Soon this resource failed. Then the longing was directed to the
wounded and sick. Since they could not recover, it was as well to

release them from their tortures; and, as soon as a man began to
stagger, all exclaimed that he was now lost, and ought to be made use

of for the rest. Artifices were employed to accelerate their death;
the last remnant of their foul portion was stolen from them; they were

trodden on as though by inadvertence; those in the last throes wishing
to make believe that they were strong, strove to stretch out their

arms, to rise, to laugh. Men who had swooned came to themselves at the
touch of a notched blade sawing off a limb;--and they still slew,

ferociously and needlessly, to sate their fury.
A mist heavy and warm, such as comes in those regions at the end of

winter, sank on the fourteenth day upon the army. This change of
temperature brought numerous deaths with it, and corruption was

developed with frightfulrapidity in the warm dampness which was kept
in by the sides of the mountain. The drizzle that fell upon the

corpses softened them, and soon made the plain one broad tract of
rottenness. Whitish vapours floated overhead; they pricked the

nostrils, penetrated the skin, and troubled the sight; and the
Barbarians thought that through the exhalations of the breath they

could see the souls of their companions. They were overwhelmed with
immensedisgust. They wished for nothing more; they preferred to die.

Two days afterwards the weather became fine again, and hunger seized
them once more. It seemed to them that their stomachs were being

wrenched from them with tongs. Then they rolled about in convulsions,
flung handfuls of dust into their mouths, bit their arms, and burst

into franticlaughter.
They were still more tormented by thirst, for they had not a drop of

water, the leathern bottles having been completely dried up since the
ninth day. To cheat their need they applied their tongues to the metal

plates on their waist-belts, their ivory pommels, and the steel of
their swords. Some former caravan-leaders tightened their waists with

ropes. Others sucked a pebble. They drank urine cooled in their brazen
helmets.

And they still expected the army from Tunis! The length of time which
it took in coming was, according to their conjectures, an assurance of

its early arrival. Besides, Matho, who was a brave fellow, would not
desert them. "'Twill be to-morrow!" they would say to one another; and

then to-morrow would pass.
At the beginning they had offered up prayers and vows, and practised

all kinds of incantations. Just now their only feeling to their
divinities was one of hatred, and they strove to revenge themselves by

believing in them no more.
Men of violentdisposition perished first; the Africans held out

better than the Gauls. Zarxas lay stretched at full length among the
Balearians, his hair over his arm, inert. Spendius found a plant with

broad leaves filled abundantly with juice, and after declaring that it
was poisonous, so as to keep off the rest, he fed himself upon it.

They were too weak to knock down the flying crows with stones.
Sometimes when a gypaetus was perched on a corpse, and had been

mangling it for a long time, a man would set himself to crawl towards
it with a javelin between his teeth. He would support himself with one

hand, and after taking a good aim, throw his weapon. The white-
feathered creature, disturbed by the noise, would desist and look

about in tranquil fashion like a cormorant on a rock, and would then
again thrust in its hideous, yellow beak, while the man, in despair,

would fall flat on his face in the dust. Some succeeded in discovering
chameleons and serpents. But it was the love of life that kept them

alive. They directed their souls to this idea exclusively, and clung
to existence by an effort of the will that prolonged it.

The most stoical kept close to one another, seated in a circle here
and there, among the dead in the middle of the plain; and wrapped in

their cloaks they gave themselves up silently to their sadness.
Those who had been born in towns recalled the resounding streets, the

taverns, theatres, baths, and the barbers' shops where there are tales
to be heard. Others could once more see country districts at sunset,

when the yellow corn waves, and the great oxen ascend the hills again
with the ploughshares on their necks. Travellers dreamed of cisterns,

hunters of their forests, veterans of battles; and in the somnolence
that benumbed them their thoughts jostled one another with the

precipitancy and clearness of dreams. Hallucinations came suddenly
upon them; they sought for a door in the mountain in order to flee,

and tried to pass through it. Others thought that they were sailing in
a storm and gave orders for the handling of a ship, or else fell back

in terror, perceiving Punic battalions in the clouds. There were some
who imagined themselves at a feast, and sang.

Many through a strange mania would repeat the same word or continually
make the same gesture. Then when they happened to raise their heads

and look at one another they were choked with sobs on discovering the
horrible ravages made in their faces. Some had ceased to suffer, and

to while away the hours told of the perils which they had escaped.
Death was certain and imminent to all. How many times had they not

tried to open up a passage! As to implore terms from the conqueror, by
what means could they do so? They did not even know where Hamilcar

was.
The wind was blowing from the direction of the ravine. It made the

sand flow perpetually in cascades over the portcullis; and the cloaks
and hair of the Barbarians were being covered with it as though the

earth were rising upon them and desirous of burying them. Nothing
stirred; the eternal mountain seemed still higher to them every

morning.
Sometimes flights of birds darted past beneath the blue sky in the

freedom of the air. The men closed their eyes that they might not see
them.

At first they felt a buzzing in their ears, their nails grew black,
the cold reached to their breasts; they lay upon their sides and

expired without a cry.
On the nineteenth day two thousand Asiatics were dead, with fifteen

hundred from the Archipelago, eight thousand from Libya, the youngest
of the Mercenaries and whole tribes--in all twenty thousand soldiers,

or half of the army.
Autaritus, who had only fifty Gauls left, was going to kill himself in

order to put an end to this state of things, when he thought he saw a
man on the top of the mountain in front of him.

Owing to his elevation this man did not appear taller than a dwarf.
However, Autaritus recognised a shield shaped like a trefoil on his

left arm. "A Carthaginian!" he exclaimed, and immediately throughout
the plain, before the portcullis and beneath the rocks, all rose. The

soldier was walking along the edge of the precipice; the Barbarians
gazed at him from below.

Spendius picked up the head of an ox; then having formed a diadem with
two belts, he fixed it on the horns at the end of a pole in token of

pacific intentions. The Carthaginian disappeared. They waited.
At last in the evening a sword-belt suddenly fell from above like a

stone loosened from the cliff. It was made of red leather covered with
embroidery, with three diamond stars, and stamped in the centre, it

bore the mark of the Great Council: a horse beneath a palm-tree. This
was Hamilcar's reply, the safe-conduct that he sent them.

They had nothing to fear; any change of fortune brought with it the
end of their woes. They were moved with extravagant joy, they embraced

one another, they wept. Spendius, Autaritus, and Zarxas, four
Italiotes, a Negro and two Spartans offered themselves as envoys. They

were immediately accepted. They did not know, however, by what means
they should get away.

But a cracking sounded in the direction of the rocks; and the most
elevated of them, after rocking to and fro, rebounded to the bottom.

In fact, if they were immovable on the side of the Barbarians--for it
would have been necessary to urge them up an incline plane, and they