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 pan