left hand grabbing the right horn, with a mighty heave he uplifted the bull's muzzle and bore down upon its horn until he threw it with a crash upon its side that left it momentarily helpless.
But, himself slipping in the loose wreckage, down also El Tigre fell, the bull's sharp right horn impaling his left thigh and pinning him to the ground.
Before the bull could rise, the men of the cuadrilla had it safely bound and El
Tigre released. El Tigre, however, did not know it. With the shock and pain of his wound he had fainted.
When at length he regained consciousness, it was to find his head pillowed in Sofia's lap, her soft fingers caressing his brow, her tearful eyes looking into his, and to hear her whisper: "Mauro mio!"
Just at this moment the Duke de Oviedo approached, no one knew whence.
White with jealousy but steady and cool, he quietly remarked:
"Madame, I ought to kill you both, but that my rank precludes. Lucha-sangre, in yourself, as son of a notary and hired toreador and purveyor of spectacles, you are unworthy of my sword; nevertheless blood once noble is in your veins. And so as noble it suits me now to count you. As soon as you are recovered of your wound I will send you my second."
"Most happy, Duke," answered Mauro; "mine shall be ready to meet him."
One evening a week later, while the Duke de Oviedo and two Mexican army officers were having drinks at the bar of the Cafe Concordia, General Delmonte, a Cuban long resident in New York and a distinguished veteran of three wars, entered with two American friends. Delmonte was describing to his friends El Tigre's last fight, lauding his prowess, extolling his noble presence and high character. Infuriated by the ardent praise of his enemy, the Duke grossly insulted General Delmonte—and was very promptly slapped in the face.
They fought at daylight the next morning, beneath an arch of the ancient aqueduct, just outside the city. Encountering in Delmonte one of the best swordsmen of his time, early in the combat the Duke received a mortal wound. And as he there lay gasping out his life, he murmured a phrase that, at the moment, greatly puzzled his seconds:
"Gana El Tigre." (The Tiger Wins!)
CHAPTER XIII
BUNKERED
It seems it must have been somewhere about the year 4000 B. C. that we lost sight of the tall peaks of the architectural topography of Manhattan Island, and yet the log of the Black Prince makes it no more than twenty days. Not that our day-to-day time has been dragging, for it has done nothing of the sort.
All my life long I have dreamed of indulging in the joy of a really long voyage, and now at last I've got it. New York to Cape Town, South Africa, 6,900 miles, thirty days' straight-away run, and thence another twenty-four days' sail to Mombasa, on a 7,000-ton cargo boat, deliberate and stately rather than fast of pace, but otherwise as trim, well groomed, and well found as a liner, with an official mess that numbers as fine a set of fellows as ever trod a bridge. The Captain, when not busy hunting up a stray planet to check his latitude, puts in his spare time hunting kindly things to do for his two passengers—for there are only two of us, the Doctor and myself. The Doctor signed on the ship's articles as surgeon, I as purser.
Fancy it! Thirty days' clear respite from the daily papers, the telephone, the subway crowds, and the constant wear and tear on one's muscular system reaching for change, large and small! Thirty days free of the daily struggle either for place on the ladder of ambition or for the privilege to stay on earth and stand about and watch the others mount, that saps metropolitan nerves and squeezes the humanities out of metropolitan life until its hearts are arid and barren and cruel as those of the cavemen! Thirty days' repose, practically alone amid one of nature's greatest solitudes, awed by her silences, uplifted by the majesty of her mighty forces, with naught to do but humble oneself before the consciousness of his own littleness and unfitness, and study how to right the wrongs he has done.
Indeed a voyage like this makes it certain one will come actually to know one's own self so intimately that, unless well convinced that he will esteem and enjoy the acquaintance, he had best stay at home. Of my personal experience in this particular I beg to be excused from writing.
Lonesome out here? Far from it. Behind, to be sure, are those so near and dear, one would gladly give all the remaining years allotted him for one blessed half-hour with them. Otherwise, time literally flies aboard the Black Prince; the days slip by at puzzling speed. Roughly speaking, I should say the meals consume about half one's waking hours, for we are fed five times a day, and fed so well one cannot get his own consent to dodge any of them.
Indeed I've only one complaint to make of this ship; she is a "water-wagon" in a double sense, which makes it awkward for a man who never could drink comfortably alone. With every man of the mess a teetotaler, one is now and then possessed with a consuming desire for communion with some dear soul of thirsty memory who can be trusted to take his "straight." Of course I don't mean to imply that this mess cannot be trusted, for you can rely on it implicitly every time—to take tea; you can trust it with any mortal or material thing, except your pet brew of tea, if you have one, which, luckily, I haven't. Indeed, for the thirsty man Nature herself in these latitudes is discouraging, for the Big Dipper stays persistently upside down, dry!—perhaps out of sympathy with the teetotal principles of this ship. And most of the way down here there has been such a high sea running that the only dry places I have noticed have been the upper bridge and my throat. The fact is, about everything aboard this ship is distressingly suggestive to a faithful knight of the tankard: he is surrounded with "ports" that won't flow and giant "funnels" that might easily carry spirits enough to wet the whistles of an army division (but don't), until he is tempted in sheer desperation to take a pull at the "main brace."
All of which, assisted by the advent of a covey of flying fishes and a (Sunday) "school" of porpoises, is responsible for the following, which is adventured with profuse apologies to Mr. Kipling:
ON THE ROAD TO MOMBASA
Take me north of the Equator
Where'er gleams the polar star,
Where "The Dipper" ne'er is empty
And Orion is not far,
Where the eagle at them gazes
And up toward them thrusts the pine—
Anywhere strong men drink spirits
On the right side of "the line."
On the road to Mombas-a,
Drawing nearer toward Cathay,
Where the north star now is under,
'Neath the Southern Cross's ray.
Take me off this water wagon
Where the Captain's ribbon's blue,
Where the Doctor, yclept Barthwaite,
And each man-jack of the crew
Never get a drop of poteen,
Never know the cheer of beer—
Anywhere a thirsty man may
Wet his whistle without fear.
On the road to Mombas-a,
With the Black Prince, day by day
Rolling her tall taffrail under,
'Neath a sky o'ercast and gray.
Take me back to good old Proctor's
Where a man may quench his thirst,
Where a purser with a shilling
Needn't feel he is accursed
By an ironclad owners' ship rule
That her officers shouldn't drink—
Anywhere the ringing glasses
Merrily clink! clink!
On the road to Mombas-a,
Where the only drink is "tay,"
Where a thirst that is a wonder
Burns the throat from day to day.
Take me somewhere close to Rector's
Where a man can get a crab,
Where the blondined waves are tossing
And every eye-glance is a stab,
Where there's froufrou of the jupon
And there's popping of the cork
Anywhere the men and women
Snap their fingers at the stork.
On the road to Mombas-a,
Where e'en mermaids never play,
Where to come would be a blunder
Hunting hot birds and Roger.
But lonesome out here? Never—with the sympathetic North Atlantic winds ever ready to roar you a grim dirge in your moments of melancholy contemplation of the inverted Dipper, with the gentle tropical breezes softly singing through the rigging notes of soothing cadence, with the lethal ocean billows ever leaping up the sid
es of the ship, foaming with the joy of what they would do to you if they once got you in their embrace!
Lonesome? With the coming and the going of each day's sun gilding cloud-crests, silvering waves, setting you matchless scenes in color effect, some ravishing in their gorgeous splendor, some soft and tender of tone as the light in the eyes of the woman you worship, scenes beside which the most brilliant stage settings which metropolitans flock like sheep to see are pathetically paltry counterfeits.
Lonesome? With a mighty, joyously bounding charger like the Black Prince beneath your feet if not between your knees, gayly taking the tallest billows in his stride, whose ever steady pulse-beat bespeaks a soundness of wind and limb you can trust to land you well at the finish!
Lonesome? Where privileged to descend into the very vitals of your charger and sit throughout the midnight watch, an awed listener to the throbs of the mighty heart that vitalizes his every function, while each vigorously thrusting piston, each smug, palm-rubbing eccentric, each somnolently nodding lever, drives deeper into your lay brain an overwhelming sense of pride in such of your kind as have had the genius to conceive, and such others as have had the skill and patience to perfect, the conversion of inert masses of crude metal into the magnificently powerful and obviously sentient entity that is bearing you!
The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier Page 21
