"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.
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.