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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 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.”