After this the other mounted gladiators joined combat. In a very short time nearly all were wounded, and three acknowledged their defeat. Dropping their swords or javelins, they upheld their clenched hands with one finger extended to plead for mercy. The plea was vain. No handkerchief was waved in sign of mercy, and, standing over them, the victors callously drove their swords into the throats of their defeated comrades. The poor conquered fighters did not shrink. They looked up at the shouting populace with something of disdain on their faces, as though to prove that they thought nothing of death, and did not wish to be pitied. To see that none were shamming dead, a figure entered disguised as Charon, who smote them with his hammer; but the work of the sword had been done too faithfully--he only smote the corpses of the slain.[81] By this time the whole atmosphere of the place seemed to reek with the suffocating fumes of blood, which acted like intoxication on the brutalised passions of the multitude. They awaited with savage eagerness the next combat, which was to be the main show of the afternoon. Twelve Samnites and mirmillos were to be matched against as many net-throwers and chasers; and the contest was all the more thrilling because the latter were very lightly clad, so that every wound and gash was visible in all its horror on their naked limbs, while the unhelmed faces showed every triumphant or agonised expression which swept across them in that stormy scene. After half an hour’s fighting in terrible earnest, in which each side had exchanged many a well-aimed blow, and had shown prodigies of skill, valour, and swiftness, many of the gladiators had fallen, and others dropped their arms in sign of defeat. Their vanquishers strode over them awaiting the signal to be executioners of their brethren. The fight was stopped till the signal had been given with ruthless unanimity. The defeated men, like those who had been killed before them, gazed without blenching on the hard and lolling multitude, as though to show by their calm demeanour how easy a thing it was to die. But to make sure that they had been really killed, once more a slave entered, who, for variety’s sake, was dressed in the wings and carried the serpent-rod of Mercury. He touched each corpse with a red-hot iron wand. No limb shrank from his touch. Other attendants, therefore, laid the dead on biers--which the admiring spectators observed to be inlaid with amber--and they were carried out through the gate of Libitina into the spoliarium, where they were carelessly flung out in a heap.[82]