The public--realising this--waxed impatient. The novel spectacle did not, after all, promise to be to its liking. The panther would make but a sorry show if it was not given a helpless victim or two to devour.
Murmurs of dissatisfaction rose from every side as the work proceeded, and anon when all round the walls of the arena, the twelve ladders of safety were firmly fixed, seeming mutely to deride the excitement of the people, the murmur broke into angry cries.
But Caligula did not seem to heed either the murmur or those loud expressions of discontent which, at other times, would probably have maddened him with rage. He had watched the preparations with eager interest and had himself once or twice shouted directions to the workmen.
Now, when everything appeared complete, he turned to the tribune which was next to his own, and his small bloodshot eyes wandered over the a.s.sembly of patricians, of knights and of senators who were seated there.
He called my lord Hortensius Martius to him and appeared to be pointing out to him the advantages of the rope-ladders with obvious pride in the ingenuity of the device. Young Escanes too was bidden to admire the contrivance, which--it soon became evident--was the invention of the Caesar himself.
The public--still feeling dissatisfied--watched desultorily for a while the doings in the imperial tribune. Then general interest was once more aroused, when the workmen--slaves and legionaries--having finished their preparations, hurried helter-skelter out of the arena.
The sliding doors of the panther"s cage were being slowly drawn away.
For a few seconds the powerful brute remained wary, silent and cowering, then with one mighty, savage snarl it bounded into the arena.
Supple, graceful and splendid it walked round in solemn majesty, its flat head kept low to the ground, its sinuous body curving and winding as it walked, like that of a snake.
The public watched it, fascinated by the perfect grace of its movements and by the cruel ferocity of its tiny eyes.
Now at the eastern end of the Amphitheatre a small iron gate slowly swung upon its hinges, and in the dark recess beyond it a couple of men appeared. For a moment they stood there immovable, a closely huddled ma.s.s, shoulder to shoulder, with round open eyes dilated with fear and a cry of nameless terror still hovering unuttered on their lips.
They were hugely built men, with ma.s.sive torso and legs bare, and tow-coloured hair brought straight up to the crown of the head and knotted there with a black band.
There was much shouting from the recess whence they had emerged, and anon some vigorous prodding and pushing from behind. But they dug their bare feet into the sand, refusing to move; arm against arm they made of themselves a wall which fear of death kept rigid and horror made unbreakable.
The public greeted them with mock applause. In them they had quickly recognised the German barbarians whom the Caesar had brought back from his last expedition as prisoners of war; in truth they were hardened malefactors who had been offered a chance of life in exchange for the pitiable masquerade. But this the public did not know. To the two hundred thousand holiday-makers, craning their necks to see the miserable wretches, they were but the living proofs of the Caesar"s prowess in the field. With ironical cheers they were bidden to advance, even whilst at no great distance from them the black panther sitting on its haunches was surveying them with lazy curiosity, licking its mighty jaws.
Then the public grew impatient, and from the recess behind the two men persuasion became more vigorous. Through the darkness behind the gates there appeared the red glow of a brazier, there was a quick hissing sound, an awful double howl of pain and the smell of burnt flesh filled the air. The next moment the two men fell scrambling forward into the arena, and the iron gate closed behind them with a thud.
CHAPTER XIX
"Thou art become guilty in the blood that thou hast shed."--EZEKIEL XXII. 4.
The hunter and the hunted! the lithe supple sinewy creature crawling with belly almost touching the ground and stealthy steps that made no sound on the sand of the arena.
Wary and silent the black beast crawled, now hiding amidst the scrubby gra.s.s, now bounding over trees and stream as if playing with herself, with her own desire for a taste of human blood.
At first terror had kept the two men rooted to the spot, paralysed, and with feet deeply imbedded in the sand. Only their eyes seemed alive, roaming along the wall, all round to where on either side the silken ladders made vivid crimson streaks on the white smoothness of the marble.
The panther waiting, watched them till they moved. The public, entranced, scarcely dared to draw breath.
Then came a sudden cry from thousands of throats; the two men, as if driven by a sudden sense of approaching death, had made a quick desperate rush, one to the right the other to the left, towards the crimson silk which meant safety to them.
But the panther was on guard and quicker twice than they. It seemed as if the brute had divined exactly where lay escape for its prey. It was guarding both sides of the arena at once, bounding from left to right, and back from right to left with giant leaps, soundless and swift.
The men paused again, because it seemed that when they were still, the panther too lay still and watched.
There was another lull, and from the imperial tribune above Dea Flavia watched the horrible spectacle, and Taurus Antinor drank into his soul the beauty of her eyes as they watched--fascinated--every movement of the sleek black panther, and of those fair-skinned giants trying to escape from death; she watched the stealthy approach of the beast toward its prey; she watched, motionless and still, the while great beads of perspiration matted the fair curls on her brow.
And to the man who loved her, and who saw her thus watching the horrible spectacle which must have made her feel sick and faint, to him it seemed as if in her mind the hideous sight meant something more than just the brutal display of cruelty which was a familiar one enough in Rome.
It seemed as if to her some hidden meaning lay in this teasing of a ferocious brute, and in this apparent clemency in allowing the victims a chance of escape, for every now and then she turned as if involuntarily toward the Caesar, and a quick glance of understanding seemed to pa.s.s between her and that inhuman monster.
Taurus Antinor, with his gaze fixed upon her every movement, wondered what all that could mean.
After a quarter of an hour of tense excitement, of alternate cries of horror and screams of delight, the two men had, by dint of cunning and agility, succeeded in evading the panther. They were safe within the protecting niches; the panther down below was roaring with baffled rage, and the public clapped and cheered vociferously.
Two more men were thrust into the arena, dressed in the same way as the others, pushed forward like the others to the accompaniment of a brazier"s glow and the smell of burnt flesh.
The panther, more wary this time, did not allow both men to escape. Yet they had made a clever dash for safety; one of them was already swinging himself aloft, but the other had missed his footing once, when he jumped upon the ledge; he regained it and seized the swinging end of the ladder, but the panther, with a bound, had reached him and caught his foot in its jaws.
That hideous noise--the scrunching of a human bone--was drowned in tumultuous applause as the miserable wretch with the maimed and bleeding leg, but with that almighty instinct for life at any cost, toiled mangled and bleeding up that ladder less crimson than the trail which he left in his wake.
Dea Flavia"s head fell forward on the cushion. But she fought against the swoon. The ironical laughter of the Augustas round her quickly brought her to herself.
"The heat is overpowering," she said calmly in reply to a coa.r.s.e comment from the Caesar.
CHAPTER XX
"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 l.u.s.t, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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.