Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 15, 2025
The capador stepped to the side, with a twirl of the cape eluding the bull and spreading the cape on his own shoulders. "What do you think?" asked Maria Venzuela. "Is it not a what-you-call sporting proposition no?" "It is certainly," said John Harned. "It is very clever." She clapped her hands with delight. They were little hands. The audience applauded. The bull turned and came back.
"Sit down," said Luis Cervallos, "or you will make a fool of yourself." John Harned replied nothing. He struck out his fist. He smote Luis Cervallos in the face so that he fell like a dead man across the chairs and did not rise again. He saw nothing of what followed. But I saw much. Urcisino Castillo, leaning forward from the next box, with his cane struck John Harned full across the face.
It was a pretty thrust, clean and sure; and there was much applause, and many of the common people threw their hats into the ring. Maria Valenzuela clapped her hands with the rest, and John Harned, whose cold heart was not touched by the event, looked at her with curiosity. "You like it?" he asked. "Always," she said, still clapping her hands. "From a little girl," said Luis Cervallos.
But she heard every word and her cheeks were white with anger. She looked out across the ring and fanned herself, but I saw that her hand trembled. Nor did John Harned look at her. He went on as though she were not there. He, too, was angry, coldly angry. "It is the cowardly sport of a cowardly people," he said. "Ah," said Luis Cervallos softly, "you think you understand us."
I sat in the box with John Harned, and with Maria Valenzuela, and with Luis Cervallos. I saw it happen. I saw it all from first to last. I was on the steamer Ecuadore from Panama to Guayaquil. Maria Valenzuela is my cousin. I have known her always. She is very beautiful. I am a Spaniard an Ecuadoriano, true, but I am descended from Pedro Patino, who was one of Pizarro's captains.
No trumped-up interest in one particular puppet will take the place of the drama itself. This is a pity. It is easier to create a marionette than it is to construct a play. The three highly advertised "personalities" that reached us at crocus time were owned and engineered by Miss Amelia Bingham, Miss Mary Mannering and Miss Virginia Harned.
Two men each hit the other with their fists till their eyes are blinded and their noses are broken. Hideous! And the other men who look on cry out loudly and are made glad. It is barbarous no?" "But they are men," said John Harned; "and they prize-fight out of desire. No one makes them prize-fight. They do it because they desire it more than anything else in the world."
He is tired and he has not yet begun." "It is the water," said Luis Cervallos. "Yes, it is the water," said John Harned. "Would it not be safer to hamstring the bull before he comes on?" Maria Valenzuela was made angry by this sneer in John Harned's words. But Luis Cervallos smiled so that only I could see him, and then it broke upon my mind surely the game he was playing.
"Would you have the bull so strong that he would kill the toreadors?" "I would that he had a fighting chance," said John Harned, facing the ring to see the second bull come in. It was not a good bull. It was frightened. It ran around the ring in search of a way to get out. The capadors stepped forth and flared their capes, but he refused to charge upon them.
More men were killed that day because of John Harned than were ever killed in all the history of the bull-ring of Quito, yes, and of Guayaquil and all Ecuador. It was the scream of the horse that did it, yet why did not John Harned go mad when the bull was killed? A beast is a beast, be it bull or horse. John Harned was mad. There is no other explanation. He was blood-mad, a beast himself.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking