"He is not there," said the man.
The girl turned quickly toward the speaker. "Fastus!" she exclaimed. "How do you know that he is not there?"
"It is by my order," replied the prince.
"He is dead," cried Dilecta. "You have had him killed."
"No," denied Fastus, "he is safe in his cell."
"What is to become of him?" asked the girl.
"His fate lies in your hands," replied Fastus. "Give him up and promise to become the wife of Fastus and I will see that he is not forced to appear in the arena."
"He would not have it so," said the girl.
Fastus shrugged. "As you will," he said, "but remember that his life is in your hands."
"With sword, or dagger, or pike he has no equal," said the girl, proudly. "If he were entered in the contest, he would be victorious."
"Caesar has been known to pit unarmed men against lions," Fastus reminded her, tauntingly. "Of what avail then is prowess with any weapon?"
"That would be murder," said Dilecta.
"A harsh term to apply to an act of Caesar," returned Fastus, menacingly.
"I speak my mind," said the girl; "Caesar or no Caesar. It would be a cowardly and contemptible act, but I doubt not that either Caesar or his son is capable of even worse." Her voice trembled with scathing contempt.
With a crooked smile upon his lips, Fastus arose. "It is not a matter to be determined without thought," he said, "and your answer concerns not Maximus Praeclarus alone, nor you, nor me."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"There are Dion Splendidus and your mother, and Festivitas, the mother of Praeclarus!" And with this warning he turned and left the loge.
The games progressed amid the din of trumpets, the crash of arms, the growling of beasts, and the murmuring of the great audience that sometimes rose to wild acclaim or deep-throated, menacing disapproval. Beneath fluttering banners and waving scarves the cruel, terrible thousand-eyed thing that is a crowd looked down upon the blood and suffering of its fellow men, munching sweetmeats while a victim died and cracking coarse jokes as slaves dragged the body from the arena and raked clean sand over crimsoned spots.
Sublatus had worked long and carefully with the prefect in charge of the games that the resultant program might afford the greatest possible entertainment for Caesar and the populace, thus winning for the Emperor a certain popularity that his own personality did not command.
Always the most popular events were those in which men of the patrician class participated, and so he counted much upon Cassius Hasta and Caecilius Metellus, but of even greater value for his purpose was the giant white barbarian, who already had captured the imagination of the people because of his exploits.
Wishing to utilize Tarzan in as many events as possible, S u hiatus knew that it would be necessary to reserve the more dangerous ones for the latter part of the week, and so upon the first afternoon of the games Tarzan found himself thrust into the arena, unarmed, in company with a burly murderer, whom the master of the games had clothed in loincloth and leopard skin similar to Tarzan.
A guard escorted them across the arena and halted them in the sand below the Emperor, where the master of the games announced that these two would fight with bare hands in any way that they saw fit and that he who remained alive or alone in the arena at the end of the combat would be considered victorious.
"The gate to the dungeons will be left open," he said, "and if either contestant gets enough he may quit the arena, but whoever does so forfeits the contest to the other."
The crowd booed. It was not to see such tame exhibitions as this that they had come to the Colosseum. They wanted blood. They wanted thrills, but they waited, for perhaps this contest might afford comedy—that they enjoyed, too. If one greatly outclassed the other, it would be amusing to see the weaker seek escape. They cheered Tarzan and they cheered the low-browed murderer. They shouted insults at the noble patrician who was master of the games, for they knew the safety and irresponsibility of numbers.
As the word was given the contestants to engage one another Tarzan turned to face the low-browed, hulking brute against whom he had been pitted and he saw that some one had been at pains to select a worthy antagonist for him. The man was somewhat shorter than Tarzan, but great, hard muscles bulged beneath his brown hide, bulking so thick across his back and shoulders as almost to suggest deformity. His long arms hung almost to his knees, and his thick, gnarled legs suggested a man of bronze upon a pedestal of granite. The fellow circled Tarzan, looking for an opening. He scowled ferociously as though to frighten his adversary.
"There is the gate, barbarian," he cried in a low voice, pointing to the far end of the arena. "Escape while you are yet alive."
The crowd roared in approbation. It enjoyed glorious sallies such as these. "I shall tear you limb from limb," shouted the murderer, and again the crowd applauded.
"I am here," said Tarzan, calmly.
"Flee!" screamed the murderer, and lowering his head he charged like an angry bull.
The ape-man sprang into the air and came down upon his antagonist, and what happened happened so quickly that no one there, other than Tarzan, knew how it had been accomplished; only he knew that he clamped a reverse head-lock upon the murderer.
What the crowd saw was the hulking figure hurtling to a hard fall. They saw him lying half-stunned upon the sand, while the giant barbarian stood with folded arms looking down upon him.
The fickle crowd rose from its benches, shrieking with delight. "Habet! Habet!" they cried, and thousands of closed fists were outstretched with the thumbs pointing downward, but Tarzan only stood there waiting, as the murderer, shaking his head to clear his brain, crawled slowly to his feet.
The fellow looked about him half-bewildered and then his eyes found Tarzan and with a growl of rage he charged again. Again the terrible hold was clamped upon him, and again he was hurled heavily to the floor of the arena.
The crowd screamed with delight. Every thumb in the Colosseum was pointed downward. They wanted Tarzan to kill his adversary. The ape-man looked up into Caesar's loge, where sat the master of the games with Sublatus.
"Is not this enough?" he demanded, pointing at the prostrate figure of the stunned gladiator.
The prefect waved a hand in an all-including gesture which took in the audience. "They demand his death," he said. "While he remains alive in the arena, you are not the victor."
"Does Caesar require that I kill this defenseless man?" demanded Tarzan, looking straight into the face of Sublatus.
"You have heard the noble prefect," replied the Emperor, haughtily.
"Good," said Tarzan. "The rules of the contest shall be fulfilled." He stooped and seized the unconscious form of his antagonist and raised it above his head. "Thus I carried your Emperor from his throne-room to the avenue!" he shouted to the audience.
Screams of delight measured the appreciation of the populace, while Caesar went white and red in anger and mortification. He half rose from his seat, but what he contemplated was never fulfilled, for at that instant Tarzan swung the body of the murderer downward and back like a huge pendulum and then upward with a mighty surge, hurling it over the arena wall, full into the loge of Sublatus, where it struck Caesar, knocking him to the floor.
"I am alive and alone in the arena," shouted Tarzan, turning to the people, "and by the terms of the contest I am victor," and not even Caesar dared question the decision that was voiced by the shrieking, screaming, applauding multitude.
CHAPTER 15