door swung ajar, and another prisoner was thrust struggling into
the circus. A sickness seized me when I saw that this was a woman,

but still, in view of the object I had in hand, I made no
interruption.

It was not that I had never seen women sent to death before.
A general, who has done his fighting, must in his day have killed

women equally with men; yes, and seen them earn their death-blow by
lusty battling. Yet there seemed something so wanton in this cruel

helpless sacrifice of a woman prisoner, that I had a struggle with
myself to avoid interference. Still it is ever the case that the

individual must be sacrificed to a policy, and so as I say, I
watched on, outwardly cold and impassive.

I watched too (I confess it freely) with a quickening heart.
Here was no sullen submissive victim like the last. She may have

been more cowardly (as some women are), she may have been braver
(as many women have shown themselves); but, at any rate, it was

clear that she was going to make a struggle for her life, and to do
vicious damage, it might be, before she yielded it up. The

watchers behind the arrow-slits recognized this. Their wagers, and
the hum of their appreciation, swept loudly round the ring of the

circus.
They stripped their prisoners, before they thrust them out to

this death, of all the clothes they might carry, for clothes have
a value; and so the woman stood there bare-limbed in the moonlight.

She clapped her back to the great stone door by which she had
entered, and faced fate with glowing eye. Gods! there have been

times in early years when I could have plucked out sword and jumped
down, and fought for her there for the sheer delight of such a

battle. But now policy restrained me. The individual might want
a helping hand, but it was becoming more and more clear that

Atlantis wanted a minister also; and before these great needs, the
lesser ones perforce must perish. Still, be it noted that, if I

did not jump down, no other man there that night had sufficient
manhood remaining to venture the opportunity.

My heart glowed as I watched her. She picked a bone from the
litter on the pavement and beat off its head by blows against the

wall. Then with her teeth she fashioned the point to still further
sharpness. I could see her teeth glisten white in the moonrays as

she bit with them.
The huge cave-tigers, which stood as high as her head as they

walked, came nearer to her in their prowlings, yet obviously
neglected her. This was part of their accustomed scheme of

torment, and the woman knew it well. There was something
intolerable in their noiseless, ceaseless paddings over the

pavement. I could see the prisoner's breast heave as she watched
them. A terror such as that would have made many a victim sick and

helpless.
But this one was bolder than I had thought. She did not wait

for a spring: she made the first attack herself. When the
she-tiger made its stroll towards her, and was in the act of

turning, she flung herself into a sudden leap, striking viciously
at its eye with her sharpened bone. A roar from the onlookers

acknowledged the stroke. The cave-tiger's eye remained undarkened,
but the puny weapon had dealt it a smart flesh wound, and with a

great bellow of surprise and pain it scampered away to gain space
for a rush and a spring.

But the woman did not await its charge. With a shrill scream
she sped forward, running at the full of her speed across the

moonlight directly towards that shadowed part of the encircling
wall within whose thickness I had my gazing place; and then,

throwing every tendon of her body into the spring, made the
greatest leap that surely any human being ever accomplished, even

when spurred on by the utmost of terror and desperation. In an
after day I measured it, and though of a certainty she must have

added much to the tally by the sheer force of her run, which drove
her clinging up the rough surface of the wall, it is a sure thing

that in that splendid leap her feet must have dangled a man-height
and a half above the pavement.

I say it was prodigious, but then the spur was more than the
ordinary, and the woman herself was far out of the common both in

thews and intelligence; and the end of the leap left her with five
fingers lodged in the sill of the arrow-slit from which I watched.

Even then she must have slipped back if she had been left to
herself, for the sill sloped, and the stone was finely smooth; but

I shot out my hand and gripped hers by the wrist, and instantly she
clambered up with both knees on the sills, and her fingers twined

round to grip my wrist in her turn.
And now you will suppose she gushed out prayers and promises,

thinking only of safety and enlargement. There was nothing of
this. With savage panting wordlessness she took fresh grip on the

sharpened bone with her spare hand, and lunged with it desperately
through the arrow-slit. With the hand that clutched mine she drew

me towards her, so as to give the blows the surer chance, and so
unprepared was I for such an attack, and with such fierce

suddenness did she deliver it, that the first blow was near giving
me my quietus. But I grappled with the poor frantic creature as

gently as might be--the stone of the wall separating us always--and
stripped her of her weapon, and held her firmlycaptive till she

might calm herself.
"That was an ungrateful blow," I said. "But for my hand you'd

have slipped and be the sport of a tiger's paw this minute."
"Oh, I must kill some one," she panted, "before I am killed

myself."
"There will be time enough to think upon that some other day;

but for now you are far enough off meeting further harm."
"You are lying to me. You will throw me to the beasts as soon

as I loose my grip. I know your kind: you will not be robbed of
your sport."

"I will go so far as to prove myself to you," said I, and
called out for the warder who had tended the doors below. "Bid

those tigers be tethered on a shorter chain," I ordered, "and then
go yourself outside into the circus, and help this lady delicately

to the ground."
The word was passed and these things were done; and I too came

out into the circus and joined the woman, who stood waiting under
the moonlight. But the others who had seen these doings were by no

means suited at the change of plan. One of the great stone valves
of the farther door opened hurriedly, and a man strode out, armed

and flushed. "By all the Gods!" he shouted. "Who comes between me
and my pastime?"

I stepped quietly to the advance. "I fear, sir," I said,
"that you must launch your anger against me. By accident I gave

that woman sanctuary, and I had not heart to toss her back to your
beasts."

His fingers began to snap against his hilt.
"You have come to the wrong market here with your qualms. I

am captain here, and my word carries, subject only to Phorenice's
nod. Do you hear that? Do you know too that I can have you tossed

to those striped gate-keepers of mine for meddling in here without
an invitation?" He looked at me sharp enough, but saw plainly that

I was a stranger. "But perhaps you carry a name, my man, which
warrants your impertinence?"

"Deucalion is my poor name," I said, "but I cannot expect you
will know it. I am but newly landed here, sir, and when I left

Atlantis some score of years back, a very different man to you held
guard over these gates." He had his forehead on my feet by this

time. "I had it from the Empress this night that she will
to-morrow make a new sorting of this kingdom's dignities. Perhaps