Here, again, a matador, he who kills, will often take a cloak and show the audience three or four artistic passes with it, as distinct from the go-as-you-please way in which cloaks are wielded by the chulo. These passes only allow the cloaker to miss the bull by a short breadth, and are well defined and recognised by all connoisseurs. The bull has now given up those wild rushes from a distance, and fences warily, evidently much annoyed at the fruitlessness of his charges, and the impossibility of driving his horns home in solid flesh. So out comes the picador on his halting steed, and plants himself well away from the barrier, so that he may not be thrown against it in the fall. His legs are cased beneath the yellow leggings with sheet iron, for he cannot shield them from the enemy's rush. Horsemanship is absent--there is no need for it. To plant his lance, and fall without hurting himself, is the whole art of a picador, and this part is the greatest blot on the performance. It is merely an act of deliberate slaughter, for the horse is intended to be killed, and will be kept there till it is killed. [Illustration: "IT IS ONE OF THE MOST PERILOUS FEATS, THIS PLACING OF DARTS."] The horse always seems vaguely conscious of something wrong, though it is not generally unmanageable. The other horses, while their comrade is being done to death, often grow restive and frightened, though they are unable to see what goes on. The bull seldom appears anxious to attack the horse, but it is pushed forward under his nose, and the big picador on top poises his lance aggressively. Then comes the short, plunging charge, the shock of the short lance-point in the bull's shoulder, and the awful home drive of the great horn into the tottering horse's body. In such a case the forequarters of the mount are lifted clear from the ground, and I have even seen a strong eight-year-old bull fling horse and rider over his back, as if they had been lightly stuffed museum specimens, instead of weighty flesh and blood. The breed of bulls called Miura--one of the most dangerous to fighters--generally strike home about the horse's chest, and thus death is rapid and sudden; but the famed Muruve bulls usually attack the flanks, and the scenes that follow this are too shudderingly horrid to put down on clean paper. Even then, if the wounds allow of the horse standing at all, the stricken beast is mounted again and led forward for another fall, though the populace resent this by whistles, as a rule. Whistling, by the way, is the Spanish method of expressing disapproval.