a most intolerable smell of sour
slime with them. There, on the edge of the amphitheatre, each for the
first time appeared to become aware of the other's presence--the
footsteps stopped dead. I could hear the water dripping from the fur of
those giant brutes amongst the shadows and the deep breathing of the
one nearest me, a scanty ten paces off, but not another sound in the
stillness.

Minute after minute passed, yet neither moved. A half-hour grew to a
full hour, and that hour lengthened amid the keenest tension till my
ears ached with listening, and my eyes were sore with straining into
the blackness. At last I began to wonder whether those earth-shaking
beasts had not been an evil dream, and was just venturing to stretch
out a cramped leg, and rally myself upon my cowardice, when, without
warning, at my elbow rose the most ear-piercing scream of rage that
ever came from a living throat. There was a sweeping rush in the
darkness which I could feel but not see, and with a shock the two
gladiators met in the midst of the arena. Over and over they went
screaming and struggling, and slipping and plunging. I could hear them
tearing at each other, and the sharp cries of pain, first one and then
another gave as claw or tooth got home, and all the time, though the
ground was quaking under their struggles and the air full of horrible
uproar, not a thing was to be seen. I did not even know what manner of
beasts they were who rocked and rolled and tore at each other's
throats, but I heard their teeth snapping, and their fierce breath in
the pauses of the struggle, and could but wait in a huddle amongst the
roots until it was over. To and fro they went, now at the far side of
the dark clearing, now so close that hot drops of blood from their jaws
fell on my face like rain in the darkness. It seemed as though the
fight would never end, but presently there was more of worrying in it
and less of snapping; it was clear one or the other had had enough and
as I marked this those black shadows came gasping and struggling
towards me. There was a sudden sharp cry, a desperate final
tussle--before which strong trees snapped and bushes were flattened out
like grass, not twenty yards away--and then for a minute all was silent.

One of them had killed, and as I sat rooted to the spot I was forced to
listen while his enemy tore him up and ate him. Many a banquet have I
been at, but never an uglier one than that. I sat in the darkne