CHAPTER XII
THE AQUEDUCT
Twelve hours afterwards all that remained of the Mercenaries was a
heap of wounded, dead, and dying.
Hamilcar had suddenly emerged from the bottom of the gorge, and again
descended the western slope that looked towards Hippo-Zarytus, and the
space being broader at this spot he had taken care to draw the
Barbarians into it. Narr' Havas had encompassed them with his horse;
the Suffet meanwhile drove them back and crushed them. Then, too, they
were conquered beforehand by the loss of the zaimph; even those who
cared nothing about it had experienced anguish and something akin to
enfeeblement. Hamilcar, not indulging his pride by holding the field
of battle, had retired a little further off on the left to some
heights, from which he commanded them.
The shape of the camps could be recognised by their sloping palisades.
A long heap of black cinders was smoking on the side of the Libyans;
the devastated soil showed undulations like the sea, and the tents
with their tattered canvas looked like dim ships half lost in the
breakers. Cuirasses, forks, clarions, pieces of wood, iron and brass,
corn, straw, and garments were scattered about among the corpses; here
and there a phalarica on the point of extinction burned against a heap
of baggage; in some places the earth was hidden with shields; horses'
carcasses succeeded one another like a series of hillocks; legs,
sandals, arms, and coats of mail were to be seen, with heads held in
their helmets by the chin-pieces and rolling about like balls; heads
of hair were hanging on the thorns; elephants were lying with their
towers in pools of blood, with entrails exposed, and gasping. The foot
trod on slimy things, and there were swamps of mud although no rain
had fallen.
This confusion of dead bodies covered the whole mountain from top to
bottom.
Those who survived stirred as little as the dead. Squatting in unequal
groups they looked at one another scared and without speaking.
The lake of Hippo-Zarytus shone at the end of a long meadow beneath
the setting sun. To the right an agglomeration of white houses
extended beyond a girdle of walls; then the sea spread out
indefinitely; and the Barbarians, with their chins in their hands,
sighed as they thought of their native lands. A cloud of grey dust was
falling.
The evening wind blew; then every breast dilated, and as the freshness
increased, the vermin might be seen to forsake the dead, who were
colder now, and to run over the hot sand. Crows, looking towards the
dying, rested motionless on the tops of the big stones.
When night had fallen yellow-haired dogs, those unclean beasts which
followed the armies, came quite softly into the midst of the
Barbarians. At first they licked the clots of blood on the still tepid
stumps; and soon they began to devour the corpses, biting into the
stomachs first of all.
The fugitives reappeared one by one like shadows; the women also
ventured to return, for there were still some of them left, especially
among the Libyans, in spite of the dreadful massacre of them by the
Numidians.
Some took ropes' ends and lighted them to use as torches. Others held
crossed pikes. The corpses were placed upon these and were conveyed
apart.
They were found lying stretched in long lines, on their backs, with
their mouths open, and their lances beside them; or else they were
piled up pell-mell so that it was often necessary to dig out a whole
heap in order to discover those they were wanting. Then the torch
would be passed slowly over their faces. They had received complicated
wounds from hideous weapons. Greenish strips hung from their
foreheads; they were cut in pieces, crushed to the marrow, blue from
strangulation, or broadly cleft by the elephants' ivory. Although they
had died at almost the same time there existed differences between
their various states of corruption. The men of the North were puffed
up with livid swellings, while the more nervous Africans looked as
though they had been smoked, and were already drying up. The
Mercenaries might be recognised by the tattooing on their hands: the
old soldiers of Antiochus displayed a sparrow-hawk; those who had
served in Egypt, the head of the cynosephalus; those who had served
with the princes of Asia, a hatchet, a pomegranate, or a hammer; those
who had served in the Greek republics, the side-view of a citadel or
the name of an archon; and some were to be seen whose arms were
entirely covered with these multiplied symbols, which mingled with
their scars and their recent wounds.
Four great funeral piles were erected for the men of Latin race, the
Samnites, Etruscans, Campanians, and Bruttians.
The Greeks dug pits with the points of their swords. The Spartans
removed their red cloaks and wrapped them round the dead; the
Athenians laid them out with their faces towards the rising sun; the
Cantabrians buried them beneath a heap of pebbles; the Nasamonians
bent them double with ox-leather thongs, and the Garamantians went and
interred them on the shore so that they might be perpetually washed by
the waves. But the Latins were grieved that they could not collect the
ashes in urns; the Nomads regretted the heat of the sands in which
bodies were mummified, and the Celts, the three rude stones beneath a
rainy sky at the end of an islet-covered gulf.
Vociferations arose, followed by the lengthened silence. This was to
oblige the souls to return. Then the shouting was resumed persistently
at regular intervals.
They made excuses to the dead for their inability to honour them as
the rites prescribed: for, owing to this deprivation, they would pass
for infinite periods through all kinds of chances and metamorphoses;
they questioned them and asked them what they desired; others loaded
them with abuse for having allowed themselves to be conquered.
The bloodless faces lying back here and there on wrecks of armour
showed pale in the light of the great funeral-pile; tears provoked
tears, the sobs became shriller, the recognitions and embracings more
frantic. Women stretched themselves on the corpses, mouth to mouth and
brow to brow; it was necessary to beat them in order to make them
withdraw when the earth was being thrown in. They blackened their
cheeks; they cut off their hair; they drew their own blood and poured
it into the pits; they gashed themselves in imitation of the wounds
that disfigured the dead. Roarings burst forth through the crashings
of the cymbals. Some snatched off their amulets and spat upon them.
The dying rolled in the bloody mire biting their mutilated fists in
their rage; and forty-three Samnites, quite a "sacred spring," cut one
another's throats like gladiators. Soon wood for the funeral-piles
failed, the flames were extinguished, every spot was occupied; and
weary from shouting, weakened, tottering, they fell asleep close to
their dead brethren, those who still clung to life full of anxieties,
and the others desiring never to wake again.
In the greyness of the dawn some soldiers appeared on the outskirts of
the Barbarians, and filed past with their helmets raised on the points
of their pikes; they saluted the Mercenaries and asked them whether
they had no messages to send to their native lands.
Others approached, and the Barbarians recognised some of their former
companions.
The Suffet had proposed to all the captives that they should serve in
his troops. Several had fearlessly refused; and quite resolved neither
to support them nor to abandon them to the Great Council, he had sent
them away with injunctions to fight no more against Carthage. As to
those who had been rendered docile by the fear of tortures, they had
been furnished with the weapons taken from the enemy; and they were
now presenting themselves to the vanquished, not so much in order to
seduce them as out of an impulse of pride and curiosity.
At first they told of the good treatment which they had received from
the Suffet; the Barbarians listened to them with jealousy although
they despised them. Then at the first words of reproach the cowards
fell into a passion; they showed them from a distance their own swords
and cuirasses and invited them with abuse to come and take them. The
Barbarians picked up flints; all took to flght; and nothing more could
be seen on the summit of the mountain except the lance-points
projecting above the edge of the palisades.
Then the Barbarians were overwhelmed with a grief that was heavier
than the humiliation of the defeat. They thought of the emptiness of
their courage, and they stood with their eyes fixed and grinding their
teeth.
The same thought came to them all. They rushed tumultuously upon the
Carthaginian prisoners. It chanced that the Suffet's soldiers had been
unable to discover them, and as he had withdrawn from the field of
battle they were still in the deep pit.
They were ranged on the ground on a flattened spot. Sentries formed a
circle round them, and the women were allowed to enter thirty or forty
at a time. Wishing to profit by the short time that was allowed to
them, they ran from one to the other, uncertain and panting; then
bending over the poor bodies they struck them with all their might
like washerwomen beating linen; shrieking their husband's names they
tore them with their nails and put out their eyes with the bodkins of
their hair. The men came next and tortured them from their feet, which
they cut off at the ankles, to their foreheads, from which they took
crowns of skin to put upon their own heads. The Eaters of Uncleanness
were atrocious in their devices. They envenomed the wounds by pouring
into them dust, vinegar, and fragments of pottery; others waited
behind; blood flowed, and they rejoiced like vintagers round fuming
vats.
Matho, however, was seated on the ground, at the very place where he
had happened to be when the battle ended, his elbows on his knees, and
his temples in his hands; he saw nothing, heard nothing, and had
ceased to think.
At the shrieks of joy uttered by the crowd he raised his head. Before
him a strip of canvas caught on a flagpole, and trailing on the
ground, sheltered in confused fashion blankets, carpets, and a lion's
skin. He recognised his tent; and he riveted his eyes upon the ground
as though Hamilcar's daughter, when she disappeared, had sunk into the
earth.
The torn canvas flapped in the wind; the long rags of it sometimes
passed across his mouth, and he perceived a red mark like the print of
a hand. It was the hand of Narr' Havas, the token of their alliance.
Then Matho rose. He took a firebrand which was still smoking, and
threw it disdainfully upon the wrecks of his tent. Then with the toe
of his cothurn he pushed the things which fell out back towards the
flame so that nothing might be left.
Suddenly, without any one being able to guess from what point he had
sprung up, Spendius reappeared.
The former slave had fastened two fragments of a lance against his
thigh; he limped with a piteous look, breathing forth complaints the
while.
"Remove that," said Matho to him. "I know that you are a brave
fellow!" For he was so crushed by the injustice of the gods that he
had not strength enough to be indignant with men.
Spendius beckoned to him and led him to a hollow of the mountain,
where Zarxas and Autaritus were lying concealed.
They had fled like the slave, the one although he was cruel, and the
other in spite of his bravery. But who, said they, could have expected
the treachery of Narr' Havas, the burning of the camp of the Libyans,
the loss of the zaimph, the sudden attack by Hamilcar, and, above all,
his manoeuvres which forced them to return to the bottom of the
mountain beneath the instant blows of the Carthaginians? Spendius made
no acknowledgement of his terror, and persisted in maintaining that
his leg was broken.
At last the three chiefs and the schalischim asked one another what
decision should now be adopted.
Hamilcar closed the road to Carthage against them; they were caught
between his soldiers and the provinces belonging to Narr' Havas; the
Tyrian towns would join the conquerors; the Barbarians would find
themselves driven to the edge of the sea, and all those united forces
would crush them. This would infallibly happen.
Thus no means presented themselves of avoiding the war. Accordingly
they must prosecute it to the bitter end. But how were they to make
the necessity of an interminable battle understood by all these
disheartened people, who were still bleeding from their wounds.
"I will undertake that!" said Spendius.
Two hours afterwards a man who came from the direction of Hippo-
Zarytus climbed the mountain at a run. He waved some tablets at arm's
length, and as he shouted very loudly the Barbarians surrounded him.
The tablets had been despatched by the Greek soldiers in Sardinia.
They recommended their African comrades to watch over Gisco and the
other captives. A Samian trader, one Hipponax, coming from Carthage,
had informed them that a plot was being organised to promote their
escape, and the Barbarians were urged to take every precaution; the
Republic was powerful.
Spendius's stratagem did not succeed at first as he had hoped. This
assurance of the new peril, so far from exciting frenzy, raised fears;
and remembering Hamilcar's warning, lately thrown into their midst,
they expected something unlooked for and terrible. The night was spent
in great distress; several even got rid of their weapons, so as to
soften the Suffet when he presented himself.
But on the following day, at the third watch, a second runner
appeared, still more breathless, and blackened with dust. The Greek
snatched from his hand a roll of papyrus covered with Phoenician
writing. The Mercenaries were entreated not to be disheartened; the
brave men of Tunis were coming with large reinforcements.
Spendius first read the letter three times in succession; and held up
by two Cappadocians, who bore him seated on their shoulders, he had
himself conveyed from place to place and re-read it. For seven hours
he harangued.
He reminded the Mercenaries of the promises of the Great Council; the
Africans of the cruelties of the stewards, and all the Barbarians of
the injustice of Carthage. The Suffet's mildness was only a bait to
capture them; those who surrendered would be sold as slaves, and the
vanquished would perish under torture. As to flight, what routes could
they follow? Not a nation would receive them. Whereas by continuing
their efforts they would obtain at once freedom, vengeance, and money!
And they would not have long to wait, since the people of Tunis, the
whole of Libya, was rushing to relieve them. He showed the unrolled
papyrus: "Look at it! read! see their promises! I do not lie."
Dogs were straying about with their black muzzles all plastered with
red. The men's uncovered heads were growing hot in the burning sun. A
nauseous smell exhaled from the badly buried corpses. Some even
projected from the earth as far as the waist. Spendius called them to
witness what he was saying; then he raised his fists in the direction
of Hamilcar.
Matho, moreover, was watching him, and to cover his cowardice he
displayed an anger by which he gradually found himself carried away.
Devoting himself to the gods he heaped curses upon the Carthaginians.
The torture of the captives was child's play. Why spare them, and be
ever dragging this useless cattle after one? "No! we must put an end
to it! their designs are known! a single one might ruin us! no pity!
Those who are worthy will be known by the speed of their legs and the
force of their blows."
Then they turned again upon the captives. Several were still in the
last throes; they were finished by the thrust of a heel in the mouth
or a stab with the point of a javelin.
Then they thought of Gisco. Nowhere could he be seen; they were
disturbed with anxiety. They wished at once to convince themselves of
his death and to participate in it. At last three Samnite shepherds
discovered him at a distance of fifteen paces from the spot where
Matho's tent lately stood. They recognised him by his long beard and
they called the rest.
Stretched on his back, his arms against his hips, and his knees close
together, he looked like a dead man laid out for the tomb.
Nevertheless his wasted sides rose and fell, and his eyes, wide-opened
in his pallid face, gazed in a continuous and intolerable fashion.
The Barbarians looked at him at first with great astonishment. Since
he had been living in the pit he had been almost forgotten; rendered
uneasy by old memories they stood at a distance and did not venture to
raise their hands against him.
But those who were behind were murmuring and pressed forward when a
Garamantian passed through the crowd; he was brandishing a sickle; all
understood his thought; their faces purpled, and smitten with shame
they shrieked:
"Yes! yes!"
The man with the curved steel approached Gisco. He took his head, and,
resting it upon his knee, sawed it off with rapid strokes; it fell; to
great jets of blood made a hole in the dust. Zarxas leaped upon it,
and lighter than a leopard ran towards the Carthaginians.
Then when he had covered two thirds of the mountain he drew Gisco's
head from his breast by the beard, whirled his arm rapidly several
times,--and the mass, when thrown at last, described a long parabola
and disappeared behind the Punic entrenchments.
Soon at the edge of the palisades there rose two crossed standards,
the customary sign for claiming a corpse.
Then four heralds, chosen for their width of chest, went out with
great clarions, and speaking through the brass tubes declared that
henceforth there would be between Carthaginians and Barbarians neither
faith, pity, nor gods, that they refused all overtures beforehand, and
that envoys would be sent back with their hands cut off.
Immediately afterwards, Spendius was sent to Hippo-Zarytus to procure
provisions; the Tyrian city sent them some the same evening. They ate
greedily. Then when they were strengthened they speedily collected the
remains of their baggage and their broken arms; the women massed
themselves in the centre, and heedless of the wounded left weeping
behind them, they set out along the edge of the shore like a herd of
wolves taking its departure.
They were marching upon Hippo-Zarytus, resolved to take it, for they
had need of a town.
Hamilcar, as he perceived them at a distance, had a feeling of despair
in spite of the pride which he experienced in seeing them fly before
him. He ought to have attacked them immediately with fresh troops.
Another similar day and the war was over! If matters were protracted
they would return with greater strength; the Tyrian towns would join
them; his clemency towards the vanquished had been of no avail. He
resolved to be pitiless.
The same evening he sent the Great Council a dromedary laden with
bracelets collected from the dead, and with horrible threats ordered
another army to be despatched.
All had for a long time believed him lost; so that on learning his
victory they felt a stupefaction which was almost terror. The vaguely
announced return of the zaimph completed the wonder. Thus the gods and
the might of Carthage seemed now to belong to him.
None of his enemies ventured upon complaint or recrimination. Owing to
the enthusiasm of some and the pusillanimity of the rest, an army of
five thousand men was ready before the interval prescribed had
elapsed.
This army promptly made its way to Utica in order to support the
Suffet's rear, while three thousand of the most notable citizens
embarked in vessels which were to land them at Hippo-Zarytus, whence
they were to drive back the Barbarians.
Hanno had accepted the command; but he intrusted the army to his
lieutenant, Magdassin, so as to lead the troops which were to be
disembarked himself, for he could no longer endure the shaking of the
litter. His disease had eaten away his lips and nostrils, and had
hollowed out a large hole in his face; the back of his throat could be
seen at a distance of ten paces, and he knew himself to be so hideous
that he wore a veil over his head like a woman.
Hippo-Zarytus paid no attention to his summonings nor yet to those of
the Barbarians; but every morning the inhabitants lowered provisions
to the latter in baskets, and shouting from the tops of the towers
pleaded the exigencies of the Republic and conjured them to withdraw.
By means of signs they addressed the same protestations to the
Carthaginians, who were stationed on the sea.
Hanno contented himself with blockading the harbour without risking an
attack. However, he permitted the judges of Hippo-Zarytus to admit
three hundred soldiers. Then he departed to the Cape Grapes, and made
a long circuit so as to hem in the Barbarians, an inopportune and even
dangerous operation. His jealousy prevented him from relieving the
Suffet; he arrested his spies, impeded him in all his plans, and
compromised the success of the enterprise. At last Hamilcar wrote to
the Great Council to rid himself of Hanno, and the latter returned to
Carthage furious at the baseness of the Ancients and the madness of
his colleague. Hence, after so many hopes, the situation was now still
more deplorable; but there was an effort not to reflect upon it and
even not to talk about it.
As if all this were not sufficient misfortune at one time, news came
that the Sardinian Mercenaries had crucified their general, seized the
strongholds, and everywhere slaughtered those of Chanaanitish race.
The Roman people threatened the Republic with immediate hostilities
unless she gave twelve hundred talents with the whole of the island of
Sardinia. They had accepted the alliance of the Barbarians, and they
despatched to them flat-bottomed boats laden with meal and dried meat.
The Carthaginians pursued these, and captured five hundred men; but
three days afterwards a fleet coming from Byzacena, and conveying
provisions to Carthage, foundered in a storm. The gods were evidently
declaring against her.
Upon this the citizens of Hippo-Zarytus, under pretence of an alarm,
made Hanno's three hundred men ascend their walls; then coming behind
them they took them by the legs, and suddenly threw them over the
ramparts. Some who were not killed were pursued, and went and drowned
themselves in the sea.
Utica was enduring the presence of soldiers, for Magdassin had acted
like Hanno, and in accordance with his orders and deaf to Hamilcar's
prayers, was surrounding the town. As for these, they were given wine
mixed with mandrake, and were then slaughtered in their sleep. At the
same time the Barbarians arrived; Magdassin fled; the gates were
opened, and thenceforward the two Tyrian towns displayed an obstinate
devotion to their new friends and an inconceivable hatred to their
former allies.
This abandonment of the Punic cause was a counsel and a precedent.
Hopes of deliverance revived. Populations hitherto uncertain hesitated
no longer. Everywhere there was a stir. The Suffet learnt this, and he
had no assistance to look for! He was now irrevocably lost.
He immediately dismissed Narr' Havas, who was to guard the borders of
his kingdom. As for himself, he resolved to re-enter Carthage in order
to obtain soldiers and begin the war again.
The Barbarians posted at Hippo-Zarytus perceived his army as it
descended the mountain.
Where could the Carthaginians be going? Hunger, no doubt, was urging
them on; and, distracted by their sufferings, they were coming in
spite of their weakness to give battle. But they turned to the right:
they were fleeing. They might be overtaken and all be crushed. The
Barbarians dashed in pursuit of them.
The Carthaginians were checked by the river. It was wide this time and
the west wind had not been blowing. Some crossed by swimming, and the
rest on their shields. They resumed their march. Night fell. They were
out of sight.
The Barbarians did not stop; they went higher to find a narrower
place. The people of Tunis hastened thither, bringing those of Utica
along with them. Their numbers increased at every bush; and the
Carthaginians, as they lay on the ground, could hear the tramping of
their feet in the darkness. From time to time Barca had a volley of
arrows discharged behind him to check them, and several were killed.
When day broke they were in the Ariana Mountains, at the spot where
the road makes a bend.
Then Matho, who was marching at the head, thought that he could
distinguish something green on the horizon on the summit of an
eminence. Then the ground sank, and obelisks, domes, and houses
appeared! It was Carthage. He leaned against a tree to keep himself
from falling, so rapidly did his heart beat.
He thought of all that had come to pass in his existence since the
last time that he had passed that way! It was an infinite surprise, it
stunned him. Then he was transported with joy at the thought of seeing
Salammbo again. The reasons which he had for execrating her returned
to his recollection, but he very quickly rejected them. Quivering and
with straining eyeballs he gazed at the lofty terrace of a palace
above the palm trees beyond Eschmoun; a smile of ecstasy lighted his
face as if some great light had reached him; he opened his arms, and
sent kisses on the breeze, and murmured: "Come! come!" A sigh swelled
his breast, and two long tears like pearls fell upon his beard.
"What stays you?" cried Spendius. "Make haste! Forward! The Suffet is
going to escape us! But your knees are tottering, and you are looking
at me like a drunken man!"
He stamped with impatience and urged Matho, his eyes twinkling as at
the approach of an object long aimed at.
"Ah! we have reached it! We are there! I have them!"
He had so convinced and triumphant an air that Matho was surprised
from his torpor, and felt himself carried away by it. These words,
coming when his distress was at its height, drove his despair to
vengeance, and pointed to food for his wrath. He bounded upon one of
the camels that were among the baggage, snatched up its halter, and
with the long rope, struck the stragglers with all his might, running
right and left alternately, in the rear of the army, like a dog
driving a flock.
At this thundering voice the lines of men closed up; even the lame
hurried their steps; the intervening space lessened in the middle of
the isthmus. The foremost of the Barbarians were marching in the dust
raised by the Carthaginians. The two armies were coming close, and
were on the point of touching. But the Malqua gate, the Tagaste gate,
and the great gate of Khamon threw wide their leaves. The Punic square
divided; three columns were swallowed up, and eddied beneath the
porches. Soon the mass, being too tightly packed, could advance no
further; pikes clashed in the air, and the arrows of the Barbarians
were shivering against the walls.
Hamilcar was to be seen on the threshold of Khamon. He turned round
and shouted to his men to move aside. He dismounted from his horse;
and pricking it on the croup with the sword which he held, sent it
against the Barbarians.
It was a black stallion, which was fed on balls of meal, and would
bend its knees to allow its master to mount. Why was he sending it
away? Was this a sacrifice?
The noble horse galloped into the midst of the lances, knocked down
men, and, entangling its feet in its entrails, fell down, then rose
again with furious leaps; and while they were moving aside, trying to
stop it, or looking at it in surprise, the Carthaginians had united
again; they entered, and the enormous gate shut echoing behind them.
It would not yield. The Barbarians came crushing against it;--and for
some minutes there was an oscillation throughout the army, which
became weaker and weaker, and at last ceased.
The Carthaginians had placed soldiers on the aqueduct, they began to
hurl stones, balls, and beams. Spendius represented that it would be
best not to persist. The Barbarians went and posted themselves further
off, all being quite resolved to lay siege to Carthage.
The rumour of the war, however, had passed beyond the confines of the
Punic empire; and from the pillars of Hercules to beyond Cyrene
shepherds mused on it as they kept their flocks, and caravans talked
about it in the light of the stars. This great Carthage, mistress of
the seas, splendid as the sun, and terrible as a god, actually found
men who were daring enough to attack her! Her fall even had been
asserted several times; and all had believed it for all wished it: the
subject populations, the tributary villages, the allied provinces, the
independent hordes, those who execrated her for her tyranny or were
jealous of her power, or coveted her wealth. The bravest had very
speedily joined the Mercenaries. The defeat at the Macaras had checked
all the rest. At last they had recovered confidence, had gradually
advanced and approached; and now the men of the eastern regions were
lying on the sandhills of Clypea on the other side of the gulf. As
soon as they perceived the Barbarians they showed themselves.
They were not Libyans from the neighbourhood of Carthage, who had long
composed the third army, but nomads from the tableland of Barca,
bandits from Cape Phiscus and the promontory of Dernah, from Phazzana
and Marmarica. They had crossed the desert, drinking at the brackish
wells walled in with camels' bones; the Zuaeces, with their covering
of ostrich feathers, had come on quadrigae; the Garamantians, masked
with black veils, rode behind on their painted mares; others were
mounted on asses, onagers, zebras, and buffaloes; while some dragged
after them the roofs of their sloop-shaped huts together with their
families and idols. There were Ammonians with limbs wrinkled by the
hot water of the springs; Atarantians, who curse the sun; Troglodytes,
who bury their dead with laughter beneath branches of trees; and the
hideous Auseans, who eat grass-hoppers; the Achyrmachidae, who eat
lice; and the vermilion-painted Gysantians, who eat apes.
All were ranged along the edge of the sea in a great straight line.
Afterwards they advanced like tornadoes of sand raised by the wind. In
the centre of the isthmus the throng stopped, the Mercenaries who were
posted in front of them, close to the walls, being unwilling to move.
Then from the direction of Ariana appeared the men of the West, the
people of the Numidians. In fact, Narr' Havas governed only the
Massylians; and, moreover, as they were permitted by custom to abandon
their king when reverses were sustained, they had assembled on the
Zainus, and then had crossed it at Hamilcar's first movement. First
were seen running up all the hunters from Malethut-Baal and Garaphos,
clad in lions' skins, and with the staves of their pikes driving small
lean horses with long manes; then marched the Gaetulians in cuirasses
of serpents' skin; then the Pharusians, wearing lofty crowns made of
wax and resin; and the Caunians, Macarians, and Tillabarians, each
holding two javelins and a round shield of hippopotamus leather. They
stopped at the foot of the Catacombs among the first pools of the
Lagoon.
But when the Libyans had moved away, the multitude of the Negroes
appeared like a cloud on a level with the ground, in the place which
the others had occupied. They were there from the White Harousch, the
Black Harousch, the desert of Augila, and even from the great country
of Agazymba, which is four months' journey south of the Garamantians,
and from regions further still! In spite of their red wooden jewels,
the filth of their black skin made them look like mulberries that had
been long rolling in the dust. They had bark-thread drawers, dried-
grass tunics, fallow-deer muzzles on their heads; they shook rods
furnished with rings, and brandished cows' tails at the end of sticks,
after the fashion of standards, howling the while like wolves.
Then behind the Numidians, Marusians, and Gaetulians pressed the
yellowish men, who are spread through the cedar forests beyond Taggir.
They had cat-skin quivers flapping against their shoulders, and they
led in leashes enormous dogs, which were as high as asses, and did not
bark.
Finally, as though Africa had not been sufficiently emptied, and it
had been necessary to seek further fury in the very dregs of the
races, men might be seen behind the rest, with beast-like profiles and
grinning with idiotic laughter--wretches ravaged by hideous diseases,
deformed pigmies, mulattoes of doubtful sex, albinos whose red eyes
blinked in the sun; stammering out unintelligible sounds, they put a
finger into their mouths to show that they were hungry.
The confusion of weapons was as great as that of garments and peoples.
There was not a deadly invention that was not present--from wooden
daggers, stone hatchets and ivory tridents, to long sabres toothed
like saws, slender, and formed of a yielding copper blade. They
handled cutlasses which were forked into several branches like
antelopes' horns, bills fastened to the ends of ropes, iron triangles,
clubs and bodkins. The Ethiopians from the Bambotus had little
poisoned darts hidden in their hair. Many had brought pebbles in bags.
Others, empty handed, chattered with their teeth.
This multitude was stirred with a ceaseless swell. Dromedaries,
smeared all over with tar-like streaks, knocked down the women, who
carried their children on their hips. The provisions in the baskets
were pouring out; in walking, pieces of salt, parcels of gum, rotten
dates, and gourou nuts were crushed underfoot; and sometimes on
vermin-covered bosoms there would hang a slender cord supporting a
diamond that the Satraps had sought, an almost fabulous stone,
sufficient to purchase an empire. Most of them did not even know what
they desired. They were impelled by fascination or curiosity; and
nomads who had never seen a town were frightened by the shadows of the
walls.
The isthmus was now hidden by men; and this long surface, whereon the
tents were like huts amid an inundation, stretched as far as the first
lines of the other Barbarians, which were streaming with steel and
were posted symmetrically upon both sides of the aqueduct.
The Carthaginians had not recovered from the terror caused by their
arrival when they perceived the siege-engines sent by the Tyrian towns
coming straight towards them like monsters and like buildings--with
their masts, arms, ropes, articulations, capitals and carapaces, sixty
carroballistas, eighty onagers, thirty scorpions, fifty tollenos,
twelve rams, and three gigantic catapults which hurled pieces of rock
of the weight of fifteen talents. Masses of men clinging to their
bases pushed them on; at every step a quivering shook them, and in
this way they arrived in front of the walls.
But several days were still needed to finish the preparations for the
siege. The Mercenaries, taught by their defeats, would not risk
themselves in useless engagements; and on both sides there was no
haste, for it was well known that a terrible action was about to open,
and that the result of it would be complete victory or complete
extermination.
Carthage might hold out for a long time; her broad walls presented a
series of re-entrant and projecting angles, an advantageous
arrangement for repelling assaults.
Nevertheless a portion had fallen down in the direction of the
Catacombs, and on dark nights lights could be seen in the dens of
Malqua through the disjointed blocks. These in some places overlooked
the top of the ramparts. It was here that the Mercenaries' wives, who
had been driven away by Matho, were living with their new husbands. On
seeing the men again their hearts could stand it no longer. They waved
their scarfs at a distance; then they came and chatted in the darkness
with the soldiers through the cleft in the wall, and one morning the
Great Council learned that they had all fled. Some had passed through
between the stones; others with greater intrepidity had let themselves
down with ropes.
At last Spendius resolved to accomplish his design.
The war, by keeping him at a distance, had hitherto prevented him; and
since the return to before Carthage, it seemed to him that the
inhabitants suspected his enterprise. But soon they diminished the
sentries on the aqueduct. There were not too many people for the
defence of the walls.
The former slave practised himself for some days in shooting arrows at
the flamingoes on the lake. Then one moonlight evening he begged Matho
to light a great fire of straw in the middle of the night, while all
his men were to shout at the same time; and taking Zarxas with him, he
went away along the edge of the gulf in the direction of Tunis.
When on a level with the last arches they returned straight towards
the aqueduct; the place was unprotected: they crawled to the base of
the pillars.
The sentries on the platform were walking quietly up and down.
Towering flames appeared; clarions rang; and the soldiers on vedette,
believing that there was an assault, rushed away in the direction of
Carthage.
One man had remained. He showed black against the background of the
sky. The moon was shining behind him, and his shadow, which was of
extravagant size, looked in the distance like an obelisk proceeding
across the plain.
They waited until he was in position just before them. Zarxas seized
his sling, but whether from prudence or from ferocity Spendius stopped
him. "No, the whiz of the bullet would make a noise! Let me!"
Then he bent his bow with all his strength, resting the lower end of
it against the great toe of his left foot; he took aim, and the arrow
went off.
The man did not fall. He disappeared.
"If he were wounded we should hear him!" said Spendius; and he mounted
quickly from story to story as he had done the first time, with the
assistance of a rope and a harpoon. Then when he had reached the top
and was beside the corpse, he let it fall again. The Balearian
fastened a pick and a mallet to it and turned back.
The trumpets sounded no longer. All was now quiet. Spendius had raised
one of the flag-stones and, entering the water, had closed it behind
him.
Calculating the distance by the number of his steps, he arrived at the
exact spot where he had noticed an oblique fissure; and for three
hours until morning he worked in continuous and furious fashion,
breathing with difficulty through the interstices in the upper flag-
tones, assailed with anguish, and twenty times believing that he was
going to die. At last a crack was heard, and a huge stone ricocheting
on the lower arches rolled to the ground,--and suddenly a cataract, an
entire river, fell from the skies onto the plain. The aqueduct, being
cut through in the centre, was emptying itself. It was death to
Carthage and victory for the Barbarians.
In an instant the awakened Carthaginians appeared on the walls, the
houses, and the temples. The Barbarians pressed forward with shouts.
They danced in delirium around the great waterfall, and came up and
wet their heads in it in the extravagance of their joy.
A man in a torn, brown tunic was perceived on the summit of the
aqueduct. He stood leaning over the very edge with both hands on his
hips, and was looking down below him as though astonished at his work.
Then he drew himself up. He surveyed the horizon with a haughty air
which seemed to say: "All that is now mine!" The applause of the
Barbarians burst forth, while the Carthaginians, comprehending their
disaster at last, shrieked with despair. Then he began to run about
the platform from one end to the other,--and like a chariot-driver
triumphant at the Olympic Games, Spendius, distraught with pride,
raised his arms aloft.
