For two or three minutes I could make nothing of the conversation until it came to me that they were talking Latin.
I had taught eight straight semesters of Latin at Texas A&M, so it did not take me long to enter into the spirit of the thing.
“Get me out of here,” I demanded.
“He’s no Christian,” said the big man.
“Well, then he’s a northman,” said the dwarf.
“Northman or no northman, he’s no gladiator. What are we supposed to do?”
“Get a gladiator and put him in,” said the dwarf.
“All right, you run and get Glaucus, and ask him to come here.” The big man turned toward me. “Who put you in here?”
“I’m Danny West from Teague County, Texas, and if I don’t get out of here pretty quick and report to duty, my captain will make mincemeat out of me. Lemme out of here.”
“What kind of a gladiator are you?” he demanded.
“I’m no gladiator, I’m a soldier. And if you don’t listen to reason, the United States Army is going to be mighty peeved at me.”
“You’re a gladiator all right, you’re just scared. A taste of this iron will cure that. But what are you supposed to fight?”
“Fight? I’m not mad at anybody.”
“What d’ya fight? What d’ya fight with? Net and spear? Lions? What?” The big man waved his poker suggestively, and seeing that it had cooled during the argument, thrust it back into the glowing coals.
“I fight Germans,” I said.
“Yes, yes, what Roman won’t fight barbarians, but I mean in the arena. What d’ya fight in the arena?”
“The . . . the arena . . . ?”
A swelling roar hammered at the wooden door. And a flock of history lit in my lap like a stack of iron plates.
“Well, what d’ya fight?” he persisted.
“Mice,” I said. We were getting nowhere.
“What kind of a weapon is that? You can’t do anything against lions with a club. No, nor . . .” he scratched a leprous scalp at the problem.
A small, nervous individual, dripping sweat, came streaming up to the bars.
“Who is this? What is this? Oh, I’m ruined. I can never set up a good program unless some fool gums it up. Oh, why was I ever born? What made me ever get into this business? Arrangements, arrangements, arrangements . . . One minute it’s ‘Send the Christians in first.’ The next minute it’s ‘Make it Nubians and lions.’ By the guts of Jupiter, I’ll retire. That’s what I’ll do, I’ll retire.”
“We didn’t know he was in here,” said the big man. “I left Jocko here.”
“Bunglers! Fools! Idiots!” howled the dripping master of ceremonies. “The crowd is getting ugly. That last batch of Christians sat down in the middle of the arena and let the wild dogs run all over them, without lifting a hand. Oh, what poor fodder they send me these days! How can I put on a show—? Take him out of there. Take him out of there quick. The next act is about to go on. Get Glaucus. Oh, oh, oh, do something! Do something!”
But before they could do anything, there was a creak, and a groan, and then silence. The big wooden door had slid up and the white sand of the arena blinded me.
Behind me the master of ceremonies groaned piteously, “It’s too late now—it’s too late. Throw some lions at him and let’s get it over with.”
“Get out there, you,” said the man with the poker, which he used to good effect. I jumped!
“Now see here,” I said. But I had jumped so far that I stood outside the door and it dropped with a bang behind me.
I swear there must have been ten thousand people in the seats around the arena. The sun was beating down and the air was full of dust and yells. Boos and catcalls split through the lower, steadier roar of the crowd.
One section was stamping its feet and shouting in time. “Bring on the Nubians! We want the Nubians! Bring on the Nubians!” I felt a little bit insulted that they would prefer Nubians to me. But they didn’t know me, after all.
There were pools of blood indifferently spread with white sand all around me. The once-white palisades which lifted fourteen feet from the ground to the first boxes were splattered with dried gore. The stench of the place was horrible. Death—rotten meat—and unwashed humanity. I had stage fright.
You couldn’t have heard an artillery barrage in the din that rocked the old place. I was trying feebly to collect my wits and find a way out of all this. I had got well into the realization that something terrible indeed had happened to me, when the wooden gates at the far end from me opened—out bounded the biggest lion I ever laid my eyes on this side of the Galveston Zoo.
This lion had something on his mind. His eyes were so red they practically dripped blood. He was so thin that you could see light straight through the middle of him. His tail was ten feet long, or longer, and it was lashing from side to side until you could almost hear it swish. Apparently he was looking for something.
Shortly he found it. Me! I felt like saying, “Now wait a minute, fellows, let’s sit down right where we are and think this whole thing over. I’m sure we can talk the matter into a reasonable solution.”
But the crowd was in a hurry! And the lion was in a hurry! And the riot gun was strapped across my back. I had to do something and do it quick—so I did it!
I dropped on one knee, pried loose the gun, threw a shell under the hammer and took aim.
Now, shooting lions is not my favorite pastime. I had had a little experience with quail, and one small experience with a deer that got away, but not lions. And the front sight of that gun was weaving around like it was trying to write my obituary.
The lion got within ten feet, crouched down till his belly touched the sand, and then jumped!
The lion got within ten feet, crouched down till his belly touched the sand, and then jumped!
There was a blast against my shoulder that knocked me about two feet! When I picked myself up the lion was lying there, all four feet reaching for clouds and clawing.
Though I had been told that hunters were usually pretty proud of their first kill, I never had time to examine this one. They let twelve more lions in through the second door.
The newcomers wasted no time. They saw the dying lion—saw me—and began to whet their appetites at ninety miles an hour. They crossed that arena, the whole twelve of them, like they’d just heard chow call.
I looked to the blunderbuss. They had not even given us instructions as to how to fire the thing, for it was an English gun and they probably didn’t know themselves. Like a shotgun it fired paper shells and I was afraid these had swollen in the rain. It fired a mass of pellets something bigger than buckshot and with a very wide spread. Though a few of them would discourage rioters, what did these lions know about the Riot Act?
I watched them sweep down on me. Did you ever see a lion run? Well, mister, they don’t run at all, they bound sideways off the ground like rubber balls. A jeep on a Roman road would make a better target.
I put that old museum piece of a shotgun on single and set myself down to knock off the leaders before the main crowd arrived.
Their stink got there before they did. A lion smells like a combination of a slaughterhouse, a choice privy and a dead horse in August. The odor of it, added to my stage fright, was enough to make me lose my boots.
The old gun belted me in the shoulder. The leader plowed sand for fifteen feet. The top of his head was gone! Clean as if he’d patronized an army barbershop.
The face of the next one just plain disappeared.
The third did five forward somersaults and ended up with his tail pointing at me accusatively. Then came the main herd.
I slipped the gun to full automatic and let them have it! There were only eleven shells to go, but they sure were plenty. There was lion meat stacked aroun
d there, until it looked as though I had decided to build a castle of the stuff. I remembered how they’d used to feed poor old horses to the lions at the Galveston Zoo. I felt pretty satisfied, let me tell you.
I had a breather then. I wiped the smoke out of my eyes and looked around me. I sure thought I’d shown the locals a thing or two. A whiff of the crowd hit me and it stunk almost as bad as the lions. The masses of streamers and faces went up from me on all sides like ranges of mountains. The crowd was quiet and I fully expected them to be something more than curious. However, it evidently took a great deal to shake a Roman mob.
I looked at one side where the President of the Games, the Emperor, for all I knew, and two royal ladies gazed on with indifferent contempt.
They were wearing gold laurel leaves inset with jewels. The box looked like Christmas. On their right sat what I took to be the vestal virgins, white-hooded and grim. Most of them, startlingly enough, were quite old. Above me, out of the quiet, drifted the voice of a young buck talking to his girl.
“Like Nero, isn’t it, to produce magic in the arena. No taste, I’ve always said, no taste whatever. This fellow is simply one of those wizards from Assyria that we’ve heard about lately. Mass hypnotism, you know. There were no lions at all. We merely suppose that they are dead. The thing is really quite simple.”
“Gee, Marius,” said the girl, “you know everything, don’t you?”
The one section of the stands which had been chanting before had now recovered from its surprise and began to demand blood. “We want Numidians. We want Numidians. We want Numidians,” they chanted, stamping their feet in time.
“Now take earlier this morning,” said young Marius, in a bored tone, “those elephants squashing the Christians, now there’s what I call a spectacle. And that one elephant that picked up the woman and knocked her head off against the wall. Now that was interesting. But this sort of thing, mere wizardry, chicanery . . .”
The crowd went back to buying nuts and fruit off the vendors. Some other parts of the crowd began to take up the Numidian chant.
I was trying hard to recall how these games were conducted. I finally remembered that after one had killed his meat or his man, he was supposed to go before the President’s box and ask for the thumbs up or thumbs down sign. So, I began walking toward the President’s box.
I was getting my breath back by now, for it seemed to me that the worst was over. The crowd was becoming quite impatient with the delay and, as the master of ceremonies had said, was obviously in an ugly mood. Boos, hisses, catcalls and an occasional hunk of rotten fruit began to descend into the arena.
“We want action,” bawled a tubby man above the palisades. “We came here to see a spectacle. We want action. We want blood!”
Others in the crowd began to take up his chant. Soon the ground under my feet was shivering with it. I never did get close to the President’s box. For, about halfway en route, the tone of the crowd changed so quickly and to such a pitch of enthusiasm that I knew I was in for more.
The master of ceremonies was evidently on his toes. I turned around quickly. A gate was opening and two net-and-trident men sped out into the arena, holding up their weapons for acclaim. They were evidently quite popular, for they were greeted with cheering.
They wasted little time, for a fast victory was what was wanted. They closed in. One circled wide until he had gained a distance on my left. The other held his ground on my right. Then they rushed me!
I didn’t like to do what I did. But I dropped to one knee and leveled on the first one.
BOWIE!
He flew apart in mid-rush.
I swiveled around and found the other one within ten feet of me. Startled by the fate of his friend, he drew and then pitched his trident at me. Its middle prong hit my helmet with a clang, and the weapon went zooming off in a new direction.
He spread and cast the net before I could catch him in my sights. The thing settled over me like a thousand spider webs.
He rushed to retrieve his trident and had picked it up when—
He rushed to retrieve his trident and had picked it up when—
BOWIE!
He went to join his companion on the banks of the Styx.
“Boo!” yelled the crowd. “Boo! Magic! Fake!”
Nevertheless, I approached the President’s box again. I stood beneath it. If this was Nero, then I had not looked to find the handsome young fellow that he was. A dissolute mouth was all that marred his face. I took the woman on his right to be his mother and sweetheart, Agrippina.
“Boo! Fake!” screamed the crowd.
Nero looked over the edge of his box at me. Ceremoniously he raised his right hand. And then, with a savage gesture, struck his thumb down.
This appeared very silly to me since there was no other combatant in the arena, and I certainly was not flat on my back awaiting a coup.
The crowd echoed the sentiment and the master of ceremonies must have been looking, for within the space of a minute, three doors opened and at least seventy-five Numidians dashed with a war cry into the arena.
Each one of them looked about fifteen feet tall, shiny black, wearing ostrich plumes and carrying assegais. They danced, and bounded, and waved their weapons and leather shields. They drew up into a formation approaching a phalanx and, after pausing long enough to be acclaimed, started for me.
I turned sideways and yelled at Nero, “Hey, you, this isn’t fair!” Nero grinned ghoulishly at me. I turned back and looked at the Numidians.
I was scared. My blood clogged my veins. Maybe it was the war cry, maybe it was the shiny black bodies, maybe it was the savage teeth. But the one place where I wanted to be at that minute was back in Teague County, Texas, eating some of my mother’s corn bread.
I had reloaded the riot gun in front of the President’s box, but I knew better than to try to spray that mob.
Something was banging against my hip. I recalled the tear gas grenades. I unhooked one and pulled its pin. I counted to three and chucked it. It burst immediately before the phalanx and sprayed dots of white smoke in all directions. The Numidians vanished in a cloud of it.
All of a sudden I felt like laughing. Maybe it was hysteria, but those black boys had looked so gay and so brave dancing in, that the contrast was very funny. They came out of that cloud in the formation of scattered rabbits. They were doubling up, and wailing, and clawing at their eyes. They were calling out the names of their various gods and rolling on the ground.
Their shields and spears were thrown in all directions. However, the crowd was not amused.
“Boo! Fake!” they jeered.
But the Numidians didn’t jeer. They went over to the edge and found places to sit down, or they bumped into each other, or they tried to climb up the palisades. It came to me that they were more scared than hurt.
“Charge me, will you?” I yelled at ’em. Then I went out to pick me up a cluster of ostrich plumes, hoping that this act would mollify the crowd.
During this operation it seemed to me suddenly that I was acting very foolishly. Here I had all the weapons that they didn’t have, obsolete as I considered them, and all I needed to do was to blast the lock on one of those doors and walk out of the place.
There was little enjoyment in the arena for me. Sooner or later somebody was going to get hurt.
I threw down the ostrich plumes and rushed toward one of the doors. But there the Roman guards threw the dice for me and got “crap.”
That door came open with a bang! And there I was, looking down the trunk of the biggest Indian elephant that was ever born. If P. T. Barnum had seen that elephant, he would have gone crazy and billed him all over the world. That elephant was so huge he could have used the Empire State Building for a toothpick. What made him look all the more horrible, they had thrust burning sticks and barbs under
his skin until he looked like a porcupine.
Somebody—probably my old friend—was jabbing him with a red hot poker from behind. And the elephant came out of there!
He saw me!
He was delighted!
He reared up until there was an eclipse of the sun. He aimed two feet twice as big as kettledrums right at my head.
His tusks gleamed. His teeth gleamed. His eyes gleamed. And froth sprayed out of his mouth like a flame-thrower.
He saw me!
He was delighted!
He reared up until there was an eclipse of the sun....
His tusks gleamed. His teeth gleamed. His eyes gleamed.
Hurrahs and hurrays bounded around that arena from a delighted crowd.
I had brought up so short at the sight of this world-ender that I sat down, directly under him. The butt of the riot gun hit alongside of me. My finger threw it on full automatic and I let him have the entire chamber as fast as I could shoot.
Pieces of elephant meat flew all over the arena, the palisades and me. When he hit earth again his trunk slammed me sideways about thirty feet. I picked myself up. But there was no more fight left in that elephant.
These people were getting too rough to suit my fancy and once more I started to get out of there. A scream of surprise and delight from the crowd made me turn again.
A second elephant, twice as big as the first one, had been let into the arena! He was bearing down on me like a combination of the Graf Zeppelin and a General Sherman tank. My error was that I was the only one in motion in that arena. He ran over about five Numidians getting to me.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals will probably never hear about this, but my riot gun was empty. There was nothing else I could do.
I unhooked a second gas grenade from my belt and pulled the pin. When he was within thirty feet of me I heaved it into his open mouth.
BOWIE!
That elephant’s head like to have torn off. He couldn’t stop because he was going too fast. His front legs folded up and his hind end came on over them. I jumped sideways just in time to miss him. He did two complete somersaults and wound up with a crash against the boards right underneath Nero’s box.