So far as we were concerned--our sympathies being wholly on the side of the ass--this astonishing spectacle remained a broad farce until the very end; but it presently became to the men engaged in it a very serious tragedy. As he made his wild charges, El Sabio galloped backward and forward again and again over the bodies of his prostrate enemies; in the course of which gallopings his sharp little hoofs cut their naked flesh savagely, and now and then, when he happened to land a kick fairly against a man's body, we could see, from the sinking in of the fellow's ribs and the gush of blood that burst from his nostrils, that the ass had delivered a death-blow.
As for the noise that attended this most extraordinary performance, words can but faintly describe it. From the men directly engaged with El Sabio came yells of fear and shouts for assistance and cries of anger, beneath all of which was a dull undertone of groans; the crowd around us and higher up behind us gave vent to a shrill roar of shouts and yells that seemed to be partly in the nature of advice, and partly the result of that instinct which prompts all barbarians to yell whenever anybody else yells, on general principles. Pablo interpolated a most despairing note in the way of beseeching cries of "B-u-r-r-r-o! B-u-r-r-r-o!" whereby he sought to allay El Sabio's frenzy, and so to save him from the direful fate that well might be expected to overtake him in recompense of his direful deeds; and Young fairly tossed his battered Derby hat up into the air as he shouted: "Go it, El Sabio! Give it to 'em, my boy! Ten t' one against th' fat priest! Three cheers for th' jackass! Hip-hip-hurrah!" In short, it seemed as though Bedlam had broken loose among us, and as though all of us together were going mad.
What with dodging behind his fellows, and keeping clear of El Sabio's frantic charges by the display of an agility that I would not have given him credit for, the little fat priest managed to preserve his small round body unharmed until all of his companions had either escaped over the wall or had been, as Young put it, knocked out by El Sabio's heels. Once or twice he had made a dash for the passage-way in which we were standing, but the lower end of this was choked with the dozen or more badly wounded wretches who had crawled thither in their efforts to escape; and these the priests in front of us, being but cowardly creatures, had made no effort to succor or to lift away, for the reason that so long as this barrier remained they themselves were safe from El Sabio's fury.