The musician was dead and the animals were fighting for the parts of his body strewn over the hillside. The crowd was weak from laughter and the girls on the barge were laughing too. The Master of the Games gave another signal.
This time nothing seemed to happen. Then one of the girls on the barge suddenly gave a shriek of terror. She was seated on the gunwale and the water in the arena was washing against her bare feet. The barge was sinking. The other girls took fright. Jumping up, they began screaming for help. A slave inside the barge had been watching through a knothole for the Master of the Games' signal. When it came, he gave orders to pull out the plugs and sink the vessel. The paddlers inside the barge had escaped through a hatch and were now feverishly swimming for the podium wall, praying that they could reach it before the crocodiles and hippos got them.
Hippos are by no means the big, good-natured pig-like creatures that they seem. These animals were all bulls and in a very bad temper. A slave happened to touch one of the creatures. Instantly the hippo swung around, making the water swirl around him, and plunged his great tusks into the man's body. As the red dye spread, the crocs began to thrash around, sometimes seizing a hippo by the leg and sometimes each other. The crowd rose to its feet as one man at this new spectacle. The barge full of screaming girls was now awash and some of the more determined girls had plunged into the water and were trying to swim to the mountain island or reach the podium.
Few of them made it for the Master of the Games had carefully selected girls who were non-swimmers. Those who reached the mountain were promptly attacked by the wild animals, now crazed by the scent of blood and the taste of the dead Greek. A few reached the podium wall and clung to it, screaming for mercy. The water around the barge was churned white as the crocs attacked the girls that still clung to the wreck. Two of the mighty reptiles seized one girl and began twisting in opposite directions. One wrung off a leg, the other an arm. One gigantic animal that must have weighed well over a ton reared out of the water and grabbed a girl standing on the gunwale. He submerged with her, carrying the shrieking girl as easily as an elephant carrying a carrot. Others of the enormous saurians were trying to knock the girls into the water with their tails. The barge, being made of wood, did not sink completely but there was no protection on it for the women.
Several of the hippos were approaching the barge, excited by the noise and the smell of blood. Although not carnivorous, the big brutes were as aggressive as bulls. Only their eyes and noses showed above the water as they floated studying the hysterical excitement on the remains of the barge. The crowd was furious. People yelled, "Go on there, you big slobs! Do something! Get the fire!" for bulls that would not perform were occasionally goaded into action by throwing burning javelins into them.
Then one of the hippos charged the barge. Lifting his head and shoulders out of the water and opening his huge mouth to its fullest capacity, he plunged his two tusks over the gunwale and began to worry the vessel like a terrier shaking a rat. The submerged wreck heaved and shook as two tons of enraged hippo struggled with it. The last of the screaming girls was flung into the water and the white bellies of the crocs flashed as they twisted in the water, trying to wring off pieces of their prey.
The mob was now uncontrollable. Women stood up in the stands drumming with their fists on the backs of people in the seats before them and screaming hysterically: "Kill! Kill! Kill!" Even before the games started, smart young men could spot women who would give way to this madness and make a point of sitting next to them. While in the grip of hysteria, the women were unconscious of everything else and the boys could play with them while they screamed and writhed at the bloody spectacle below them. Old men, long impotent, sat drooling gleefully. Even ordinarily normal men watched with mouths hanging half open, eyes staring eagerly to take in every detail, and then fought their way out through the crowd to take advantage of the prostitutes assembled in the arches under the building. Children shouted and danced on their seats, as much to relieve their nervous tension as with joy at the sight below them. Only in the lower ring of seats were there connoisseurs who watched with dispassionate interest, commenting to each other on the strength and ferocity of the animals and criticizing the girls' figures as they were dragged to their death.
From above the watertight barrier which had been hastily erected across the Gate of Death, rafts made of reeds and two-man boats of woven rushes were being launched. The rafts held six men each, Negroes from the cataracts of the Nile armed with harpoons. In each of the rush boats which had extravagantly high bows and sterns sat a single harpooner and one paddler. These curious craft were paddled toward the seething water around the remnants of the barge. One of the rafts silently glided toward a hippo and, at a given signal, the harpooners all plunged their harpoons into the massive back.
Now even the blasй occupants of the podium became interested. The whole arena was quickly converted into a mass of foam, blood, struggling reptiles, bellowing hippos and shouting men. Several light dugout canoes shot out. All but one headed for the mountain and a number of Egyptians stepped ashore. Bestiarii had already come out of the interior of the structure and were driving the animals back into their holes with the lashing, lead-tipped whips. The Egyptians lined up along the water's edge and stood with folded arms. They were magnificently built men, naked except for loincloths, and they stood motionless as images. They had brought several heavy nets which lay beside them carefully coiled.
In the remaining dugout was a lean, wiry man who from his colouring was probably half Egyptian and half Negro. His dugout was manned by four expert paddlers who made the light craft fly. He seemed to be directing the harpooning, peering down into the water and then ordering the harpooners to take that animal or spare the next. The crowd shouted furiously at him, "No! No!" but the man ignored them. When the angry cries of the mob rose to such a pitch that it seemed as though a riot threatened, Domitian turned to one of his aides and snapped an order. The aide vanished and returned in a few moments with the Master of the Games. He gave the emperor some explanation that seemed to satisfy him for he nodded and continued to watch the show.
The water level in the arena was dropping rapidly, for sluice gates had been opened and the water was pouring out even more swiftly than it had flowed in. All the hippos were dead now or in their death agonies and many of the crocs had been finished off by the harpooners. The lean man in the dugout had landed on the mountain and was giving orders to the others. They lifted the nets and began to wade into the water which was now not much above their waists. The crowd grew silent, sensing that something unusual was about to take place.
The water was now so clouded by blood that it was impossible to see through it but the men prodded about with long poles. Then they raised a shout. Splashing through the muck, they made a circle with the net and then began to drag it up the slope of the mountain. There was a violent underwater explosion and a great crocodile reared up in the centre of the net. The men dragged it ashore and their leader stepped forward. The croc was thrashing about fiercely striking at the men with his great tail and snapping his jaws together with a report that could be heard in the topmost tier of seats. Watching his chance, the Egyptian made a sudden plunge and, landing on the reptile's back, locked his arms around the saurian's neck.