TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE
passed him. “Now if someone would kill Fulvus Fupus we might have a Caesar who is a Caesar.”
The sudden rush of the escaping prisoners so confused and upset the few guards beneath the Colosseum that they were easily overpowered and a moment later the prisoners found themselves in the streets of Castrum Mare.
“Where now?” cried one.
“We must scatter,” and Mallius Lepus. “Each man for himself.”
“We shall stick together, Mallius Lepus,” said von Harben.
“To the end,” replied the Roman.
“And here is Gabula,” said von Harben, as the black joined them. “He shall come with us.”
“We cannot desert the brave Gabula,” said Mallius Lepus, “but the first thing for us to do is to find a hiding-place.”
“There is a low wall across the avenue,” said von Harben, “and there are trees beyond it.”
“Come, then,” said Mallius Lepus. “It is as good for now as any other place.”
The three men hurried across the avenue and scaled the low wall, finding themselves in a garden so overgrown with weeds and underbrush that they at once assumed that it was deserted. Creeping through the weeds and forcing their way through the underbrush, they came to the rear of a house. A broken door, hanging by one hinge, windows from which the wooden blinds had fallen, an accumulation of rubbish upon the threshold marked the dilapidated structure as a deserted house.
“Perhaps this is just the place for us to hide until night,” said von Harben.
“Its proximity to the Colosseum is its greatest advantage,” said Mallius Lepus, “for they will be sure to believe that we have rushed as far from our dungeon as we could. Let us go in and investigate. We must be sure that the place is uninhabited.”
The rear room, which had been the kitchen, had a crumbling brick oven in one corner, a bench and a dilapidated table. Crossing the kitchen, they entered an apartment beyond and saw that these two tombs constituted all that there
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