“Habet!” cried Mamercus.  “A fair hit!  Come on, you scum of the earth; come on, you German and Gallic dogs; do you think I haven’t faced the like of you before?  Do you think your great bulks and fierce mustaches will make a soldier of Marius quiver?  Do you want to taste Roman steel again?”

And then there was a strange sight.  A phantasm seemed to have come before every member of that mad, murderous band; for they saw, as it were, in the single champion before them, a long, swaying line of men of slight stature like him; of men who dashed through their phalanxes and spear hedges; who beat down their chieftains; whom no arrow fire, no sword-play, no stress of numbers, might stop; but who charged home with pilum and short-sword, and defeated the most valorous enemy.

“Ha!  Dogs!” taunted Mamercus, “you have seen Romans fight before, else you were not all here, to make sport for our holiday!”

“He is Tyr,[116] the ‘one-armed,’ who put his left hand in the jaws of Fenris-wolf!” cried a German, shrinking back in dread.  “A god is fighting us!”

  [116] A Germanic war-god.

“Fools!” shouted Gabinius from a distance.  “At him, and cut him down!”

“Cut him down!” roared Dumnorix, who had wits enough to realize that every instant’s delay gave Drusus time to escape, or collect help.

There was another rush down the passage; but at the narrow doorway the press stopped.  Mamercus fought as ten.  His shield and sword were everywhere.  The Roman was as one inspired; his eyes shone bright and clear; his lips were parted in a grim, fierce smile; he belched forth rude soldier oaths that had been current in the army of fifty years before.  Thrusting and parrying, he yielded no step, he sustained no wound.  And once, twice, thrice his terrible short-sword found its sheath in the breast of a victim.  In impotent rage the gladiators recoiled a second time.

“Storm the other door!” commanded Dumnorix.

The two defenders there had undertaken to pile up furniture against it; but a few blows beat down the entire barrier.  Falto and Pausanias stood to their posts stoutly enough; but there was no master-swordsman to guard this entrance.  The first gladiator indeed went down with a pierced neck, but the next instant Falto was beside him, atoning for his stupid folly, the whole side of his head cleft away by a stroke from a Gallic long-sword.

“One rush and we have the old man surrounded,” exhorted Dumnorix, when only Pausanias barred the way.

There was a growl and a bound, and straight at the foremost attacker flew Argos, Mamercus’s great British mastiff, who had silently slipped on to the scene.  The assailant fell with the dog’s fangs in his throat.  Again the gladiators recoiled, and before they could return to the charge, back into the peristylium rushed Drusus, escaped from Cappadox, with that worthy and Mago and Agias, just released, at his heels.