“As he sat there, a group of well-muscled, well-set-up young fellows passed him.  It was a cool, cheerful morning, and they appeared to be full of play.  Everybody did that morning in Lima.  Cogan knew these at once for some sort of athletes.  They seemed to be well known to the store-keepers and the small boys along the street.  Their hair, or what he could see of it, was clipped close.  Not handsome men all, but all in high favor.  Girls flung back light words at them, or tapped them on the arm in passing.  Two girls pinned roses on the coats of two of them, who took it all as though they were used to it.  ‘Big leaguers of some kind,’ thinks Cogan, and asked the fruit-stand keeper who they were, and the fruit-seller said ‘Torero.’

“’Torero?  Torero?—­Ah-h-h’—­Cogan recalled his ’Spanish Without A Master’—­’Ah-h-h, of course, Toreros—­Toreadors’—­he remembered the opera ’Carmen’—­bull-fighters.  Cogan got up and followed them.

“If Cogan had never seen a bull-ring, he would right away have known this in Lima for one.  It was a perfect circle, about two hundred feet across, packed with what looked like hard sand and surrounded by a stout stockade, and with seats enough for eight or ten thousand people.  The bull-fighters had not minded when he followed them in, and now he took a seat on the empty benches and watched them at practice.  They had a bull, a lively one, but a well trained one, too, for when he knocked one of them over he would stand still and not try to trample anybody.  He would reach down and prod with his horns, but, as he had a brass knob on each horn, he couldn’t hurt them much that way.  The fellows with the red capes practised all their tricks, the men with wooden stakes all covered with paper streamers practised theirs, and Cogan’s blood was racing in his veins before they were through.  These were great athletes—­he saw that at once—­and with a savage bull with sharp-pointed hoofs and horns in place of that trained manicured one—­well, these men would be taking chances which no athlete at home ever had to take, unless they were aerial-bar men in the circus or loop-the-loopers or something like that.

“A few of these men, as Cogan looked on, stood out from the others; and after a time from among those few stood one by himself.  From the first Cogan had noticed that he was very fast and clever—­and strong, yes.  It was his quickness and skill, even more than his strength, which counted.  He used the bull’s strength against the bull himself.  He wasn’t much more than medium height or weight, but beautifully developed—­they were all finely developed men—­and behind his muscular power was all kinds of nervous energy.  And a great way of doing things, not an extra motion of any kind—­no wasteful flourishes or posings.  Not that he didn’t have style.  Style!—­he had so much of it that he didn’t seem to be half trying.  Everything and everybody seemed to be playing into his hands—­even the bull.  And he was such a human kind, laughing and joking as he bounded and ran about!  And he must have said many funny things, they all laughed so; and he took a lot of trouble to coach some of them in their practice.