Shortly afterwards the footmen laid aside their flags and proceeded to what is considered a more dangerous, and consequently more interesting, part of the performances. They lighted cigars, and were handed small pieces of wood, with a barbed point at one end and a squib at the other. Having lighted his squibs at his cigar, one of their number rushes up in front of the bull, shouting and stamping before him, as if challenging him to come on. The bull is not slow of putting down his head and making at him, when the man vaults nimbly over his horns, leaving a squib fizzing and cracking on each side of his neck. This makes the bull still more furious, but another man is ready for him, who plays him the same trick, and so they go on till his neck is covered with squibs. One of them then takes a large rosette, furnished in like manner with a sharp barbed point, and this, as the bull butts at him, he sticks in his forehead right between the eyes. Another man then engages the bull, and, while eluding his horns, removes the rosette from his forehead. This is considered a still more difficult feat, and was greeted with immense applause, the Mexican part of the audience screaming with delight. The performers were all uncommonly well made, handsome men; their tight dresses greatly assisted their appearance, and they moved with so much grace, and with such an expression on their countenance of pleasure and confidence, even while making their greatest efforts, that they might have been supposed to be going through the figures of a ballet on the stage, instead of risking death from the horns of a wild bull at every step they executed. During the latter part of the performance, being without their red flags, they were of course in greater danger; but it seemed to make no difference to them; they put a squib in each side of the bull’s neck, while evading his attack, with as much apparent ease as they had dodged him from behind their red flags. Sometimes, indeed, when they were hard pressed, or when attacked by the bull so close to the barrier that they had no room to maneuver round him, they sprang over it in among the spectators.