CHAPTER XXI

"His blood shall be on our head, if any hand be upon him."—Joshua ii. 19.

The heat was intense! The glare from the tribunes opposite seemed to sear the eyes, and from below there rose to the nostrils that awful sickening stench of human blood.

The public, frantic with excitement, was clapping and cheering; thousands of necks were craned to get a better view into the floor of the arena, thousands of fans were fluttering, children were laughing and women chattered incessantly, like a pack of monkeys.

And down below the baffled panther sent roar upon roar of rage into the seething cauldron of a thousand sounds.

The creature had been cheated to the last; a score of victims had been pushed into his lair to tempt him. He had stalked them in play at first, then more earnestly, finally with a mad desire for blood. But always his prey escaped him, invisible hands showed the means of escape; the crimson ladders seemed to multiply their numbers until all round the walls they showed innumerable paths to safety.

The panther seemed to know that those streaks of crimson were his mute enemies. He made several ineffectual dashes for them, but always his claws slid against the marble, and he fell back into the sand, snarling with rage.

Once or twice his prey was more attainable. He caught a foot, a leg, a hand; thrice he brought a huge, panting body to the ground, but even then he was cheated of his victory.Long iron grapnels, wielded by unseen hands, dragged the mangled limbs and torn bodies roughly from his clutch, leaving behind them trails of torn flesh and streams of blood, which only helped to exasperate the beast by their insufficiency.

And now the panther was like a black, snake-like fury, blind with rage and unsatisfied lust, with tail lashing like a whipcord and yellow eyes that gleamed like tiny suns. His jaws were red and dripping, his claws had been torn by the same grapnels that had snatched his prey from him.

He had ceased to roar, but snarl upon snarl escaped his panting throat. The public delighted in him. They loved to see the ferocious brute maddened by these tortures, beside which the agony of Tantalus was but the misery of a child.

Then Caligula rose to his feet and his heralds blew loud blasts upon their trumpets. In a moment silence fell on the entire arena; the pandemonium of shouts and laughter and shrieks of agony was hushed as if by the magic of an almighty power.

The Emperor was standing and desired speech, and all at once silence descended upon this vast concourse of people. Everyone rose, since the Cæsar was standing; all heads were turned towards the tribune, all eyes fixed upon the misshapen figure with its halo of gold round the grotesque head, and the metal thunderbolts held aloft in the hand.

The only sound that was not stilled at the Cæsar's bidding was—down below—the snarl of the angry panther.

"Citizens of Rome," began Caligula, as soon as he could make himself heard, "patricians of Rome! soldiers! senators! all my people! I—even I—your Cæsar, your Emperor, your god, do give you greeting! I have sought toplease you and to make you happy on this my first day amongst you all."

Here he was interrupted by vociferous cheering. Next to shows and spectacles, to games and theatres, there was nothing that the people of Rome loved better than to hear impassioned speeches thundered at them either from the rostra in the Forum, or from any convenient spot whence the voice of a good speaker would rouse a sense of excitement or elation in their hearts. Demagogues and agitators, rhetoricians and poets were all sure of a hearing, if only they were sufficiently inspired and sufficiently eloquent. But it was not often that the Cæsar himself would pour forth imperial oratory into the delighted ears of his people, and a fervent speech from the Emperor at this moment, when excitement and exhilaration were at fever-pitch, was a pleasure which no one had foreseen but which filled everyone with delight.

"Glad am I," continued Caligula, when the excitement had calmed down momentarily, "that my efforts to please you have met with success."

"They have! They have!" yelled the enthusiastic crowd.

"The gods have indeed rewarded me—not beyond my deserts, for that were impossible—but in a just measure, by giving me the love of my people."

"Hail Cæsar! Hail the greatest and best of Cæsars!" came in deafening echoes from every side of the immense Amphitheatre.

"I thank you all! Your loyalty to-day has greatly cheered me. I—as your supreme lord and god—will shower my blessings upon you. As a god I am immortal; always I will watch over you, sitting at the right hand of Jupiter Victor, my father, from all times. But in myearthly shape I may not be with you always. There may come a time when god-like duties call me to Olympus. Then must a wise and just ruler take my place at the head of this great Empire."

"No! no! Hail to thee Cæsar! Immortal Cæsar!" cried the people, and Caligula, stricken with vanity as if with plague, was deaf to the ironical cheers that accompanied these cries.

"Immortal am I," he said, whilst his bloodshot eyes travelled restlessly over the sea of faces spread out before him. "Immortal, yet destined to leave you one day. When that day comes, there will be weeping in the city and moanings throughout the Empire, but the wise and just ruler who will follow in my wake will—while not able to console you for my loss—continue the good works which I have commenced. Citizens of Rome, patricians, soldiers, all listen to what I say."

His face now looked purple with excitement, his hoarse voice shook as it escaped his throat, and his hair, thin and lanky, seemed to stand upon end all round his large, bulging forehead.

A gentle breeze had caught the folds of his purple tunic, and it fluttered all round him with a curious swishing noise, like the sighing of creatures in pain.

The hand that held Jove's thunderbolt trembled visibly, and the perspiration was streaming down his face. There was not a man or woman present there at this moment who did not look upon him as an abject and hideous monster, there was no one there who did not loathe and despise him! And yet everyone listened, and not one voice was raised in derision at his senseless oratory.

Only the panther snarled, and its tail beat against the ground with a dull, monotonous sound.

And Dea Flavia, standing beside the monster, white as the lilies which now lay withered at her feet, listened to every word that he said, whilst Taurus Antinor gazed on her and saw again in her eyes that look of anticipation and of understanding, as of one who knows what is to come.

"Citizens of Rome," resumed the imperial mountebank after an impressive pause, "I have spent days and nights in communion with the gods, thinking of your welfare—of your welfare when I no longer will be amongst you all. And this is what I and the gods have decided. Listen to me, for the gods speak to you through my mouth—I, even I, your Cæsar and your god, do speak.

"There dwells amongst us all one whose divinity is almost equal to mine own—one who by her beauty and her grace hath found favour with the gods and with me. She is of the House of Cæsar, and hath name Dea Flavia; and I, the Cæsar, have called her Augusta, and set her up above all other women in Rome. She comes from the House of great Augustus himself, and it is a descendant of the great Augustus who alone will be worthy to wield the sceptre of Cæsar when it hath fallen from my grasp. Therefore this have I decided. The son of Dea Flavia shall in time to come follow in my footsteps, and make you happy and prosperous even as I have done; and because of this my decision must I give Dea Flavia as wife unto a man who is worthy of her. Many there are who have aspired to her hand, but all of them have I hitherto rejected, because not one of them had given proof of his courage or of his strength. Citizens of Rome, patricians, and soldiers all! What we must look for in your future ruler is valour in the face of death, coolness and intrepidity in the sight of danger. These qualities, which grace your present Cæsar, must be transmitted to his successor through Dea Flavia, the divine,and by a father who has given signal proof of his virtues. I have enjoined the Augusta Dea Flavia to bestow her hand on him who above all is worthy to be her lord. To this has she consented and to-day will she make her choice, and herewith do I call on you patricians who aspire to her hand to enter the lists in her honour. Give a proof of your valour, of your intrepidity, of your courage! Show that you are as valiant as the lion, as wary as the snake. Descend into the arena now, unarmed save for the hands which the gods have given you, and thus engage that unconquered monster in single combat! An even chance of life is given you! And I—even I your Cæsar—will give unto the victor the hand of the Augusta Dea Flavia in marriage!"

Even before his last words had echoed along the marble walls, deafening cries and cheers rent the air. Men shouted, women screamed and waved their fans, mantles were torn from every shoulder and swung overhead like flags.

"Hail to Cæsar! Hail to the best and greatest of Cæsars! Hail to the Augusta! Dea Flavia, hail!"

The shouts were incessant, even whilst Caligula, delighted with his oratory, exultant over the success of his plan, stood there trembling in every limb, with moist, purple face turned from right to left to receive the acclamations of his people. His tiny eyes blinked with the glare that struck fully at them from opposite, his throat was parched with screaming, his tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth.

Excitement was overmastering him; the effort to appear outwardly sane and calm was too severe a tax upon his raging temper. The heat, too, no doubt turned him giddy, for suddenly, even whilst the cries of "Hail!" buzzed in his ears, he threw up his arms and tottered backwards, rigid as a log, whilst drops of foam gathered at the corners of his mouth.

It was Taurus Antinor who received the swooning Cæsar in his strong arms. Everyone else around was too excited to move. The Augustas, inwardly consumed with jealousy, were striving to keep up an appearance of dignity in the face of the insult which they deemed had been put upon them by this semi-deification of their kinswoman.

Dea Flavia, pale and silent, stood facing the people, with eyes that seemed to look on something unearthly far away. Her white robes, shimmering with precious stones, fell round her like a shroud, her lips were parted as with a cry that had died even before it had found birth in her throat. The public thought that she looked proud, and acclaimed her because of this strange aloofness which seemed to envelop her whole person. She did not look of this world at all. Even the eyes appeared sightless and dead.

When the Cæsar fell back, half fainting, she seemed to wake from her dream, a shudder went right through her as her eyes slowly turned from their vacant gaze to the prostrate figure of this inhuman monster, lying stricken like a felled brute, in the arms of the praefect of Rome.

Once again, and for the third time to-day, her eyes met those of Taurus Antinor, but this time it seemed to him that within their still mysterious depths he read something akin to an appeal.

As on that day in the Forum, intense pity—which had given birth to love—filled his heart for this beautiful young girl who seemed so lonely in the midst of all this pomp.

The purity of her soul appeared to him undimmed, even though he knew now that she had expected this awful thing all along, and that she was no stranger to this monstrous barter of her person for the attainment of a crazy Emperor's whim, or to make holiday for the rabble of Rome. In his sight her pride remained unshaken; only her loyaltyand allegiance had been given to the Cæsar in the same way as his own had been. She, in her simple, womanly way, was rendering unto Cæsar that which was Cæsar's, and Taurus Antinor, whilst tenderly pitying her, felt that he had never loved her as fondly as he did now.

The curse of the dying freedwoman was indeed bearing fruit. Dea's favours, her loyalty, were turning to bitter malediction for the recipients. More than one man to-day, mayhap, would die an horrible death in the hope of winning her grace. And Taurus Antinor, in the silent depths of his soul, prayed unto God that the woman he loved should never—as Menecreta had foretold—be driven to beg for mercy from a heart that knew it not and find a pitiless ear turned to her prayers.

Caligula had quickly shaken himself free from the arms that held him. The fainting fit which had threatened him passed away as swiftly as it had come. His lust of hate and revenge was so keen at this moment that it conquered all his physical weakness. When he realised that it was Taurus Antinor who was supporting him, he contrived to smile benignly and placidly upon him.

"I am well! I am well!" he reiterated cheerfully. "Did my voice carry all over the Amphitheatre? Did everyone hear what I said?"

"Everyone heard thy voice, O Cæsar!" said Taurus Antinor slowly, "and see the aspirant for the Augusta's hand has prepared to do battle for her sake!"

"But truly as the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, there is but a step between me and death."—I Samuel xx. 3.

When the Cæsar had finished speaking, and he fell swooning back in the arms of the praefect of Rome, the conspirators remained quite still, staring at one another, dumbfounded.

Could any man at that moment have divined the secrets of the heart and looked into the thoughts of all these men, what a medley of terror and of lust, of rage and of jealousy, would have been unfolded before his eyes.

The plotters were like men who, falling to with axe and pick to demolish a building, had seen that same building collapse beneath their feet. They had sat quietly by all the day watching the events, content that these would shape themselves in accordance with their will. Young Escanes from time to time fingered the poniard which he had hidden under his tunic, Hortensius Martius gave free rein to his ardent admiration of Dea Flavia, Ancyrus, the elder, kept watch over every phase of the temper of the audience—its apathy, its excitement, its murmurs of dissatisfaction and cries of enthusiasm.

Only Caius Nepos, white to the lips, sat in terror lest the courage of the conspirators whom he had betrayed should fail them at the eleventh hour, and he—branded as a false informer—be left to encounter the fury of an almighty Cæsar, who had never been known to relent.

The speech of Caligula had of a truth struck strangelyupon his hearers. The men who had been willing to wait upon chance for the success of their plot, now found that Chance had waited upon them. The thought of treachery did not at first enter their minds. The freaks of the crazy Emperor were as numerous and as varied as the grains of sand in the arena. That he should offer the hand of his kinswoman as a prize to a victor in the arena, was not inconsistent with his perpetual desire for new sensations, his lust of tyrannical power and his open contempt for all his fellow-men.

His allusions to his probable successor had seemed futile and of no account, and they all felt that they had wallowed so deeply in the mire of conspiracy together, that it could not have served the purpose of any one of them to betray the others.

The first moment of stupefaction had quickly passed away, and even before the Cæsar had recovered consciousness Hortensius Martius had risen to his feet. There had been no hesitation in him from the first. Whilst the others pondered—vaguely frightened at this turn given by Chance to her wheel—he was ready to stake his life for the possession of Dea Flavia and of the imperium. His passion for the beautiful woman would have led him into far wilder extravagances and into far graver dangers than an encounter in a public arena with a wild beast, and the momentary degradation of offering his patrician person as a spectacle for the plebs.

And because of this sudden decision, taken boldly whilst others wavered, he became tacitly the leader of the gang of plotters. When he jumped to his feet, ready to descend into the arena, he seemed to challenge them to keep their oath of allegiance to him, who would succeed in winning Dea Flavia for wife.

Hortensius Martius had proved himself to be a true opportunist, for he had seized his opportunity just at the right moment when the others hesitated. Thus are leaders made—one bold movement whilst others sit still, one step forward whilst the others wait.

"Thy chance, O Hortensius Martius," whispered Marcus Ancyrus, the elder, close to the young man's ear. "Escanes and the rest of us will be ready when the time comes, mayhap before thou dost return to us from below."

Escanes' hand beneath his tunic closed upon the dagger. Stronger and taller than Hortensius, he had not the sudden initiative of the brain. He was one of those men who would always be second to a bolder, a more resourceful leader.

Forty pairs of eyes encouraged Hortensius Martius as he rose. In their minds they had already crowned him with laurels. For the moment they had accepted him as their future Emperor and were prepared to acclaim him as Cæsar when Escanes had done his work.

It was at this moment that Caligula recovered from his swoon. His lust of revenge and of hate brought him back to reality. He had planned to make the arch-traitor betray himself, and now, when he caught sight of Hortensius Martius preparing to descend into the arena, a cry as of some prowling, savage beast rose and died in his throat.

He was sufficiently cunning to control himself, sufficiently of an actor to play his part without betraying his thoughts. Though he would gladly have strangled Hortensius then and there with his own hands, he called the young man to him with kindly benevolence and placed a fatherly hand upon his shoulder.

"Thou, O Hortensius Martius?" he said, in well-feigned astonishment.

"Even I, O Cæsar!" replied Hortensius calmly.

"For love of the Augusta thou wouldst risk thy life?"

"To prove my valour, gracious lord, since thou didst desire it."

"On thy knees then, O my son!" rejoined the mountebank solemnly, "and receive the blessing of the gods."

The public watched this little scene with palpitating interest. The Cæsar looked magnificent in his fantastic robes, and beside him Dea Flavia—like a goddess in her white tunic—was beautiful to behold.

The Cæsar laid three fingers on the young man's head, and turned his bloodshot eyes up to the vault of heaven. Then Hortensius Martius rose from his knees and went up to the Augusta Dea Flavia, and knelt down before her. She took no heed of him whatever. She did not look upon his bowed head as he stooped very low and kissed the hem of her gown; some who watched the scene very closely declared afterwards that she snatched her robe away from his hands.

And from the arena down below was heard again the snarl of the thwarted beast.

From the Emperor's tribune, to right and left, wide marble steps led down to the floor of the arena. At the bottom of these steps huge iron gates, wrought with gold and studded with nails, guarded them against access from below. Two legionaries were stationed at these gates.

When Hortensius Martius appeared at the top of the steps the audience screamed with delight and cheered him to the echoes.

He was indeed a figure like to please the most hardened spectator. Not over tall, and slight of build, he lookedelegant and graceful in his short white tunic, with the deep purple bands that proclaimed his patrician rank.

A young exquisite, with well-groomed hands and hair delicately perfumed and curled, the tense expression of his face gave him nevertheless an air of determination and of strength. He had taken off his cloak and was winding it round his left arm, otherwise, of course, he was unarmed as the Emperor had directed.

The women blew him kisses across the width of the arena, and some of the more enthusiastic—or the younger—ones pelted him with roses as he came down the steps.

And down below the panther, as if scenting this new prey, sent a roar of expectation into the vibrating air.

Caligula smiled with hideous complacency as he looked down on the descending figure of the young man, and when the people cheered, and the shower of roses fell in a blood-red mass at Hortensius' feet, the Cæsar snarled even as the panther had done, showing a row of yellow teeth, like fangs.

At last Hortensius Martius had reached the foot of the steps. The massive iron gates stood alone between him and the black panther, which cowered some twenty feet away behind a low monticule covered with tufts of grass, its tiny eyes of topaz fixed upon the oncoming prey.

Hortensius gave the order for the opening of the gates. They swung upon their hinges and he passed out through them. And they fell to behind him with a mighty clang.

Thunderous applause greeted him when he set his foot upon the sands of the arena. The panther did not move. It had even ceased to snarl, but its sinewy tail beat a dull tattoo upon the ground.

Then over the whole arena there rose a curious sound, like the sighing of two hundred thousand souls, an indrawing of the breath in two hundred thousand throats. Hortensius Martius looked up, for the sigh had sounded very strangely in his ear, and it had been followed by a still stranger silence, as if two hundred thousand hearts had momentarily ceased to beat.

And as he looked he understood the sigh, and also the death-like silence that followed.

He saw that from the niches all round the arena the safety ladders of crimson silk had all been taken away.

And up in the imperial tribune the mighty Cæsar laughed loudly and long.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."—St. John xv. 13.

No doubt that for that first tense moment all thought of treachery, of the conspiracy, of the imperium and even of Dea Flavia, was absent from the young man's mind.

It must have come upon him suddenly then and there that his life was now in almost hopeless jeopardy. He was unarmed, and all around him the smooth marble walls of the arena rose, polished and straight, to a height of at least twelve feet, to the row of niches which alone might afford him shelter. From the bases of the fluted columns the iron rings to which the silken ladders had previously been attached, now hung at an unattainable height: the narrow ledge—four feet from the ground—had ceased to be a stepping-stone to safety.

All this, of course, came to him in a flash, as does to a dying man, they say, the varied pictures of his life. Hortensius Martius, in that one flash, realised that he was a doomed man, that he had been trapped into this death-trap, and that nothing now but a miracle stood between him and a hideous death.

Men up above in the tribunes held their breath; some women began to whimper with excitement. But the man and the panther stood for a moment eye to eye. No longer the hunted and the hunter, but the hungry beast of the desert and his certain prey. The baffled creature, tantalised withthe blood of his other victims, was ready to satiate its lust at last.

There was a moment of absolute silence, while two tiny golden eyes, measured the distance for a leap.

The young man now, with the cunning born of a mad instinct for life, was waiting with bent knees, body slightly leaning forward and eyes fixed upon the brute. He had unwound the cloak from round his arm and held it in front of him like a shield. The man and the beast watched one another thus for a few seconds, and to many those few seconds seemed like an eternity.

Then with a snarl the panther bounded forward. The man held his ground for the space of one second, and as the brute landed within an arm's length of him, quick as lightning he threw his cloak right in its face. Then he began to run. The panther, entangled in the folds of the cloak, savage and snarling, was tearing it to pieces, but Hortensius ran and ran, driven by the blind sense of self-preservation. He ran and ran the whole length of the arena, skirted the oval at the eastern end, and still continued to run, with elbows firmly held to his hips and with swift winged steps that made no sound in the sand.

But already the creature, realising that again it was being cheated, started in pursuit. With leaps and bounds that seemed erratic and purposeless, it gradually diminished the distance between itself and the running man. Once it alighted on the outstanding branch of a gnarled tree, then from thence it took shelter in a clump of shrubs, then across the stream, swimming to the opposite shore; for the running man had rounded the oval and was now swiftly coming this way. Here in the tall grass it paused—cowering—once more on the watch.

And Hortensius, while he ran so blindly along, had failed to notice where his enemy lay hiding.

"In the grass!" shouted a dozen voices.

"There!"

"On ahead!"

"Further on!"

"No! no! Not there! Not there!"

There was little exquisiteness left in the young man now. It was but a few moments since he had stepped smiling into the arena, kicking aside the rose-leaves which enthusiastic hands had thrown in his path. It was but some minutes since he had begun to run, and now the perspiration was pouring from his body, his face was as grey as the sand of the arena, the fear of death had raised the death-sweat on his brow.

His breath came and went hot and panting through his nostrils, his eyes, dilated with terror, were vainly searching for the cowering enemy.

Once more he turned to run. The panther seemed to be playing with him. A dozen times it could have reached him, a dozen times it bounded to one side, giving his prey another chance to run, another short respite for the agony of despair.

Men, women and children screamed with excitement. No longer did they cheer the handsome young patrician, no longer did they throw roses at his feet. They shouted to him to run because they knew that running was no use. They urged the panther to leap because they fanned its rage with their screams.

"Habet! Habet!" they shouted with every bound of the ferocious creature.

"Habet! Habet!" now that Hortensius at last paused in his run.

He stood quite still for a veil had descended over his eyes. The whole arena began to spin and to dance before him, the marble columns were twisted awry, thousands upon thousands of distorted faces grinned hideously upon him. Over the trees and the grass and the stream there was a film of red, the colour of blood, and through this film—which grew thicker and thicker as he gazed—he saw nothing but just opposite to him, across the width of the arena, towering high above everything around, the tall figure of Dea Flavia with her white dress falling straight from the shoulders, her fair hair crowned with diamonds, her face white as her gown and her lips parted as if uttering a cry of horror.

The next moment that cry—it was a woman's cry—did rend the air from, end to end of the gigantic enclosure, and the cry was echoed and re-echoed by thousands and thousands of throats, as the panther, taking steady aim, leaped straight for the man.

The noise became deafening: men, women, children, everyone screamed, and right through this whirling orgy of sound a voice was shouting, strong and mighty as that of Jupiter when he sends his decrees thundering forth into the air.

"By his throat, Hortensius! By his throat, and I'll at him whilst he pants!"

Hortensius put out his hands with a last instinctive sense of self-preservation. The mighty voice rang in his ear, it reverberated through the hot noonday air, and clanged against the copper gates as if a powerful arm had smitten them with the axe of Jove.

The man saw the beast's leap, felt the hot breath in his face, felt the two yellow eyes gleaming on him like burning suns, and his ears buzzed with the din of thousands of shrieks; then he suddenly felt himself uplifted, whilst anagonised roar from the throat of a wounded beast overfilled the seething cauldron of sound.

The praefect of Rome was standing in the arena now, and in his strong arms lifted high above his head he held the swooning man, whilst some few paces away the panther was lying prone, with blood streaming from its quivering jaws.

It had all happened so suddenly that no one afterwards could say how it occurred. But there were those who retained a vision of the whole thing and afterwards shared their impressions with others.

Everyone recollected when my lord Hortensius first entered the arena and the iron gates closed in behind him, that a general feeling of horror fell upon the entire public when it realised that all means of safety, all chance of escape had been removed with those silken ladders, and that the young patrician had in truth been left at the mercy of a powerful brute, goaded to madness through baffled desire for blood.

At that same moment the praefect of Rome disappeared from the imperial tribune, and the terrible scene between the hunting beast and the hunted man had begun.

Time for the man to run round the arena! Time for the brute to stalk and play with its prey! Time, it seems, for the praefect of Rome to make his way from the imperial tribune to the east end of the arena, where was stationed the city guard of which he had full control!

A few precious seconds in making the soldiers understand what he wanted, a few more seconds to command them to obey for they stood as a phalanx against the gate, thinking the praefect mad in desiring to enter the arena—a few more seconds and Taurus Antinor was at last inthe arena, shouting to the hunted man to have at the brute with his hands.

But Hortensius was weak from exhaustion brought on by a life of luxury and idleness and by the excitement of the last two days. He put out two feeble hands, and the panther was already on the leap.

And by that time Taurus Antinor was between him and the brute. With a blow of his hard fists—fashioned in far off Northern lands—and with the strength that is given to the barbarians of that sea-washed shore, he had drawn blood from the creature's jaw and sent it rolling back on its haunches, momentarily dazed.

Only momentarily, however, whilst two hundred thousand throats yelled in unison:

"Habet! Habet! Habet!"

A precious moment that! With a maddened beast, a swooning man and no arms save a pair of fists, hard as iron, made with a hand slender and supple like the finest tempered steel.

And while the panther fell back roaring, and before it could prepare for a new spring, Taurus Antinor had seized the swooning man. It was his turn to run now, for he had but a few seconds in which to save the life of his bitterest foe.

Straight to the walls of the arena did he run, and his voice was heard speaking loudly and commandingly:

"The arcade, man! Rouse thyself! The arcade! The rings in the columns! Quick!"

It needed the strength of a bullock to accomplish the deed: that, or the strength which comes from unbendable human will. The man, only half-conscious, returned to his senses by the force of that same will. The instinct of life was strongest in the end, and when Taurus Antinorleapt upon the ledge and hoisted Hortensius' body high up above his head, the young man, with the final effort borne of hope and built upon despair, reached up and caught one of the massive rings imbedded in the bases of the fluted columns.

For a few seconds he remained suspended, his body swinging against the marble wall, whilst the public cheered with an enthusiasm that knew no bounds. From below the praefect helped to push the feeble body up, then another jerk, a pull upwards, a push, and Hortensius Martius had found safety in one of the niches of the arcade.

"Hail to the praefect of Rome! Hail!" came in a continuous, thunderous roar from every corner of the arena, even as with a sudden bound the black panther had sprung upon Taurus Antinor, and, catching him unawares, had felled him to the ground.

"Well done, thou good and faithful servant."—St. Matthew xxv. 21.

A tumult amongst the people?

Aye! it was here now fully aroused. The praefect of Rome was popular with the plebs. His action in the arena had called forth unbounded enthusiasm. When he fell rolling into the sand, with the black panther snarling above him, his steel-like grip warding for the moment the brute's jaws from off his throat, the people broke out into regular frenzy.

"The praefect! the praefect!" they shouted.

Men climbed down along the gradients leaping over other men, determined to jump down twelve feet into the arena in order to rescue the praefect from the jaws of the ferocious beast.

But above in the imperial tribune the Cæsar sat snarling like the panther and rubbing his hands with glee. His trap had been over-successful, one by one the arch-traitors fell headlong into it. First Hortensius Martius, that young fool! What mattered if he had escaped from a ravenous panther? The claws of a vengeful Cæsar were sharper far than those of any beast of the desert.

And now Taurus Antinor! the praefect of Rome! the man of silence and of integrity! the idol of the people, the scorner of Cæsar's godhead. Vague rumour had reached Caligula of the praefect's strange sayings, his refusal to enter the temples and to sacrifice to the gods. People saidthat the Anglicanus worshipped one who claimed to be greater than Cæsar and all the deities of Rome.

Well, so be it! There he lay now in the dust, a huddled mass of man and beast, the sand of the arena reddened with his blood. Caligula screamed like the rest of his people, but his cry was:

"Habet! Habet! Habet!" And in a frenzy of rage and hate his thumb pointed downwards, downwards, as if it were a dagger which he could plunge into the Anglicanus' throat.

But the city guard were the first to break their bounds. Even whilst the imperial madman exulted and shrieked forth his murderous "Habet!" they had rushed to the rescue of their praefect.

The powerful grasp on the panther's throat was on the point of relaxing; the brute was digging its claws in the shoulders of the fallen man, and he, feeling faint with loss of blood, looked upon death as it stared down at him from the beast's golden eyes, and all that he was conscious of was the feeling that death was good.

When the city guard rushed to his rescue, and by dint of numbers and strength of steel tore the ferocious creature from the body of its prey, Taurus Antinor lay a while half conscious. He heard the cry of the people round him, he felt a shower of sweet-scented petals fall upon him from above, he heard the last dying roar of the panther and a scream of rage from the imperial tribune.

Then the din became deafening: the trampling of feet, the rushing hither and thither, the cries, the imprecations, and from beneath the tribunes in their distant prisons, the roar of caged beasts like the far-off rumbling of thunder.

Taurus Antinor raised himself on his knees. Both hisshoulders had been lacerated by the panther; he was bleeding from several wounds about the legs and arms, and his whole body felt bruised and stiff.

But he struggled to his feet, and now, leaning against a large tree trunk which had formed part of the setting of the scene, he tried to take in every detail of what was going on around him. There was, of course, a great deal of shouting and a general stampede in the tribunes of the plebs. In the midst of this shouting, which buzzed incessantly like the war of a great cataract, two cries resounded very distinctly above all the others.

Thousands of people were shouting:

"Hail to the praefect! Hail to the god of valour and of strength! Hail! Taurus Antinor, hail!"

Whilst others cried more dully, yet equally distinctly:

"Death to the tyrant! Death to the madman! Death to Cæsar! Death!"

That he himself was for the moment the object of enthusiasm of this irresponsible crowd, he could not doubt for an instant. That this same irresponsible enthusiasm was leading the crowd to treachery and rebellion was equally certain.

The city guard egged on by the people had forced open the heavy iron gates through which Hortensius Martius had passed a while ago, and which led up the marble steps straight to the imperial tribune.

Taurus Antinor looking up now saw the Cæsar standing pale and trembling, surrounded by his standard bearers, whose attitude seemed strangely irresolute. The Augustas were clinging together in obvious terror, their heads were pressed close to one another, and the jewels in their hair formed a curious shimmering mass of diamonds and rubies which caught the rays of the sun and threw back blindingsparks of prismatic colours. Dea Flavia was not near them. She was standing alone up against the dividing wall of the tribune, and leaning back against it, with eyes closed, and hand pressed against her heart.

All this did Taurus Antinor see, and also that Hortensius Martius, still deathly pale and trembling in every limb, had succeeded in making his way from the arcade where he had found safety, back to the patricians' tribune amongst his friends.

He was standing now in the midst of a compact group composed of those men who had been present two days ago at the banquet in Caius Nepos' house. They stood close to one another whispering eagerly amongst themselves. Hortensius Martius was obviously their chief centre of interest, and young Escanes held his hand concealed within the folds of his tunic.

And Taurus Antinor no longer paused to think. He had forgotten his lacerated shoulder and his bleeding limbs; even the horrors of the past quarter of an hour had faded from his mind. All that he saw was that murder and treachery were walking hand in hand, and that the murder of the insane Cæsar now would mean the death of thousands of innocent victims later on, that it would mean civil strife, and uncountable misery. And all that he heard was the voice of Him Who had bidden him to render unto Cæsar that which was Cæsar's, namely his allegiance, his fealty, his life.

The city guard loved him and knew his voice. He had no trouble in inducing the men to let him pass through their ranks and to mount the steps before them which led to the imperial tribune. They let him pass perhaps because they thought that their praefect would wish to take his revenge with his own hands. The gods themselves wouldhave placed a poisoned dagger in the hand of him who had been so ruthlessly exposed to a most horrible death.

And as Taurus Antinor's massive figure was seen to mount the steps, the audience broke into cheers.

"Hail Taurus Antinor! the god of valour and of strength!"

Whilst more ominous than before came that other cry: "Death to the tyrant! Death to the Cæsar! Death!"

And whilst the city guard followed closely on the footsteps of their praefect, and men among the crowd prepared for the inevitable fight which they foresaw, the women and those who were feeble and pacific waved fans and cloaks about and threw dead roses across the arena, till the whole place seemed like a great pageant of many-coloured flags, over which the midday sun had thrown its veil of gold.

When Taurus Antinor reached the topmost step Caligula caught sight of him, and the intensity of his rage was such that his cheeks turned livid and blotchy and hoarse inarticulate sounds escaped his panting throat.

Even at this same moment the group composed of Escanes and the others seemed to sway in a mass toward the tribune of the Cæsar. They appeared to be consulting Hortensius Martius who had nodded encouragingly. Young Escanes was in the very centre of the group now, his hand was still hidden in the folds of his tunic and the look in his face told Taurus Antinor all that there was to fear.

At his feet as he stepped into the tribune lay his own cloak which he had discarded when first his instinct had prompted him to run to Hortensius' aid. Now he picked it up. It was of dark-coloured stuff, unadorned with theusual insignia of dignity and rank. With it in his hand he ran quickly toward the Cæsar.

Caligula saw him coming towards him, his yellow teeth were chattering in his mouth, he stood there palsied with fear, a prey to a deadly feeling of hate and to one of abject terror.

Even as Taurus Antinor, with a quick gesture, threw his own cloak round the shoulders of the Cæsar and whispered hurriedly:

"Let your praetorian guard escort you quickly to your palace, gracious lord—your life is in danger from the people, and...."

"In danger at thy hands, thou infamous traitor," broke in Caligula with a maniacal yell of rage; "take this then, in remembrance of the Cæsar whom thou hast betrayed!"

And quick as lightning the madman drew a short poniard from beneath his robe, and, uttering a final snarl of satisfied hate and revenge, he plunged the dagger in Taurus Antinor's breast.

Then he snatched the cloak from him, and, wrapping it quickly over his head and shoulders, he called wildly to his guard and fled incontinently from the spot.

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