"Is not this enough?" he demanded, pointing at the prostrate figure of the stunned gladiator. The praefect 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 praefect," 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 question the decision that was voiced by the shrieking, screaming, applauding multitude. _Chapter Fifteen_ 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."