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.