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 panther fell back roaring, and before it could prepare for a new spring, Taurus Antinor had seized the swooning man. It was his turn to run now, for he had but a few seconds in which to save the life of his bitterest foe.