"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 with
the 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 an agonised 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 in the 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 Antinor
leapt 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.