When our transports had abated a little I was aware that the twilight was deepening into dusk and that I must somehow save Vedia from the roaming wild beasts. I guided her along the twisting track from her hiding-place to the road. As we gained it I heard a loud snarl of a lion or tiger or panther far off towards the crag. We must make haste.
I reflected that it would be a very strong and enterprising beast, even if a lion, which would break into Vedia's coach when its panels were slid and fastened.
"We are too far from any habitation," I said, "for us to reach any while the light holds. I dare not make the attempt with you among all these freed wild beasts. I should be afraid to try it alone in this deepening dusk. The best thing we can do is to get inside your carriage, slide the panels and trust to them to keep out any inquisitive leopard or lion. With the carcasses of four well-fed horses and as many mules laid ready to eat, no tiger ought to be hungry enough to be eager after us."
"I had thought that, too," she agreed.
I peered through the open door into the coach, which was roomy. Then I replaced in it its mattresses and cushions, Vedia showing me how they fitted and, going round to the other door and opening it, helping me to lay smooth the unmanageable feather-stuffed upper-cushions. She also showed me the receptacles for her toilet-box, the food hampers and the kidskins. While we were thus busied the almost full moon rose clear and bright over a distant mountain. I helped Vedia into the coach and she disposed herself at full length on its cushions, sinking into the feathers. I walked round the coach and slid all the panels except the front panel through which the moonlight entered, then I climbed inside, shut and fastened the door, shut the panels, fastened each and stretched out by Vedia, like her with plenty of cushions and pillows under my head and shoulders.
As I fastened the last panels we heard the hunting-squall of a leopard at no great distance. Vedia clung to me, shuddering.
"You have saved me, Caius," she said. "As you did on the terrace atNemestronia's."
Naturally, for a while, we exchanged kisses and caresses without any intermingled words.
When, she spoke she said:
"How do you come to be alive?"
"That," I said, "is thanks to Agathemer and is a long tale. I am faint with hunger and thirst, you yourself should be in need of nourishment and might be the better for it. There should be food in those hampers and wine in the kidskins."
"There is," she said, "and plenty. I am as hungry and thirsty as you, now I am no longer terrified and am recovering from my panic. But I am intensely eager to hear your story. Do begin at the beginning just as soon as you can, and tell it while we eat."
Then she showed me how to dispose the hampers as they were designed to be arranged while the occupants of the coach ate. They were very generously filled with the most luxurious fare: hard-boiled eggs, ham, cold roast pork, sliced thin; breast of roast goose, breast of roast duck, young guinea-fowls, broiled whole and cut up, broiled chickens, broiled squabs; half a. dozen kinds of bread, a quarter loaf and different sorts of rolls; lettuce and radishes; bottles of oil, vinegar, garum sauce, and other sauces; salt smoked fish; figs, both big green figs and small purple figs; a jar of strained honey, several kinds of cakes, and plenty of salt, pepper, other relishes, and a lavish provision of knives and of silver, plates, spoons, cups and other utensils.
"Why all this profusion?" I queried. "You have enough here for a party of ten."
"I always have a variety like this," she explained. "I generally have very little appetite on a journey so I tell Lydia to put in all the things she can get which she knows I like. Then something is likely to tempt me."
We feasted by moonlight, while I told my story from the moment when I had received her warning letter.
"I knew that you mounted the horse in front of Plosurnia's Tavern," she said, "but I have never heard of you after that. Tanno and I did all we could to find out what had become of you; all we could without risking the secret service getting an inkling that we had a hope that you were not dead.
"In fact it was not only advertised from the Palace in due course, but circumstantially reported to us privately, that the secret service had learned that you had arranged for a fishing-vessel to take you to sea from Sipontum. They had then set three detachments of Praetorians to intercept you, one on each road, with watchers to warn them if you were recognized. You were seen or betrayed somewhere between Hadria and Auximum, one account said at Ortona, and the Praetorians killed you.
"Tanno said that the secret service always gave out such an account if they failed to locate and capture any man they should have arrested. But the confirmation of the story by three different private agencies plainly destroyed his hopes that you might still be alive. I tried to keep on hoping, but, after a whole year, I stopped lying awake and sobbing in the dark; while I felt more grief for you than I ever felt for Satronius Patavinus and more truly widowed than when he died, I ceased to grieve and regained my interest in gaieties and suitors. Don't you think that was natural?"
"Very natural," I admitted and went on with my story.
The moon rose higher and its rays no longer struck on our faces, but, striking through the open panel, diffused from what part of the cushion or sides of the coach they fell on directly, lit up the whole interior with a pearly glimmer. By this subdued light Vedia looked bewitchingly charming and coquettish, all the more because of the contrast between her elaborate coiffure and the simple costume her maid had worn.
I ate liberally and with relish and she appeared to enjoy her food as I did.
"You don't seem a bit worried," I remarked, "over the loss of your jewels."
"Loss!" she exclaimed. "I haven't lost them, they are all in the secret compartment under us inside the coach body, just where Lydia put them before we left Rome. The bandits had barely begun to ransack the coach when we heard the yells of the constabulary and then the hoof-beats of their horses. They and their horses made so much noise that the brigands thought they had to do with a hundred or more and fled, dragging off Bambilio and Lydia and leaving me and the hampers, even the wine-skins. They never were near laying hands on those jewels. They had Bambilio's coin-chests, to be sure; but not my jewelry nor so much as a nugget of the bullion they had expected. They were preparing to torture the procurator to make him reveal the hiding place of his bullion, when the yelling and galloping horsemen scared them away."
I congratulated her and we ate with even more relish. Both of us, however, were sparing of the wine, though I gloated at the savor of the first really good wine I had tasted for more than two years.
And garum sauce! I had not realized how I had craved such luxuries as garum.
I told my story to an accompaniment of Vedia's exclamations. She was amazed at all of it; at our crawl through the drain, at the loyalty of old Chryseros, at my involvement with Maternus, at my encounter with Pescennius Niger, at my involvement with the mutineers; but most of all, at my having been present in the great circus, an eyewitness of the most spectacular day of racing Commodus ever exhibited under his transparent pseudonym of Palus and his last day of public jockeying; and, equally, at Agathemer's device by which we survived the massacre.
We had finished our leisurely meal and I had finished my story, neither our appetites nor the flow of my narrative marred by the distant squalls of leopards and roars of lions, nor by the uncanny sounds made by the hyenas, when, all of a sudden, a lion uttered a powerful and prolonged roar within a dozen yards of us. Vedia shrieked and clung to me, clutching me so I had to remonstrate with her in order to be able to slide shut and fasten the open front panel. I had barely fastened it when another roar as loud, sudden, and long answered the first from the other side of us, somewhere in the swamp tract. This time Vedia did not shriek, she only clung closer to me. I held her as close as she held me and, so clinging to each other, in the pale glimmer of the moonlight striking on the shell panes in the panels, we listened to repetitions of the roars, each time nearer, till the two beasts were roaring at each other not much more than its length from the carriage, apparently facing each other across the dead pole-horses. I expected a fight, but they ceased roaring, and, by the sounds they made, fell to gorging themselves on horse-meat.
When we had become used to their proximity, since, after a lapse of time which seemed like half an hour or more, they kept on crunching and rending without any roarings and without coming nearer the carriage, Vedia, her arms still about me, told me the story of her doings since my downfall. Most of it was taken up with social gaieties and with rejections of tolerated suitors.
Then she, shyly, told me of her liking for Orensius Pacullus, of Aquileia, and her promise to marry him. She explained at length why she had been called imperatively to Aquileia, why he felt bound to remain there and how it was that she had agreed to travel to Aquileia to be married there, instead of his returning to Rome, which would have been the most conventional arrangement.
While she was telling me this we heard not only the noise of the feeding of the two lions which were eating the dead horses, but heard also a third animal as noisily tearing at one of the dead mules behind the coach.
"I cannot believe," she said, "that I ever consented to marry anybody else, even when I was certain you were dead. But you know, Caius, it is natural to be married; and to live alone, as maid or widow, is not only lonesome and unnatural, but unfashionable and absurd.
"But, now that I know you are alive, I shall not care who thinks me ridiculous or who calls me silly; I shall feel lonely, but lonely merely because I cannot live with you. I shall jilt poor dear Pacullus, who is as good a man and as good a fellow as ever lived, and I shall stick to my widowhood until I die or Commodus joins the company of the gods and we can arrange for your full rehabilitation and the restoration of your estates and rank."
Just as she said this we distinctly heard clawing and snuffing against the panels behind our heads, opposite where the lions were feasting. Vedia did not shriek, she was too scared to make any sound: she merely clutched me closer.
Both lions roared in front of the coach; a tiger's rasping yarr answered from behind it and almost instantly there were noises alongside the coach indicating that a lion and tiger were at grips; growls, snarls, more growls and more snarls, each choked off in the middle as it were, half swallowed and left unfinished. For some reason the noise of the fight immediately started a chorus of hyenas, emitting their strange cries, much like human laughter, but the laughter of maniacs. Our situation and environment was to the last degree uncanny.
The fight lasted no long time. We could not conjecture which combatant was victorious, but they dashed off, one pursuing the other. The remaining lion roared twice; long, choking, snarling torrents of thunderous noise; then it also went away. Except for distant snarls, squalls and roars, we were in a silent moonlit world, almost peaceful. I ventured to unfasten the other front panel and slide it a little way open. The rays of the high moon, poured in on our feet, we looked out on a magical prospect.
Vedia put a relishing warm arm round my neck.
"Call me Caia again," she whispered. "Where you are Caius I am Caia!"[Footnote: From the Roman marriage-ritual.] The implication thrilled me.It was as if we were married, had been man and wife for long past.
It may have been midnight, was near midnight when she said:
"I don't want to go to sleep at all. We can do without one night's sleep. We can sleep tomorrow night, when we are not together. Let's try to keep awake every minute till daylight."
In fact it was not easy to sleep, for a pack of hyenas, apparently as friendly with each other as if they had hunted together since they were weaned, came and picked the bones of the horses and mules, even ate the bones, which cracked loudly between their powerful jaws. The noise of their gluttony would have kept awake a pair sleepier than we.
But, when the moon was almost half way down the sky, when the roars and squalls and snarls of lions and leopards and tigers and the horrid laughter of hyenas had ceased to sound, when the night silence was so complete that we could hear the cocks crowing near distant farmsteads and the faint breezes rustling in the willows, we did sleep, she first, her arms round me and her head on my shoulder.
When we woke, with the slanted moon rays on the back corner of the coach behind me, she cuddled to me luxuriously, patted me and presently whispered, in a bantering, roguish tone which I detected even in her softest whisper:
"You remember that old sweetheart of yours?"
"I don't remember any sweetheart except you," I retorted. "I never had any sweetheart except you."
"I mean," she said, "that minx who made eyes at you and all your country neighbors and certainly tried to marry you and most of your Sabine friends."
"You mean Marcia?" said I.
"Ah," she said, playfully and teasingly, "I thought you would remember her name. If you remember her name you must remember her."
"Of course I remember Marcia," I said. "How could I forget her after the way she led my uncle by the nose, had half the countryside mad for her, set us all by the ears, rebuffed Ducconius Furfur, and married Marcus Martius?
"If I had never known her before I'd be bound to recall the creature who embroiled me with you. My! You were in a wax!"
"I certainly was," she whispered, "and I thought I had reason to be indignant. But now I believe your version of her relations with you and feel no qualms at recollecting the slanders I then credited. But, the point is, you remember her."
"My dear," I said, "if I had never set eyes on Marcia except when I encountered her in the Baths of Titus the day you rescued me from drowning when I fainted in the swimming pool, I'd remember her for life. She is too beautiful to forget."
"Am I so hideous?" she demanded.
"You are the loveliest woman alive," I vowed. "But Marcia is amazingly spectacular and the pictures she makes impress themselves on one's memory and eyesight. I could never forget her in that brilliant tableau on the camp-platform facing the mutineers, even if I had never seen her before."
"I was coming to that," Vedia said. "Marcia, who was a foundling and a slave as the adopted child of a slave, has risen so high that she is truly Empress in all but the official title. She has all the honors Faustina or Crispina ever had, except that she keeps out of those religious rites, participation in which is confined to women married with the full old-time ceremonies and observances."
I then told her what Agathemer and I had heard about Marcia while domiciled with Colgius, and of the absence from all talk about her of any mention of or allusion to Marcus Martius; I asked if she knew what had become of him or, indeed, anything about him.
"Oh, yes," she said, "all Roman society knew the main facts and dear old Tanno supplied me with many of the intimate details. Commodus made a point of having Martius specially presented to him because he had heard that he had been, with you and Tanno, one of the foremost fighters in your affrays in Vediamnum and near Villa Satronia. At his private audience he congratulated and bepraised Martius and acclaimed his prowess. Martius, who seems to have been a very fine fellow, disclaimed any pretensions to such laudations and modestly stated that he had, at the beginning of each fight, been far in the rear in your travelling-coach, with Marcia; that she had clung to him and so delayed his getting out; that each time he had gotten out and picked up the staff of a disabled combatant, but that, in each combat, he had arrived barely in time to land a few blows on some of the routed enemy; that in neither affray had he done any real fighting or been in any danger or performed any exploits.
"Commodus, in his blunt way, had asked whether he was good for anything, anyhow. Martius had replied that he was considered more than a mediocre horse-master.
"Commodus had then invited him to demonstrate his prowess in the Stadium of the Palace. There Martius had shown such skill, courage, agility, judgment, grace and ease that Commodus was delighted. He had Martius ride a number of wild, fierce and unmanageable horses and was more and more charmed with him.
"Next day he had another batch of intractable mounts for him. As Martius was manoeuvring one which he had almost subdued Commodus stepped too near the plunging brute and, in saving the Emperor from being run down and trampled, Martius was somehow thrown and his neck broken.
"Commodus was very penitent, felt that he had caused Martius' death, had him given a funeral of Imperial magnificence and, as soon as her grief had quieted enough, paid Marcia a ceremonial visit of condolence, as if she had been the widow of a full general killed in battle on the frontier.
"One sight of Marcia was enough. Within a very short space of time her wiles had ensnared him and Crispina raged in vain."
Then she told me all the story of the intrigues by which Marcia poisoned the Emperor's mind against the Empress, until Crispina fell under all sorts of suspicion in the eyes of Commodus: of how at the same time Marcia subtly laid snares for Crispina and enticed her into injudicious behavior with several gallants, until finally the Emperor put her under surveillance, later relegated her to Capri, then to some more distant island, and finally had her brought back to Rome, publicly tried, convicted and executed.
I told her my conjectures as to the queer outcome of the arrest of Ducconius Furfur and as to who Palus really was and who occupied the throne while Palus exhibited himself as wrestler, boxer, charioteer and what not.
"I know nothing to confirm your surmises," she said, "but we about the Court have often been puzzled at the way Commodus appeared to be in two places at once. You set me thinking."
After the second cockcrow, since dawn was not now far away, we fell to talking of the future.
"I shan't marry anybody, ever, except you, dear!" she promised, without my asking it and again and again: "I'll remain a widow until I die unless we outlive Commodus, and Tanno and I succeed in having you rehabilitated. I have many consolations in my wealth and social position and friends."
"And suitors," I put in, mimicking her tone when she bantered me aboutMarcia.
"And suitors!" she replied. "Caius, I love you, and I'll never marry anyone else, but I do love attention. I love to keep a dozen good catches dangling about me; their wooings and their gifts and their behavior generally are no end of good fun. And it's good fun to have half the marriageable belles furious with me. I cannot help encouraging any man, or even lad, who moons about after me. But you have never had any reason to be jealous, you have none now, you never will have."
I expressed my faith in her the best I could.
"You are a dear, dear boy," she said, "and it is good of you not to be jealous, even when you have so little reason to be jealous. I have much more. Suppose I raged about Nebris or Septima?"
I tried to change the subject and succeeded, when I suggested that we must plan what we were to do at dawn and in the future. After a full discussion and the airing of her ideas and mine, we agreed that there was little or no likelihood of the road-constables returning or of anyone else approaching her carriage before full daylight. As soon as there was sufficient light for it to be safe, I would open the panels enough for us to keep watch up and down the highway and in the direction the constables had taken. When we saw them returning I was to wait till they were near enough to assure her safety and then, at the last moment, I was to slip out on the other side of the coach. That was next the swamp and I could be out of sight among the willows and alders when less than two score yards from the road; also I knew the path across the swamp and could cross it and go off home through the meadows and pastures beyond it. This was our plan.
She said she would, whenever the road-constables returned, behave as if she had been alone in the coach all night. She had no doubt that the police would give her every assistance in their power.
"Of course," she said, "my intendant galloped off somewhere, somehow and the coachman and outrider and mule-drivers ran away; you couldn't expect any or all of them to make a stand against all those armed brigands. If the constables return, as they will, all my men will come back. Osdarus will manage to get me horses from the nearest change-station or somewhere else, somehow. Once at an inn I can get fresh horses. I can buy a team at Nuceria."
"Can you pay for a team?" I interrupted. "Have you the cash?"
"My gold and silver," she laughed, "are in the other secret compartment. The outlaws did not get my coin any more than my jewelry. Why look! Lydia's earrings are in my ears now and her necklace round my neck and her bracelets on my wrists and her rings on my fingers. The rascals were so sure of not being interfered with and so much at ease that they were startled frantic by the galloping horsemen and scuttled off with Bambilio's coin-chest, dragging him and poor Lydia and totally forgetting me, thinking me the maid, not even noticing these little trinkets, which are mostly silver and some of gold and so worth stealing.
"I have the cash to pay for two teams or three: I brought plenty for the journey to Aquileia, because we could learn little of the state of the roads beyond Bononia and I thought I might have to travel by Placentia or even by Milan. I'll get back to Rome, as fast as I can. I don't want to be married now, so I don't want to go on to Bononia, let alone all the way to Aquileia. If I did want to go on, the bandits have run off with my maid, and I could hardly get along without her, and they have also removed my escort, and I certainly could not keep on without a proper escort. I have every excuse for turning about at once and making haste to get out of this dangerous neighborhood and getting back home.
"Poor Lydia! I hate to think of her at the mercy of those brutal ruffians. They may maltreat her horribly if they discover that they have the maid instead of the mistress, and by the maid's device. I'll tell everybody I see that I'll pay any ransom in reason, even beyond reason, for poor Lydia, if the brigands will restore her to me safe and sound. I fancy their friends hereabouts, and almost every inhabitant of the district is a friend of theirs, by your account, will speedily have conveyed to them the news that their capture is worth almost as much ransom as they hoped to extort for me. That news ought to protect Lydia while she is among the outlaws and ought to help me to get her back without much delay.
"As soon as I am in Rome I'll send a trusty agent up here to set on foot negotiations with the outlaws and to rescue Lydia by paying what they ask for her.
"And, the moment I reach Rome I'll set in motion all the forces I can control or enlist, and I can influence many men in high places, I'll have all I can influence working quietly and most unobtrusively for that official manumission, of yours. Once you are free you had best travel secretly and without haste to Bruttium. No folk are more secretive or more loyal than the herders and foresters of Bruttium. Not only your former slaves on your uncle's estate there, but all their neighbors will do as much to keep secret your presence among them, and shield you and to make you comfortable and happy as the Umbrians hereabouts have been doing to help and protect Bulla and his band and to shield them from the constabulary and authorities. In Bruttium you can lurk in safety as long as Commodus lives and it will even be safe for us two to exchange letters. In Bruttium it can be arranged that no secret-service agent or Imperial spy can ever get wind of your existence, let alone of your hiding-place. You can be free, in a way, housed comfortably, with no duties, able to pass your time as you please, and well cared for. Tanno and I will see that you are supplied with cash for the journey and for your needs after you reach your haven."
The cocks crowed vociferously at all the neighboring farmsteads and we could hear them plainly across the considerable distances from us to each. The moon hung low and the pale first light of day began to overcome the moonlight.
Vedia petted me and I petted her and she repeated her vows of unalterable fidelity to her pledge to marry no one else and to hope to marry me.
As dawn brightened the hyenas burst into a belated chorus and a lion roared far away. After that the beasts made no sounds which came to our ears.
Vedia insisted on my eating more of her delicacies and, I confess, I ate liberally and with relish. A night with almost no sleep and much excitement causes an unnatural hunger at dawn and the delicious rarities tempted me.
She explained, over and over, that I was to behave precisely as if we had not encountered each other and be sure not to mistake some secret-service agent for her emissary. The watchword was to be, in memory of that used at my escape from Rome, that whoever came from her or Tanno to me would ask:
"Can you direct me to the leopard-tamer who rode the horse with the blue saddle-cloth?"
I was to reply:
"The blue saddle-cloth was bordered with silver."
He was then to respond:
"I have silver for the leopard-tamer."
I was then to say:
"I am the leopard-tamer and I have a pouch for your silver."
After we had rehearsed the passwords till both were sure neither could forget or misplace a word, as the day was coming on, we kept a keen lookout through the partly opened panels. Before sunrise I saw the mounted constables approaching down the mountain trail, for there were several points on it where horsemen could be seen through the trees, even from where we were.
I unfastened the coach door next the swamp, we kissed each other again and again, and, as the horsemen came in sight away across the meadows where they emerged from the woods, we exchanged a last farewell kiss and I slipped out and across the swamp.
From the marsh my path homewards led me past the villa, for it was directly between my cottage and the swamp. The very first human being I encountered was theVillicushimself.
"Hullo, Felix," he said. "I've been looking for you. We need you. Septima says she hasn't seen you since early yesterday. Where have you been all night?"
"Up a tree," I replied. "Bulla told me day before yesterday that he and his lads planned a spectacular capture and robbery on the highway south of Diana's Crag for yesterday afternoon. Most of the days lately on which you haven't wanted me I have spent on top of the crag, watching the traffic on the road. I went up there about the third hour yesterday morning, to view the show Bulla had promised me. I expected to enjoy it, but, somehow, when I saw the victims' coaches come in sight, the idea of a Roman lady in the clutches of Bulla's gang went against my gorge. I ran down alongside the crag towards where Selinus was grazing in the roadside pasture. He came to me and I galloped up the highway and up the first crossroad to warn the constabulary, who had gone up that road about noon, on some false information given them by someone at Bulla's suggestion. Their officer took my horse and I had to run with the infantrymen. My breath gave out and my legs too and I dropped behind when they left the highway south of the crag and struck off across country after the bandits, who had been scared off by the cavalrymen. It took me a long time to get my breath and rest my legs. When I felt able to walk it was after sunset. I can gentle any beast by daylight, but after dusk I'm no better off than any other man facing a lion or tiger. The brigands had opened scores of cages and the freed beasts began to roar and snarl soon after sunset. I climbed a maple and spent the night in a fork about six yards from the ground, where I felt safe as long as I could keep awake. I dreaded to fall if I dozed, and I was frightfully drowsy after such a hot day and such a long run. When the sun rose I started home."
"Come along, prudent youth," he said, "we need you. The sub-procurator in charge of the beast-train which the brigands interfered with is at the villa: so are half his beast-tenders and teamsters. The animal-keepers vow they dare not attempt to recapture their charges and the procurator is angry and worried and anxious about his responsibility and what will be expected of him by his superiors. He does not want to lose one single lion or tiger or even hyena; wants them recaged at once. So do I. I've lost more stock than I like to think of. The hyenas and panthers and leopards have slaughtered a host of my sheep and goats, and the lions and tigers have banqueted on some of my most promising colts and on many of my cattle.
"Can you duplicate your feat with the panther loose on the highway?"
"I can repeat it as often as I can get anywhere near any of those beasts by daylight," I said. "Let us start at once. There is no hurry, for the beasts will do little damage in daytime, as most of them will hide till dark. But there seems to be a large number loose; I doubt if I can catch all of them before dusk."
"It'll take you two days, Felix, or three," theVillicuslaughed. "The procurator states that his train had in its cages twenty-five panthers, as many leopards, fifty tigers, a hundred lions and two hundred hyenas. That's four hundred beasts for you to catch as fast as they can be located by their keepers, assisted by my whole force of horse-wranglers, herdsmen, shepherds, and the rest and all the farmers hereabouts, and all their slaves. We'll have plenty of help. Three farmers are at the villa now raving over the loss of sheep or cattle; every farmer will turn out with his men to help us; anyhow, every bumpkin and yokel will want to enjoy the fun and they'll all flock to the scene."
I do not know how many days I spent catching the escaped beasts for the procurator. I enjoyed the first day, did not mind the second and was not painfully weary on the third; but the rest passed in a daze of exhaustion; though I had good horses, a fresh horse whenever I asked for it, wine and good wine as often as I was thirsty, plenty of good food and every consideration; and although the various farms at which I spent the nights (for we did not once return to the villa) did all they could for my comfort, the repetition, for hundreds of times, of dismounting, approaching a lion or tiger in his daylight lair among reeds or tall grass or bushes, catching him by the mane or the scruff of his neck, leading him to his cage and caging him, was extremely, even unbelievably exhausting.
Whenever any of our searchers located a beast in hiding the teamsters drove their wagons with his cage as near as might be; in no case did I lead a cowed captive half a mile; seldom two furlongs. But I walked a great distance in the course of each of these days, rode many miles in the course of all the riding I did between recaptures, and was never calmed between my recurrent periods of tense excitement. I felt limp.
My condition was not improved by the occurrence and recurrence of perturbing excitement from a more disquieting cause. Early on my third day of animal-catching, just as I stepped back from bolting the door of a cage on a lion, I felt rather than saw out of the tail of my eye someone rush towards me from behind, trip when a few yards from me and fall flat. I whirled to look and beheld a mere lad, one of my fellow-slaves at the villa, a stable cleaner, scrambling to his feet. When he was half up the man nearest him, another of my fellow-slaves, an assistant colt-wrangler, apparently the man who had tripped him, dealt him a smashing blow on the ear with his clenched fist and felled him again. As he went down I saw that he had a long-bladed, keen-edged, gleaming dagger in his right hand. It flew from his grasp as he plowed up the ground with his face. The colt- wrangler picked it up.
We were on a crossroad, some distance from the highway, in the woods. The wagon and cage were surrounded by almost a score of the slaves of the estate, with nearly as many more helpers; farm-slaves, farmers, teamsters, beast-warders, yokels and stragglers; theVillicuswas near.
"Napsus," he said to the colt-wrangler, "kill him with his own dagger!"
Instantly Napsus stabbed the fallen lad between the shoulders. The thrust went home neatly, under the left shoulder-blade, deep and inclined a little upward. It must have reached his heart, for he died after one violent convulsion which threw him into the air, and turned him completely over, his corpse slapping the ground like a flopping fish on a stream- bank.
"Hand me that rope!" theVillicusordered a teamster.
He knotted a hangman's noose at one end of the rope, tried it to make sure it worked properly and ordered the estate slaves to hang the body to a convenient limb of a near by tree. They did.
I stood, gazing questioningly, first at the swinging corpse, then at theVillicus.
"Felix," said he, "I perceive that you do not understand. Tiro meant to kill you, and would most likely have succeeded had not Napsus first tripped him and then killed him. Napsus shall be handsomely rewarded in every fashion within my power. Tiro has been dealt with as he deserved, as any similar fool deserves. I propose to protect you to the extent of my abilities and authority, which includes peremptory execution of any estate slave whom I so much as suspect; I don't have to wait for any overt act, nor for any threat, uttered or whispered or hinted. You can rely on all the protection I can give you and I fancy it will suffice. If there is any other fool about let him take notice."
He spoke loudly, so as to be audible to everyone of the gathering.
I stared numb, puzzled, almost dazed.
"But," I blurted out, "why did he try to kill me? Why should anyone want to kill me?"
"You don't know Umbria, lad," spoke theVillicus, indulgently. "Many eyes in addition to those of the teamsters and beast-wardens beheld you on Selinus, galloping your fastest northwards along the highroad. Many saw you turn Selinus up the crossroad theviariihad taken. Many saw their officer on Selinus when the cavalrymen charged down the highroad and scattered the bandits. Many saw you afoot among the infantrymen when they turned from the crossroad into the highway and as they double-quicked down it. Every partisan of the outlaws blames you for their discomfiture, and regards you as a detestable traitor, many a one is looking for such a chance at you as Tiro thought he saw. I'll give you a body-guard of men I can trust, for the rest of this beast-catching job. But keep a bright lookout, yourself. You may need all your own strength and quickness to save yourself."
The strain of this surprise and anxiety was a hundredfold as trying as the most daunting beast-catching. I felt it.
I felt it more after a second similar attempt that very afternoon. I had threaded a dense patch of undergrowth, approached a lurking leopard, caught her and led her out of the thicket, led her almost to her waiting cage. By this time our helpers were so used to seeing me cage lions, panthers, leopards and tigers that they no longer, as at first, hovered at a distance, gaping at me as I, completely alone with my catch, led it towards its cage, set ready by its wagon, from which the team had been loosed and removed: no longer drew off some yards beyond the cage and wagon and stood ready for instant flight if my capture escaped me; they now merely drew aside as I approached and opened a lane for me and my charge, no more afraid than if I had been leading a calf.
As I drew near the cage, my mind intent on the leopard and my eyes on the open cage door and its fastenings, a slave of one of the neighboring farmers dashed at me, sheath-knife uplifted. He came from my left side, from a little behind me. I whirled round to face him, pulling the leopard round roughly, so that she snarled. I let her go. She was face to face with my reckless assailant and they were close together. She gave one joyful, gloating, triumphant squall and one mighty leap. Her claws sank into his shoulders, her long white fangs met, horridly crunching, in his throat, and she bore him to the earth where she crouched flat on him, greedily gulping his blood.
The bystanders fairly fell over backwards in their panic as they scattered. I stood by the leopard, and when she had exhausted the supply of hot blood, succeeded in caging her; but dropped limp on the earth once I had fastened her in her cage, for a beast of prey which had just tasted human blood was a ward with which I had felt very uncertain of being able to cope.
After that no one attempted to molest me while out catching the escaped beasts. But the night before my last day of beast-catching, as I lay abed very fast asleep at a villa fully ten miles from the Imperial villa where I belonged, I became gradually aware of some noises, then slowly I wakened. There was a fight going on at my door. Soon after I got out of bed our host and my master, theVillicus, came with a light and three or four slaves. The light revealed One of my fellow-slaves flat on his back and another throttling him. A dagger lay on the floor. Evidently the one had saved me from the other.
Late next afternoon, far up in the hills near Helvillum, I caught and caged the last hyena. These, being smaller and more cowardly than the nobler animals, were harder to locate. It was after sunset when we reached the villa where we found the procurator in charge of the beast-train; and along with, him and his men were welcomed and entertained.
After our bath and a lavish dinner theVillicusexchanged a few whispered words with our host and then he and I had a long conference alone. He explained that my life was in danger, not only from local friends of Bulla and partisans of the King of the Highwaymen who all not merely regarded me with detestation and hatred as a traitor but suspected me of being a government spy, but also from the King of the Highwaymen himself, who was certain to be informed by Bulla of how they had been discomfited and who had a long arm and countless capable and intrepid agents. He was of the opinion that the three attempts at assassination which I had escaped were a mere beginning. He was emphatic that I could not remain on the Imperial estate and survive many days. He advised me strongly not to return to the villa.
Then he told me that the procurator of the beast-train had sent to Rome by an Imperial courier, whom he had managed to intercept at a change-station, a letter setting forth my powers over fierce animals and asking that an order be sent for my transfer from the horse-breeding estate to the Beast Barracks attached to the Colosseum, where the animals are housed from their arrival in Rome, until their display in the arena; that this letter had come into the hands of the same officials who already had under consideration the requisition for me made by the procurator in charge of the Beast Barracks; that somehow these same officials appeared to know nothing of my identity with the slave who had foiled the conspirators who were fomenting a mutiny in theergastulumat Nuceria, and for whose manumission a request had been made by the aldermen of that town, and indeed appeared to know nothing of any such request for manumission; that a requisition for my transfer from the horse-breeding estate to the Beast- Barracks at Rome had been made out, approved by the higher officials, sealed, stamped and sent out by an Imperial courier and received that very afternoon by the procurator of the beast-train, who consequently had authority to take me to Rome with him as one of the attendants on the animals of his train, which was now again in order, I having recaged all the four hundred escaped beasts, except five hyenas, one panther and one lion which had been killed by stock-owners and their slaves while attacking stock.
TheVillicuswent on to say that this fell out very advantageously for me, in his opinion. He advised me not only to go with the procurator without demur, but to arrange with him that I drop the name of Felix and adopt some other. He pointed out that, if it was known that Felix the Horse-wrangler of Umbria had gone to Rome as Felix the Beast-Tamer, then the King of the Highwaymen would be able without difficulty to trace me and set on me his ruthless agents until one of them assassinated me.
I felt that he was right. The danger to my former self as Andivius Hedulio, implicated in a conspiracy against Caesar, appeared now far off and unimportant, in spite of the fact that the secret service might still be keen to catch me and the hue and cry out after me from the Alps to Rhegium; the danger to my present self from the enmity of Bulla, of his ruffians, of their partisans in Umbria, of their Chief, the King of the Highwaymen, whoever he might be, appeared close and menacing. A change of name would make it impossible for Tanno and Vedia to carry out her plan for my manumission by thefiscus, my clandestine journey to Bruttium and my comfortable and unsuspected seclusion there until some other prince succeeded our present Emperor. I had grasped eagerly at the thought of this plan and had built much on it. But I realized that Bulla's admirers or the agents of the King of the Highwaymen would make an end of me long before Vedia's influence could obtain my manumission; and that, if she did accomplish all she expected, I could never hope to escape the vigilance of the tenacious and expert pursuers who would inevitably dog my footsteps.
I thought the advice of theVillicusgood. I regretted that I was not to say farewell to Septima; she deserved a most fervent expression of my esteem, gratitude, regard and good wishes; but, after my encounter with Vedia, Septima seemed of very little importance. I had my amulet-bag on its thong about my neck and my coin-belt about my waist. I agreed to go with the procurator and thanked theVillicusfor his solicitude for me, for his good offices and for his advice.
He said that it would be best that he should not know what name I meant to adopt. Also he said that, if I was to escape the vengeance of the King of the Highwaymen, it would be imperative that I be thought dead; he would give out that I had been killed by one of my fellow-slaves and everybody would assume that I had perished at the hands of some partisan of the outlaws; Bulla and the King of the Highwaymen would feel their animosity satiated.
I reflected that whereas news of my supposed assassination would fill Vedia with grief and would probably, after her grief abated, leave her feeling free to marry, yet, if a false report of my death was not spread abroad, a genuine report of my actual death soon would be. It was a choice between a lesser and a greater evil. I acquiesced.
I then ventured to ask him if he knew anything as to how far the brigands had succeeded in spite of my intervention and how far they had failed because of it. He told me that they had effected their escape with the propraetor's coin-chests, the propraetor, and the procurator and had carried off the widow's maid by mistake for the widow, on account of her clever device of changing clothes with her mistress.
Also that Vedia had announced that she would pay a large ransom for her maid.
I then felt safe to ask what had become of Vedia, her name being known from her advertisement. He said she had procured horses and mules and had returned to Rome, sending up agents from Nuceria to negotiate with the bandits, rescue Lydia and pay her ransom.
The next day, at dawn, I set off with the beast-train, riding by the procurator. He and I and theVillicushad had a talk. After theVillicusleft my name was Festus.
I asked the procurator what had become of the bullion on account of which the brigands had routed out the cages. He laughed and asked whether I had noted anything peculiar in the handling of the cages while I was returning their contents to them. I said I had noticed that the rollers lashed to the wagons were never used, but fresh-cut rollers each time a cage was taken off a wagon or put back on.
He laughed again.
"You can conjecture then," he said, "why the outlaws got no grain of the dust, let alone any nugget: six hundred rollers, even with very moderate holes bored into half of them, would hold more bullion than the procurator was convoying."
I laughed also.
"I suppose," I said, "it could not be told which rollers were bored out and might crush if used."
"Just so!" said he.
We journeyed to Rome with as much hurry as could be made by such a beast- train, which was very slowly for men on good horses. We made excursions up crossroads, idled at inns, were entertained at villas and I decidedly enjoyed the beginning of my life as Festus the Beast-Tamer. We were fourteen full days on the road.
I had time to meditate on the fifth fulfillment of the prophecy of theAemilian Sibyl. Also I had time to offer two white hens to Mercury atNuceria, at Spolitum, at Interamnia, at Narnia and at Ocriculum.
Towards sunset just before our last night's halt out of the city, from a hilltop on the highway, I had a glorious view of Rome bathed in mellow evening sunlight, much as I had viewed it when I came down the same highroad with the mutineers from Britain. As always this unsurpassable sight filled me with intense emotions.
We entered Rome, of course, by the Flaminian Gate and at dawn. Before sunrise I was in the great mass of buildings variously known as the Choragium, the Therotheca, the Animal Mansions and the Beast-Barracks. These were mostly of many stories, the ground-level used for the beasts, the second floor for their keepers and attendants, the cage-cleaners, the overseers, and the rest of the army of men who cared for the animals, and the upper floors utilized as store-rooms for all sorts of weapons, armor, costumes, implements and apparatus used in and for the spectacles; swords, spears, arrows, shields, helmets, breast-plates, corselets, kilts, greaves, boots, cloaks, tunics, poles, rope, pulleys, winches, jack- screws, derricks, wagons, carts, and the like.
The jumble of buildings was without any sort of general plan. Apparently a courtyard and the structures about it had been found necessary for housing the beasts and their attendants and had been bought by the management of the Colosseum. When it was overtaxed, as the number of animals exhibited increased, an adjacent property had been acquired and annexed. So the Choragium had been created and extended till it now covered many acres and had many courtyards, all arcaded on all sides. Under the arcades were set as many cages as they could accommodate; when the beasts were too numerous for their cages to be all under the arcades some were stood out in the courtyards.
I was comfortably housed in light, airy, roomy, clean and well-furnished quarters on one of the biggest courtyards. From dawn after my first night's sleep there I was busy quelling vicious beasts so their cages could be cleaned; keeping others quiet while the beast-surgeons dressed wounds inflicted by their captors or keepers or sores caused by their confinement; inducing others to swallow the remedies the animal-doctors thought good for them; leading beasts out of their cages into others; and so on.
* * * * *
Before I had been a full day at my duties the procurator of the Beast- Barracks complimented me, declared that I was his very ideal of just the kind of man he had always needed and wanted, averred that I was already indispensable and vowed that he could not conceive how he or the Choragium had ever gotten on without me. Within a very few days he came to my quarters and said:
"I want you to be contented here. I won't listen to a word hinting at your leaving. Otherwise I'll do all I can to gratify every wish of yours not inconsistent with your continuing here and keeping up as you have begun. Of course, within a few days now, you'll have no such rush of all-day toil as you have been having. You have been doing in the past few days all the left-over jobs which should have been attended to since warm weather began. Once you get clear of legacies from the past you'll find a day's work can be done in much less than a day and will neither exhaust nor weary you. Now what can I do to make you as comfortable as possible?"
He had sat down and had motioned me to be seated also. I ruminated.
"In the first place," I said, "I do not want to be made to show off in the arena before audiences. I am willing to tame animals and to keep on taming animals, but I do not want to be forced to display my powers before the populace and the nobility, Senate and court. I have the most powerful antipathy to being compelled to become a performer as part of a public spectacle."
"Set your mind at rest," he said. "I give my pledge that, unless my authority is overridden, you shall not take part in public spectacles except that you may often have to enter the arena to lead out ferocious beasts which are not to be killed or which the Emperor, or some of the courtiers, senators, nobles or populace have taken a fancy to for some display of courage or craft and have ordered spared. The driving into a cage or out of a postern of such a beast is generally an irritating matter, delaying the spectacle and often calling for the use of as many as a hundred muscular, agile and bold attendants. I perceive that you can do alone, quickly and easily, what a large gang of eager men has often taken a long time to accomplish. Often they have to kill a recalcitrant beast. I feel that I need you for this and I trust that you are willing."
"Entirely," I answered.
"Good!" said he, and resumed:
"Now, what is your next point?"
"In the second place," I said, "I do not want to be pestered with visitors; nobles or wealthy idlers who take a fancy to me and think they are conferring a favor on me by intruding on me and wasting my time with their inquisitive questions and patronizing remarks. In particular I have a horror of the kind of women who have a fad for molesting with their attentions singers, actors, gladiators, beast-fighters, charioteers and so on; if one of them gets after me and the infection spreads to more I shall find life here in Rome altogether unendurable.
"I speak feelingly (I thought it proper to lie like a Greek, if necessary, in a situation like mine). Where I was before I suffered from the attentions of enthusiastic admirers and I have had all I want of it and far more; enough to last half a dozen lifetimes."
"Festus," said the procurator, "where were you before?"
"If you had seen my back," I said, "you wouldn't expect me to tell you."
"I don't expect you to tell me," he laughed, "but I could not help asking; you are such a wonder that I am tormented with the desire to know all about you, not merely where you came from and how you got into theergastulumat Nuceria. But I shall not press you for any information about yourself. Keep your own secrets as long as you are willing to work miracles for me.
"I don't want to see your back; without seeing it I may say that if anyone ill-treated you he was an amazing fool. You shall not be flogged here, nor ill-used in any way. I'll take all the measures in my power to ensure that no visitors bother you and that you are protected not only from genuine sporting nobles but still more from the silly loungers who think it adds to their importance to make the acquaintance of all persons of public reputation. Especially I'll have you guarded from intrusive fine ladies."
"What next?"
"I want plenty of the best fruit," I said boldly.
"You'll get all you can eat of whatever the markets afford," he said, "and understand right here that I'll indulge you to any extent in anything relating to your food or wine, as long as you keep sober. Similarly you can have anything you ask for in the way of extra clothing or bedding or furnishings for your quarters. If you don't like the slave detailed to wait on you I'll have another put in his place and keep on changing till you get one to suit you.
"You are to be indulged and pampered in every way in my power, except that I mean to keep you hard at work, long hours each day, at the cages, whenever it is necessary."
I thanked him and agreed to do my best to please him.
Not many days later, as he had foretold, my work became less continuous and less burdensome. Soon afterwards I settled into a sort of daily routine which occupied me, but did not wear me out and which often left me not a little free time.
I found that I was entirely free to go and come as I pleased, when not occupied. I did go to the Temple of Mercury and offer two white hens bought in the Forum Boarium, as I had done when in the City with Maternus. Otherwise I kept pretty close for more than a month. I feared to be recognized as myself by some secret-service agent; I feared almost as much to be identified as Felix the Horse-Tamer by some henchman of the King of the Highwaymen. I wanted to try to communicate with Vedia, but the more I pondered on how to do so the more I saw only betrayal, recognition and death as the probable results of every plan I devised.
Domiciled in the Choragium and busy there and in the Colosseum I spent almost a year. Until the approach of winter put a stop to spectacles in the arena and after the outset of spring permitted their resumption, I was not only continuously busy, but entirely contented. Of the dreary and tedious winter between, which was intensely dispiriting and appeared interminable, the less I say the better. I do not want to remind myself of it.
I was of course free from the bodily miseries which had made my winters at Placentia and Nuceria so terrible: I did not suffer from cold, hunger, vermin, sleeplessness, overwork, exhaustion, weakness, blows and abuse. I was, on the contrary, comfortably lodged and clothed, well attended, lavishly and excellently fed and humored by the procurator.
But at Placentia and Nuceria I had solaced myself amid the horror of my situation by reminding myself that I was, at least, alive, and, as long as I was in anergastulum, entirely safe from any danger of being recognized and executed. Here, in Rome, often in the arena, under the eyes of sixty thousand Romans, thousands of whom had known me in my prosperity and hundreds of whom had known me familiarly from my childhood, I was, every instant, in peril of recognition and of betrayal to the secret service. While I was actually in the arena I was so busy or so exhilarated by my participation in the most magnificent spectacle on earth that I never worried a moment. I seldom worried while I was occupied with any of my duties in the Colosseum or Choragium, although I knew I was very liable to recognition, for the passages and vaults of the Colosseum and the courtyards of the Choragium were habitually visited by men of sporting tastes; gentlemen, wealthy idlers, noblemen, senators, courtiers, even the Emperor himself. I was, in my intellect, conscious of my danger; but, while I was occupied, it did not perturb my feelings.
During the idleness of the long winter my peril did rob me of sleep, of appetite and of peace of mind. I had continually to devise excuses for remaining in my lodgings, for declining invitations to banquets, for keeping to myself. I dreaded that the procurator himself was growing suspicious of me. He had, in the kindness of his heart, thrown in my way offers of opportunities for outings, for diversions, for entertainments, which any man in my situation might have been expected to accept with alacrity. My refusals, I felt, might set him to thinking. He was entirely loyal to the Emperor and the government. If the idea ever crossed his mind he would, at once, have reported to the secret service that it would be well to take a look at Festus the Beast-Tamer; he might be other than he appeared. The anxiety caused by these thoughts preyed upon my mind.
Without reason, apparently. The procurator, as I look back on that deadly winter, seems to have accepted all my peculiarities without question. If I would remain content and quell obstreperous beasts when spring opened as I had until autumn ushered in winter, I might do and be anything I pleased. If I pleased to mope in my quarters, pace under the arcades of the courtyard, lie abed from early dusk till after sunrise, what mattered that to him? Such, apparently, was his attitude of mind. He gave orders that I was to have my meals alone in my quarters, as I requested. He had brought to me, from the libraries of the Basilica Ulpia, most of the books I asked for. I had read all the books on catching, caring for, curing, managing, taming and fighting beasts which formed the library of the Choragium. After they were exhausted I asked the procurator for more. As he had a cousin among the assistant curators at the Ulpian Library he was able to gratify me. After I could learn of no more books on beasts I took to comedies and read Naevius, all of Menander and Caecilius, and most of the best plays of other writers of comedies; then. I turned to histories, which I thought safe, and spent my days for the remainder of the winter sleeping early, long and late, eating abundant meals of good food, walking miles round and round the big courtyard under the empty arcades, exercising in the gymnasium of the Choragium, steaming and parboiling and half-roasting myself in its small but very well-appointed and well-served baths, and, otherwise, reading every bit of my daylight. I kept well and I remained safe, ignored and unnoticed. The procurator kept his word as to shielding me from visitors, and he said he had much ado to succeed, for the ease and certitude with which, in the open arena, before all Rome, I approached a lion or tiger which had just slaughtered a criminal and lapped his blood, seized the beast by the mane or scruff of the neck, as if he had been a tame dog, and led him to a postern or into his cage, roused much interest, much curiosity, many enquiries and not a little desire to see me closer, question me, talk with me, get acquainted with me and learn the secret of my power.
I thanked the procurator for his resolution and success in rebuffing would-be patrons eager to pamper me. Also, all winter, I dreaded that he would he less lucky or less adamantine when spring came.
Thus passed my fourth winter since my disaster.
I might have been spared much of my anxiety during the winter if I had learned sooner that such aloofness as mine was no novelty to the procurator, that he had, among his most valued subordinates, a man even more unsociable than I, and even more highly esteemed and more sedulously pampered. This was the celebrated and regretted Spaniard, Mercablis, who, for more than thirty years, was accorded by the Choragium a home of his. own, a retinue of servants and the fulfillment of every whim, of which the chief was his determination to have as little as possible to do with any human being except his wife and their three children, for he was not a slave, but a freeman. In his way Mercablis was as celebrated as Felix Bulla the brigand or Agyllius Septentrio the actor of mimes, and the memory of his fame yet lingers in the recollections of the aged and in the talk of their children and grandchildren. For it was Mercablis who, for half a life-time, invented, rehearsed, and kept secret till the moment of its display the noon-hour sensational surprise for each day of games in the Colosseum.
I have, in my later years, met many persons who congratulated me on my luck in having personally known and frequently talked with Mercablis, just as many have similarly envied me my encounters with Felix Bulla. For myself I have never plumed myself on such features of my adventures, though they are not unpleasing to recall.
When, in the spring of the next year, while Fuscianus and Silanus were consuls, I came to know Mercablis and to consider him, I arrived at the conclusion that his inclination for solitude and his aloofness were not the result of any dread of strangers or of any need for seclusion, like mine, but the product of a disposition naturally churlish, crabbed, and unsocial.
Habituated as the procurator had been to Mercablis and his loathing for strangers, my desire for privacy had seemed to him as a matter of course.
Resolute as Mercablis was to be let alone, he was enormously vain and self-conceited and puffed up with his conviction of his own importance. He never smiled, but some subtle alteration in his countenance betrayed that any flattery pleased him.
He was a tall, spare, bony man, with a dry, brown, leathery skin, lean legs and arms, a stringy neck, almost no chin, a hooked nose, deep set little greeny-gray eyes and intensely black, harsh, stiff, curly hair and very bushy eyebrows. He wore old, worn, faded garments and stalked about as if the fate of the universe depended on him.
Certainly he never failed to surprise all Rome when the time came for his novelty to be displayed. Every one which I saw, either earlier when I was myself or while in the Choragium as Festus the Beast-Wizard or later, justified the claim of Mercablis to being the most original-minded sensation-deviser ever known in the Colosseum or elsewhere.
One of his utterly unpredictable surprises recurs often to my recollection.
It was a hot July day and, during the noon pause, the vendors of cooling drinks did a good business among the spectators of the upper tiers. To the ring-rope round the opening in the awning, over the middle of the arena, had been fastened a big, strong, pulley block. One of the lightest and most agile of the awning-boys hung by his hands from the radial rope stretched from nearest that pulley, worked out to it, sat on it, rove through it a light cord which he carried coiled at his waist, and worked back along the radial rope, leaving the cord trailing from the pulley- wheel to the sand of the arena. By means of the cord the arena-slaves rove through the pulley first a light rope, then a very strong one.
The end of this rope they fastened to an iron ring, from which hung four stout chains, three of them of equal length, each about thirty feet, whose lower ends, at points precisely equidistant from each other, were fastened to a big iron hoop all of twenty-four feet across. From the hoop hung six lighter chains, like the fourth chain which hung from the ring. As the six were fastened to the hoop either where one of the upper chains ended or exactly between two of them each of the six was precisely twelve feet from those on either side of it and from the center chain hanging from the ring. The hoop hung perfectly level and each of the seven chains, about thirty feet below the level of the hoop, had hung to it an iron disk, a yard or more across, hanging by a ring-bolt in its center and perfectly level. From a second ring-bolt in the underside of each disk depended more of the same light, strong chain, to a length of some thirty feet below the disks.
I, like all the arena-slaves and Choragium-slaves, like all the spectators, knew that this apparatus portended some unpredictable surprise; but I, like the others, like the audience, gaped at it, incredulous and unable to conjecture what it could be for.
Then arena-slaves carried in and set down on the sand a full hundred feet from the hoop and chains, a dozen or more wicker crates full of quacking white ducks with yellow bills. They and the noise they made recalled unpleasantly to me my sensations as I clung to the alder bush immersed in Bran Brook, after Agathemer and I had crawled through the drain at Villa Andivia.
Then there was a delay and I was called out to assist the mahout of the Choragium's best trick elephant, the smallest full-grown elephant I ever saw and the worst-dispositioned elephant of any age or size which ever I encountered. When I and themahouthad put him in a good humor he entered the arena and stationed himself by the crates of quacking ducks.
Then there marched out into the arena a procession of arena-slaves, four by four, each four carrying by two poles a strong cage housing a big African ape. These cages they set down each under one of the chains depending from the hoop. Then I was called to deal with the baboons.
Now I fear no beast, but of all beasts I most dislike an African ape. These creatures, inhabiting the mountains of Mauretania, Gaetulia and the Province of Africa, are big as a big dog and have teeth as long and cruel as any big dog. They are violent and treacherous. Whereas any wild bear or wolf I ever approached would permit me to handle him without snarling or growling, every baboon I ever had to handle made some sort of threatening noise inside him. Although none ever bit me or attempted any attack on me yet the hideousness of such apes and their vile odor always made me timid in dealing with them.
Each of these seven had around his middle an iron hoop-belt, with a strong ring-bolt in the back. It was my task to affix the end of each pendant chain to the ring-bolt in the belt of one of the baboons. This was easy to do, as each cage, in addition to a door in one side, had a trap-door in its top; and each chain had a snap-hook ringed to its last link. More difficult was managing so that the apes should be hauled up out of their cages without any two swinging sideways enough to clutch each, other; for, while baboons in their native haunts hunt in packs, male baboons not of the same pack always fight venomously and members of the same pack, if separated for a time, are as hostile to each other as males of different packs.
By care and caution, the slaves at the rope obeying my signals promptly, I at last had all seven apes clear of their cages, and not swinging too much. Then the cages were removed and the hoop lowered somewhat. Then I steadied each chain till none had any side-ways swing. Each ape finally hung on a level with every other ape, and about two yards above the sand of the arena.
I say finally, for it was at once manifest why the disks were hung to the chains; each baboon swarmed up his chain; each got no higher than the disk, for it was too broad for his arm to reach the chain above it, so that each failed to climb past it, and, after some chattering, and hesitation, each climbed down his chain again and hung by his belt, every one mewing and chattering at his neighbors, frantic with hostility and eager for a fight.
When all seven were quiet the herald proclaimed that wagers might now be laid on the apes, the survivor of the seven to be the winner. Each had a different color painted on his iron ring: blue, green, red, yellow and so on. The spectators appeared to make bets.
Then when the arena was clear between the elephant and the baboons and beyond them, the mahout spoke to his charge, the elephant inserted his trunk through the opened lid of a crate of ducks, grasped a duck by the neck, lifted it out, swung it, and hurled it at the hanging apes. It hurtled through the air, napping its wings in vain, and passed between the baboons, they grabbing for it as it shot by, it falling far beyond them on the sand.
A roar of appreciative yells rose from the spectators.
The elephant threw another duck and another. The third came within reach of one ape. He seized it and bit it savagely, tearing it to pieces with vicious glee. Its impact set him swinging.
Duck after duck was hurled till another baboon caught and rent another. This went on till two of the swinging apes came within grasping distance of each other. At once they grappled, bit each other and fought till one was killed.
It made a queer spectacle; the crates of quacking ducks, the thin-legged, blackskinned, turbanedmahout, the wickedly comprehending little elephant, the chattering baboons, the ducks hurtling through the air, and running about the sand all over the arena, for many of them fell and escaped alive, the yelling spectators of the upper tiers, the mildly amused parties in the Imperial and senatorial boxes, the blaze of sun over everything.
The duck-throwing was continued till only one ape remained alive.
It was all very exciting and so whimsically odd that it was acclaimed a most successful surprise. It is yet remembered by those who saw it or heard of it from them as the most spectacular and peculiar of all the inventions of the lamented Mercablis.
Of my experiences while in the Choragium and about the amphitheater the most notable were my opportunities for observing Commodus as a beast- fighter, the passion for the sport which possessed him, his absorption in it, even rage for it, his unflagging interest in it, his untiring pursuit of it, and his amazing strength and astounding skill in the use of arrows, spears, swords, and even clubs as weapons for killing beasts.