The Complete Tarzan Collection

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  The participants were formed in a solid phalanx facing Sublatus, where they were addressed by the Emperor, freedom and reward being promised the victors; and then, sullen and lowering, they were herded back to their dungeons and cages.

  Dilecta's eyes scanned the faces of the contestants as they stood in solid rank before the loge of Caesar, but nowhere among them could she discover Maximus Praeclarus. Breathless and tense, with fearful apprehension, she leaned forward in her seat across the top of the arena wall as a man entered the loge from behind and sat upon the bench beside her.

  "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 ques
tion the decision that was voiced by the shrieking, screaming, applauding multitude.

  CHAPTER 15

  BLOODY days followed restless nights in comfortless cells, where lice and rats joined forces to banish rest. When the games began there had been twelve inmates in the cell occupied by Tarzan, but now three empty rings dangled against the stone wall, and each day they wondered whose turn was next.

  The others did not reproach Tarzan because of his failure to free them, since they had never taken his optimism seriously. They could not conceive of contestants escaping from the arena during the games. It simply was not done and that was all that there was to it. It never had been done, and it never would be.

  "We know you meant well," said Praeclarus, "but we knew better than you."

  "The conditions have not been right, as yet," said Tarzan, "but if what I have been told of the games is true, the time will come."

  "What time could be propitious," asked Hasta, "while more than half of Caesar's legionaries packed the Colosseum?"

  "There should be a time," Tarzan reminded him, "when all the victorious contestants are in the arena together. Then we shall rush Caesar's loge and drag him into the arena. With Sublatus as a hostage we may demand a hearing and get it. I venture to say that they will give us our liberty in return for Caesar."

  "But how can we enter Caesar's loge?" demanded Metellus.

  "In an instant we may form steps with living men stooping, while others step upon their backs as soldiers scale a wall. Perhaps some of us will be killed, but enough will succeed to seize Caesar and drag him to the sands."

  "I wish you luck," said Praeclarus, "and, by Jupiter, I believe that you will succeed. I only wish that I might be with you."

  "You will not accompany us?" demanded Tarzan.

  "How can I? I shall be locked in this cell. Is it not evident that they do not intend to enter me in the contests? They are reserving for me some other fate. The jailer has told me that my name appears in no event."

  "But we must find a way to take you with us," said Tarzan.

  "There is no way," said Praeclarus, shaking his head, sadly.

  "Wait," said Tarzan. "You commanded the Colosseum guards, did you not?"

  "Yes," replied Praeclarus.

  "And you had the keys to the cells?" asked the ape-man.

  "Yes," replied Praeclarus, "and to the manacles as well."

  "Where are they?" asked Tarzan. "But no, that will not do. They must have taken them from you when they arrested you."

  "No, they did not," said Praeclarus. "As a matter of fact, I did not have them with me when I dressed for the banquet that night. I left them in my room."

  "But perhaps they sent for them?"

  "Yes, they sent for them, but they did not find them. The jailer asked me about them the day after I was arrested, but I told him that the soldiers took them from me. I told him that because I had hidden them in a secret place where I keep many valuables. I knew that if I had told them where they were they would take not only the keys, but my valuables as well."

  "Good!" exclaimed the ape-man. "With the keys our problem is solved."

  "But how are you going to get them?" demanded Praeclarus, with a rueful smile.

  "I do not know," said Tarzan. "All I know is that we must have the keys."

  "We know, too, that we should have our liberty," said Hasta, "but knowing it does not make us free."

  Their conversation was interrupted by the approach of soldiers along the corridor. Presently a detachment of the palace guard halted outside their cell. The jailer unlocked the door and a man entered with two torch-bearers behind him. It was Fastus.

  He looked around the cell. "Where is Praeclarus?" he demanded, and then, "Ah, there you are!"

  Praeclarus did not reply.

  "Stand up, slave!" ordered Fastus, arrogantly. "Stand up, all of you. How dare you sit in the presence of a Caesar!" he exclaimed.

  "Swine is a better title for such as you," taunted Praeclarus.

  "Drag them up! Beat them with your pikes!" cried Fastus to the soldiers outside the doorway.

  The command of the Colosseum guard, who stood just behind Fastus, blocked the doorway, "Stand back," he said to the legionaries. "No one gives orders here except Caesar and myself, and you are not Caesar yet, Fastus."

  "I shall be one day," snapped the prince, "and it will be a sad day for you."

  "It will be a sad day for all Castra Sanguinarius," replied the officer. "You said that you wished to speak to Praeclarus? Say what you have to say and be gone. Not even Caesar's son may interfere with my charges."

  Fastus trembled with anger, but he knew that he was powerless. The commander of the guard spoke with the authority of the Emperor, whom he represented. He turned upon Praeclarus.

  "I came to invite my good friend, Maximus Praeclarus, to my wedding," he announced, with a sneer. He waited, but Praeclarus made no reply. "You do not seem duly impressed, Praeclarus," continued the prince. "You do not ask who is to be the happy bride. Do you not wish to know who will be the next Empress in Castra Sanguinarius, even though you may not live to see her upon the throne beside Caesar?"

  The heart of Maximus Praeclarus stood still, for now he knew why Fastus had come to the dungeon-cell, but he gave no sign of what was passing within his breast, but remained seated in silence upon the hard floor, his back against the cold wall.

  "You do not ask me whom I am to wed, nor when," continued Fastus, "but I shall tell you. You should be interested. Dilecta, the daughter of Dion Splendidus, will have none of a traitor and a felon. She aspires to share the purple with a Caesar. In the evening following the last day of the games Dilecta and Fastus are to be married in the throne-room of the palace."

  Gloating, Fastus waited to know the result of his announcement, but if he had looked to surprise Maximus Praeclarus into an exhibition of chagrin he failed, for the young patrician ignored him so completely that Fastus might not have been in the cell at all for all the attention that the other paid to him.

  Maximus Praeclarus turned and spoke casually to Metellus and the quiet affront aroused the mounting anger of Fastus to such an extent that he lost what little control he had of himself. Stepping quickly forward, he stooped and slapped Praeclarus in the face and then spat upon him, but in doing so he had come too close to Tarzan and the ape-man reached out and seized him by the ankle, dragging him to the floor.

  Fastus screamed a command to his soldiers. He sought to draw his dagger or his sword, but Tarzan took them from him and hurled the prince into the arms of the legionaries, who had rushed past the commander of the Colosseum guard and entered the cell.

  "Get out now, Fastus," said the latter. "You have caused enough trouble here already."

  "I shall get you for this," hissed the prince, "all of you," and he swept the inmates of the cell with an angry, menacing glance.

  Long after they had gone, Cassius Hasta continued to chuckle. "Caesar!" he exclaimed. "Swine!"

  As the prisoners discussed the discomfiture of Fastus and sought to prophesy what might come of it, they saw a wavering light reflected from afar in the corridor before their cell.

  "We are to have more guests," said Metellus.

  "Perhaps Fastus is returning to spit on Tarzan," suggested Cassius Hasta, and they all laughed.

  The light was advancing along the corridor, but it was not accompanied by the tramp of soldiers' feet.

  "Whoever comes comes silently and alone," said Maximus Praeclarus.

  "Then it is not Fastus," said Hasta.

  "But it might be an assassin sent by him," suggested Praeclarus.

  "We shall be ready for him," said Tarzan.

  A moment later there appeared beyond the grating of the cell door the commander of the Colosseum guards, who had accompanied Fastus and who had stood between the prince and the prisoner.

  "Appius Applosus!" exclaimed Maximus Praeclarus. "He is no assassin, my friends."

  "I am not the assassin of your body, Praeclarus
," said Applosus, "but I am indeed the assassin of your happiness."

  "What do you mean, my friend?" demanded Praeclarus.

  "In his anger Fastus told me more than he told you."

  "He told you what?" asked Praeclarus.

  "He told me that Dilecta had consented to become his wife only in the hope of saving her father and mother and you, Praeclarus, and your mother, Festivitas."

  "To call him swine is to insult the swine," said Praeclarus. "Take word to her, Applosus, that I would rather die than to see her wed to Fastus."

  "She knows that, my friend," said the officer, "but she thinks also of her father and her mother and yours."

  Praeclarus's chin dropped upon his chest. "I had forgotten that," he moaned. "Oh, there must be some way to stop it."

  "He is the son of Caesar," Applosus reminded him, "and the time is short."

  "I know it! I know it!" cried Praeclarus, "but it is too hideous. It cannot be."

  "This officer is your friend, Praeclarus?" asked Tarzan, indicating Appius Applosus.

  "Yes," said Praeclarus.

  "You would trust him fully?" demanded the ape-man.

  "With my life and my honor," said Praeclarus.

  "Tell him where your keys are and let him fetch them," said the ape-man.

  Praeclarus brightened instantly. "I had not thought of that," he cried, "but no, his life would be in jeopardy."

  "It already is," said Applosus. "Fastus will never forget or forgive what I said tonight. You, Praeclarus, know that I am already doomed. What' keys do you want? Where are they? I will fetch them."

  "Perhaps not when you know what they are," said Praeclarus.