s 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 coarse 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 ir