“Here’s your man!” cried Gabinius, who still kept discreetly in the rear.

“Freedom and ten sestertia[117] to the one who strikes Drusus down,” called Dumnorix, feeling that at last the game was in his hands.

  [117] About $400.

But Mamercus had made of his young patron an apt pupil.  All the fighting blood of the great Livian house, of the consulars and triumphators, was mantling in Drusus’s veins, and he threw himself into the struggle with the deliberate courage of an experienced warrior.  His short-sword, too, found its victims; and across Falto’s body soon were piled more.  And now Drusus was not alone.  For in from the barns and fields came running first the servants from the stables, armed with mattocks and muck-forks, and then the farm-hands with their scythes and reaping hooks.

“We shall never force these doors,” exclaimed Gabinius, in despair, as he saw the defenders augmenting.

Dumnorix turned to his men.

“Go, some of you.  Enter from behind!  Take this rabble from the rear.  In fair fight we can soon master it.”

A part of the gladiators started to leave the atrium, Gabinius with them.  An instant later he had rushed back in blank dismay.

“Horsemen!  They are dismounting before the house.  There are more than a score of them.  We shall be cut to pieces.”

“We have more than fifty,” retorted Dumnorix, viciously.  “I will sacrifice them all, rather than have the attack fail!—­” But before he could speak further, to the din of the fighting at the doors of the peristylium was added a second clamour without.  And into the atrium, sword in hand, burst Caius Curio, and another young, handsome, aquiline-featured man, dressed in a low-girt tunic, with a loose, coarse mantle above it,—­a man known to history as Marcus Antonius, or “Marc Antony “; and at their backs were twenty men in full armour.

The courage of the lanista had failed him.  Already Drusus’s reinforcements in the peristylium had become so numerous and so well armed that the young chieftain was pushing back the gladiators and rapidly assuming the offensive.  Gabinius was the first to take flight.  He plunged into one of the rooms off the atrium, and through a side door gained the open.  The demoralized and beaten gladiators followed him, like a flock of sheep.  Only Dumnorix and two or three of his best men stood at the exit long enough to cover, in some measure, the retreat.

Once outside, the late assailants gained a temporary respite, owing to the fact that the defenders had been disorganized by their very victory.

“We have lost,” groaned Gabinius, as the lanista drew his men together in a compact body, before commencing his retreat.

“We are alive,” growled Dumnorix.

“We cannot go back to Rome,” moaned the other.  “We are all identified.  No bribe or favour can save us now.”

“A robber’s life is still left,” retorted Dumnorix, “and we must make of it what we can.  Some of my men know these parts, where they have been slaves, before coming to my hands.  We must strike off for the mountains, if we live to get there.”