e boxes, as if wishing to go among the
spectators; others ran around barking furiously, as though chasing some
unseen beast. The people were angry. A thousand voices began to call;
some howled like wild beasts; some barked like dogs; others urged them
on in every language. The amphitheatre was trembling from uproar. The
excited dogs began to run to the kneeling people, then to draw back,
snapping their teeth, till at last one of the Molossians drove his teeth
into the shoulder of a woman kneeling in front, and dragged her under
him.

Tens of dogs rushed into the crowd now, as if to break through it. The
audience ceased to howl, so as to look with greater attention. Amidst
the howling and whining were heard yet plaintive voices of men and
women: "Pro Christo! Pro Christo!" but on the arena were formed
quivering masses of the bodies of dogs and people. Blood flowed in
streams from the torn bodies. Dogs dragged from each other the bloody
limbs of people. The odor of blood and torn entrails was stronger than
Arabian perfumes, and filled the whole Circus.

At last only here and there were visible single kneeling forms, which
were soon covered by moving squirming masses.

Vinicius, who at the moment when the Christians ran in, stood up and
turned so as to indicate to the quarryman, as he had promised, the
direction in which the Apostle was hidden among the people of Petronius,
sat down again, and with the face of a dead man continued to look with
glassy eyes on the ghastly spectacle. At first fear that the quarryman
might have been mistaken, and that perchance Lygia was among the
victims, benumbed him completely; but when he heard the voices, "Pro
Christo!" when he saw the torture of so many victims who, in dying,
confessed their faith and their God, another feeling possessed him,
piercing him like the most dreadful pain, but irresistible. That feeling
was this,--if Christ Himself died in torment, if thousands are perishing
for Him now, if a sea of blood is poured forth, one drop more signifies
nothing, and it is a sin even to ask for mercy. That thought came to him
from the arena, penetrated him with the groans of the dying, with the
odor of their blood. But still he prayed and repeated with parched lips,
"O Christ! O Christ! and Thy Apostle prayed for her!" Then he forgot
himself, lost consciousness of where he was. It seemed to him that blood
on the arena was rising and rising, that it was coming up and flowing
out of t