“There are seats right over your head. Calaman’s throne is immediately above where you are standing. The walls are thick, but it might chance that he would hear you if you raised your voice even for a word or two.”
Saying this, Lord Slava gripped the hands of each of the white men, smiled, and vanished by the way they had come.
“Not a bad fellow—for a lord,” observed Chick. “But I didn’t expect to find such things in an out-of-the-way corner of India like this. You can’t lose ’em. They will wear titles, no matter where you go.”
“I wonder who gave him his title, anyhow?” mused Patsy. “There doesn’t seem to be anybody in this country higher than old Calaman, and I don’t think much of him. Gee! Jai Singh!” he went on, addressing the Hindu. “Why don’t you give yourself a rest from polishing that old spear of yours? It’s got me all dazzled as it is! It shines like an icicle under an electric light.”
“It may lose its shine when I use it up there,” answered Jai Singh, with a grim smile, as he nodded toward the opening of the amphitheater. “I polish only when it is not used, Sahib Patsy.”
“That’s so, too,” murmured Patsy to himself. “When there’s real action, you don’t see him primping either his spear or himself.”
The festival in the arena began, and the thousands of spectators who had gathered settled down to enjoy the exhibition.
The first victim was a slouching, hangdog-looking man, who, if his appearance was a criterion of his character, ought never to have been out of jail. He was one of the malefactors who, according to Lord Slava, were to be the first victims of the Golden Scarab.
He was shoved out of one of the gateways, and as he stood, shivering, on the sandy floor of the great arena, with not a look or word of mercy for him anywhere, he whimpered like a beaten hound.
Then he limped farther into the arena, and gazed about, as if to see where the enemy that he knew must be at hand was coming from.