CHAPTER XIV THE PASS OF THE HATCHET
The Carthaginians had not re-entered their houses when the cloudsaccumulated more thickly; those who raised their heads towards thecolossus could feel big drops on their foreheads, and the rain fell.
It fell the whole night plentifully, in floods; the thunder growled; itwas the voice of Moloch; he had vanquished Tanith; and she, being nowfecundated, opened up her vast bosom in heaven’s heights. Sometimesshe could be seen in a clear and luminous spot stretched upon cushionsof cloud; and then the darkness would close in again as though shewere still too weary and wished to sleep again; the Carthaginians, allbelieving that water is brought forth by the moon, shouted to make hertravail easy.
The rain beat upon the terraces and overflowed them, forming lakes inthe courts, cascades on the staircases, and eddies at the corners of thestreets. It poured in warm heavy masses and urgent streams; big frothyjets leaped from the corners of all the buildings; and it seemedas though whitish cloths hung dimly upon the walls, and the washedtemple-roofs shone black in the gleam of the lightning. Torrentsdescended from the Acropolis by a thousand paths; houses suddenly gaveway, and small beams, plaster, rubbish, and furniture passed along instreams which ran impetuously over the pavement.
Amphoras, flagons, and canvases had been placed out of doors; but thetorches were extinguished; brands were taken from the funeral-pile ofthe Baal, and the Carthaginians bent back their necks and opened theirmouths to drink. Others by the side of the miry pools, plunged theirarms into them up to the armpits, and filled themselves so abundantlywith water that they vomited it forth like buffaloes. The freshnessgradually spread; they breathed in the damp air with play of limb, andin the happiness of their intoxication boundless hope soon arose. Alltheir miseries were forgotten. Their country was born anew.
They felt the need, as it were, of directing upon others the extravagantfury which they had been unable to employ against themselves. Such asacrifice could not be in vain; although they felt no remorse they foundthemselves carried away by the frenzy which results from complicity inirreparable crimes.
The Barbarians had encountered the storm in their ill-closed tents; andthey were still quite chilled on the morrow as they tramped through themud in search of their stores and weapons, which were spoiled and lost.
Hamilcar went himself to see Hanno, and, in virtue of his plenarypowers, intrusted the command to him. The old Suffet hesitated for afew minutes between his animosity and his appetite for authority, but heaccepted nevertheless.
Hamilcar next took out a galley armed with a catapult at each end.He placed it in the gulf in front of the raft; then he embarkedhis stoutest troops on board such vessels as were available. He wasapparently taking to flight; and running northward before the wind hedisappeared into the mist.
But three days afterwards, when the attack was about to begin again,some people arrived tumultuously from the Libyan coast. Barca hadcome among them. He had carried off provisions everywhere, and he wasspreading through the country.
Then the Barbarians were indignant as though he were betraying them.Those who were most weary of the siege, and especially the Gauls, didnot hesitate to leave the walls in order to try and rejoin him. Spendiuswanted to reconstruct the helepolis; Matho had traced an imaginary linefrom his tent to Megara, and inwardly swore to follow it, and none oftheir men stirred. But the rest, under the command of Autaritus, wentoff, abandoning the western part of the rampart, and so profound was thecarelessness exhibited that no one even thought of replacing them.
Narr’ Havas spied them from afar in the mountains. During the night heled all his men along the sea-shore on the outer side of the Lagoon, andentered Carthage.
He presented himself as a saviour with six thousand men all carryingmeal under their cloaks, and forty elephants laden with forage and driedmeat. The people flocked quickly around them; they gave them names. Thesight of these strong animals, sacred to Baal, gave the Carthaginianseven more joy than the arrival of such relief; it was a token of thetenderness of the god, a proof that he was at last about to interfere inthe war to defend them.
Narr’ Havas received the compliments of the Ancients. Then he ascendedto Salammbô’s palace.
He had not seen her again since the time when in Hamilcar’s tent amidthe five armies he had felt her little, cold, soft hand fastened to hisown; she had left for Carthage after the betrothal. His love, whichhad been diverted by other ambitions, had come back to him; and now heexpected to enjoy his rights, to marry her, and take her.
Salammbô did not understand how the young man could ever become hermaster! Although she asked Tanith every day for Matho’s death, herhorror of the Libyan was growing less. She vaguely felt that the hatewith which he had persecuted her was something almost religious,—andshe would fain have seen in Narr’ Havas’s person a reflection, asit were, of that malice which still dazzled her. She desired to know himbetter, and yet his presence would have embarrassed her. She sent himword that she could not receive him.
Moreover, Hamilcar had forbidden his people to admit the King of theNumidians to see her; by putting off his reward to the end of the warhe hoped to retain his devotion;—and, through dread of the Suffet,Narr’ Havas withdrew.
But he bore himself haughtily towards the Hundred. He changed theirarrangements. He demanded privileges for his men, and placed themon important posts; thus the Barbarians stared when they perceivedNumidians on the towers.
The surprise of the Carthaginians was greater still when three hundredof their own people, who had been made prisoners during the Sicilianwar, arrived on board an old Punic trireme. Hamilcar, in fact, hadsecretly sent back to the Quirites the crews of the Latin vessels,taken before the defection of the Tyrian towns; and, to reciprocate thecourtesy, Rome was now sending him back her captives. She scorned theovertures of the Mercenaries in Sardinian, and would not even recognisethe inhabitants of Utica as subjects.
Hiero, who was ruling at Syracuse, was carried away by this example. Forthe preservation of his own States it was necessary that an equilibriumshould exist between the two peoples; he was interested, therefore, inthe safety of the Chanaanites, and he declared himself their friend, andsent them twelve hundred oxen, with fifty-three thousand nebels of purewheat.
A deeper reason prompted aid to Carthage. It was felt that if theMercenaries triumphed, every one, from soldier to plate-washer, wouldrise, and that no government and no house could resist them.
Meanwhile Hamilcar was scouring the eastern districts. He drove backthe Gauls, and all the Barbarians found that they were themselves insomething like a state of siege.
Then he set himself to harass them. He would arrive and then retire, andby constantly renewing this manouvre, he gradually detached them fromtheir encampments. Spendius was obliged to follow them, and in the endMatho yielded in like manner.
He did not pass beyond Tunis. He shut himself up within its walls. Thispersistence was full of wisdom, for soon Narr’ Havas was to beseen issuing from the gate of Khamon with his elephants and soldiers.Hamilcar was recalling him, but the other Barbarians were alreadywandering about in the provinces in pursuit of the Suffet.
The latter had received three thousand Gauls from Clypea. He had horsesbrought to him from Cyrenaica, and armour from Brutium, and began thewar again.
Never had his genius been so impetuous and fertile. For five moons hedragged his enemies after him. He had an end to which he wished to guidethem.
The Barbarians had at first tried to encompass him with smalldetachments, but he always escaped them. They ceased to separate then.Their army amounted to about forty thousand men, and several times theyenjoyed the sight of seeing the Carthaginians fall back.
The horsemen of Narr’ Havas were what they found most tormenting.Often, at times of the greatest weariness, when they were advancing overthe plains, and dozing beneath the weight of their arms, a great line ofdust would suddenly rise on the horizon; there would be a galloping upto them, and a rain of darts would
pour from the bosom of a cloud filledwith flaming eyes. The Numidians in their white cloaks would utterloud shouts, raise their arms, press their rearing stallions with theirknees, and, wheeling them round abruptly, would then disappear. They hadalways supplies of javelins and dromedaries some distance off, and theywould return more terrible than before, howl like wolves, and take toflight like vultures. The Barbarians posted at the extremities of thefiles fell one by one; and this would continue until evening, when anattempt would be made to enter the mountains.
Although they were perilous for elephants, Hamilcar made his way inamong them. He followed the long chain which extends from the promontoryof Hermæum to the top of Zagouan. This, they believed, was a device forhiding the insufficiency of his troops. But the continual uncertainty inwhich he kept them exasperated them at last more than any defeat. Theydid not lose heart, and marched after him.
At last one evening they surprised a body of velites amid some bigrocks at the entrance of a pass between the Silver Mountain and the LeadMountain; the entire army was certainly in front of them, for a noiseof footsteps and clarions could be heard; the Carthaginians immediatelyfled through the gorge. It descended into a plain, and was shaped likean iron hatchet with a surrounding of lofty cliffs. The Barbariansdashed into it in order to overtake the velites; quite at the bottomother Carthaginians were running tumultuously amid galloping oxen. A manin a red cloak was to be seen; it was the Suffet; they shouted this toone another; and they were carried away with increased fury and joy.Several, from laziness or prudence, had remained on the threshold of thepass. But some cavalry, debouching from a wood, beat them down uponthe rest with blows of pike and sabre; and soon all the Barbarians werebelow in the plain.
Then this great human mass, after swaying to and fro for some time,stood still; they could discover no outlet.
Those who were nearest to the pass went back again, but the passage hadentirely disappeared. They hailed those in front to make them go on;they were being crushed against the mountain, and from a distance theyinveighed against their companions, who were unable to find the routeagain.
In fact the Barbarians had scarcely descended when men who had beencrouching behind the rocks raised the latter with beams and overthrewthem, and as the slope was steep the huge blocks had rolled downpell-mell and completely stopped up the narrow opening.
At the other extremity of the plain stretched a long passage, split ingaps here and there, and leading to a ravine which ascended to the upperplateau, where the Punic army was stationed. Ladders had been placedbeforehand in this passage against the wall of cliff; and, protected bythe windings of the gaps, the velites were able to seize and mount thembefore being overtaken. Several even made their way to the bottom of theravine; they were drawn up with cables, for the ground at this spot wasof moving sand, and so much inclined that it was impossible to climbit even on the knees. The Barbarians arrived almost immediately. Buta portcullis, forty cubits high, and made to fit the intervening spaceexactly, suddenly sank before them like a rampart fallen from the skies.
The Suffet’s combinations had therefore succeeded. None of theMercenaries knew the mountain, and, marching as they did at the headof their columns, they had drawn on the rest. The rocks, which weresomewhat narrow at the base, had been easily cast down; and, whileall were running, his army had raised shouts, as of distress, on thehorizon. Hamilcar, it is true, might have lost his velites, only half ofwhom remained, but he would have sacrificed twenty times as many for thesuccess of such an enterprise.
The Barbarians pressed forward until morning, in compact files, from oneend of the plain to the other. They felt the mountain with their hands,seeking to discover a passage.
At last day broke; and they perceived all about them a great white wallhewn with the pick. And no means of safety, no hope! The two naturaloutcomes from this blind alley were closed by the portcullis and theheaps of rocks.
Then they all looked at one another without speaking. They sank down incollapse, feeling an icy coldness in their loins, and an overwhelmingweight upon their eyelids.
They rose, and bounded against the rocks. But the lowest were weightedby the pressure of the others, and were immovable. They tried to clingto them so as to reach the top, but the bellying shape of the greatmasses rendered all hold impossible. They sought to cleave the ground onboth sides of the gorge, but their instruments broke. They made a largefire with the tent poles, but the fire could not burn the mountain.
They returned to the portcullis; it was garnished with long nails asthick as stakes, as sharp as the spines of a porcupine, and closer thanthe hairs of a brush. But they were animated by such rage that theydashed themselves against it. The first were pierced to the backbone,those coming next surged over them, and all fell back, leaving humanfragments and bloodstained hair on those horrible branches.
When their discouragement was somewhat abated, they made an examinationof the provisions. The Mercenaries, whose baggage was lost, possessedscarcely enough for two days; and all the rest found themselvesdestitute,—for they had been awaiting a convoy promised by thevillages of the South.
However, some bulls were roaming about, those which the Carthaginianshad loosed in the gorge to attract the Barbarians. They killed them withlance thrusts and ate them, and when their stomachs were filled theirthoughts were less mournful.
The next day they slaughtered all the mules to the number of aboutforty; then they scraped the skins, boiled the entrails, pounded thebones, and did not yet despair; the army from Tunis had no doubt beenwarned, and was coming.
But on the evening of the fifth day their hunger increased; they gnawedtheir sword-belts, and the little sponges which bordered the bottom oftheir helmets.
These forty thousand men were massed into the species of hippodromeformed by the mountain about them. Some remained in front of theportcullis, or at the foot of the rocks; the rest covered the plainconfusedly. The strong shunned one another, and the timid sought out thebrave, who, nevertheless, were unable to save them.
To avoid infection, the corpses of the velites had been speedily buried;and the position of the graves was no longer visible.
All the Barbarians lay drooping on the ground. A veteran would passbetween their lines here and there; and they would howl curses againstthe Carthaginians, against Hamilcar, and against Matho, although he wasinnocent of their disaster; but it seemed to them that their pains wouldhave been less if he had shared them. Then they groaned, and some weptsoftly like little children.
They came to the captains and besought them to grant them something thatwould alleviate their sufferings. The others made no reply; or, seizedwith fury, would pick up a stone and fling it in their faces.
Several, in fact, carefully kept a reserve of food in a hole in theground—a few handfuls of dates, or a little meal; and they ate thisduring the night, with their heads bent beneath their cloaks. Thosewho had swords kept them naked in their hands, and the most suspiciousremained standing with their backs against the mountain.
They accused their chiefs and threatened them. Autaritus was not afraidof showing himself. With the Barbaric obstinacy which nothing coulddiscourage, he would advance twenty times a day to the rocks at thebottom, hoping every time to find them perchance displaced; and swayinghis heavy fur-covered shoulders, he reminded his companions of a bearcoming forth from its cave in springtime to see whether the snows aremelted.
Spendius, surrounded by the Greeks, hid himself in one of the gaps; ashe was afraid, he caused a rumour of his death to be spread.
They were now hideously lean; their skin was overlaid with bluishmarblings. On the evening of the ninth day three Iberians died.
Their frightened companions left the spot. They were stripped, and thewhite, naked bodies lay in the sunshine on the sand.
Then the Garamantians began to prowl slowly round about them. They weremen accustomed to existence in solitude, and they reverenced no god. Atlast the oldest of the band made a sign, and bending over the corpsesthey cut s
trips from them with their knives, then squatted upon theirheels and ate. The rest looked on from a distance; they uttered criesof horror;—many, nevertheless, being, at the bottom of their souls,jealous of such courage.
In the middle of the night some of these approached, and, dissemblingtheir eagerness, asked for a small mouthful, merely to try, they said.Bolder ones came up; their number increased; there was soon a crowd. Butalmost all of them let their hands fall on feeling the cold flesh on theedge of their lips; others, on the contrary, devoured it with delight.
That they might be led away by example, they urged one another onmutually. Such as had at first refused went to see the Garamantians, andreturned no more. They cooked the pieces on coals at the point of thesword; they salted them with dust, and contended for the best morsels.When nothing was left of the three corpses, their eyes ranged over thewhole plain to find others.
But were they not in possession of Carthaginians—twenty captives takenin the last encounter, whom no one had noticed up to the present? Thesedisappeared; moreover, it was an act of vengeance. Then, as they mustlive, as the taste for this food had become developed, and as they weredying, they cut the throats of the water-carriers, grooms, and all theserving-men belonging to the Mercenaries. They killed some of them everyday. Some ate much, recovered strength, and were sad no more.
Soon this resource failed. Then the longing was directed to the woundedand sick. Since they could not recover, it was as well to releasethem from their tortures; and, as soon as a man began to stagger, allexclaimed that he was now lost, and ought to be made use of for therest. Artifices were employed to accelerate their death; the lastremnant of their foul portion was stolen from them; they were troddenon as though by inadvertence; those in the last throes wishing to makebelieve that they were strong, strove to stretch out their arms, torise, to laugh. Men who had swooned came to themselves at the touch of anotched blade sawing off a limb;—and they still slew, ferociously andneedlessly, to sate their fury.
A mist heavy and warm, such as comes in those regions at the endof winter, sank on the fourteenth day upon the army. This changeof temperature brought numerous deaths with it, and corruption wasdeveloped with frightful rapidity in the warm dampness which was keptin by the sides of the mountain. The drizzle that fell upon the corpsessoftened them, and soon made the plain one broad tract of rottenness.Whitish vapours floated overhead; they pricked the nostrils, penetratedthe skin, and troubled the sight; and the Barbarians thought thatthrough the exhalations of the breath they could see the souls of theircompanions. They were overwhelmed with immense disgust. They wished fornothing more; they preferred to die.
Two days afterwards the weather became fine again, and hunger seizedthem once more. It seemed to them that their stomachs were beingwrenched from them with tongs. Then they rolled about in convulsions,flung handfuls of dust into their mouths, bit their arms, and burst intofrantic laughter.
They were still more tormented by thirst, for they had not a drop ofwater, the leathern bottles having been completely dried up since theninth day. To cheat their need they applied their tongues to the metalplates on their waist-belts, their ivory pommels, and the steel of theirswords. 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 ittook in coming was, according to their conjectures, an assurance of itsearly arrival. Besides, Matho, who was a brave fellow, would not desertthem. “’Twill be to-morrow!” they would say to one another; andthen to-morrow would pass.
At the beginning they had offered up prayers and vows, and practised allkinds of incantations. Just now their only feeling to their divinitieswas one of hatred, and they strove to revenge themselves by believing inthem no more.
Men of violent disposition perished first; the Africans held outbetter than the Gauls. Zarxas lay stretched at full length among theBalearians, his hair over his arm, inert. Spendius found a plant withbroad leaves filled abundantly with juice, and after declaring that itwas 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. Sometimeswhen a gypaëtus was perched on a corpse, and had been mangling it fora long time, a man would set himself to crawl towards it with a javelinbetween his teeth. He would support himself with one hand, and aftertaking a good aim, throw his weapon. The white-feathered creature,disturbed by the noise, would desist and look about in tranquil fashionlike 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 inthe dust. Some succeeded in discovering chameleons and serpents. But itwas the love of life that kept them alive. They directed their souls tothis idea exclusively, and clung to existence by an effort of the willthat prolonged it.
The most stoical kept close to one another, seated in a circle here andthere, among the dead in the middle of the plain; and wrapped in theircloaks they gave themselves up silently to their sadness.
Those who had been born in towns recalled the resounding streets, thetaverns, theatres, baths, and the barbers’ shops where there are talesto be heard. Others could once more see country districts at sunset,when the yellow corn waves, and the great oxen ascend the hills againwith the ploughshares on their necks. Travellers dreamed of cisterns,hunters of their forests, veterans of battles; and in the somnolencethat benumbed them their thoughts jostled one another with theprecipitancy and clearness of dreams. Hallucinations came suddenly uponthem; they sought for a door in the mountain in order to flee, and triedto pass through it. Others thought that they were sailing in a stormand gave orders for the handling of a ship, or else fell back in terror,perceiving Punic battalions in the clouds. There were some who imaginedthemselves at a feast, and sang.
Many through a strange mania would repeat the same word or continuallymake the same gesture. Then when they happened to raise their headsand look at one another they were choked with sobs on discovering thehorrible ravages made in their faces. Some had ceased to suffer, and towhile away the hours told of the perils which they had escaped.
Death was certain and imminent to all. How many times had they not triedto open up a passage! As to implore terms from the conqueror, by whatmeans 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 sandflow perpetually in cascades over the portcullis; and the cloaks andhair of the Barbarians were being covered with it as though the earthwere rising upon them and desirous of burying them. Nothing stirred; theeternal mountain seemed still higher to them every morning.
Sometimes flights of birds darted past beneath the blue sky in thefreedom of the air. The men closed their eyes that they might not seethem.
At first they felt a buzzing in their ears, their nails grew black, thecold reached to their breasts; they lay upon their sides and expiredwithout a cry.
On the nineteenth day two thousand Asiatics were dead, with fifteenhundred from the Archipelago, eight thousand from Libya, the youngest ofthe Mercenaries and whole tribes—in all twenty thousand soldiers, orhalf of the army.
Autaritus, who had only fifty Gauls left, was going to kill himself inorder to put an end to this state of things, when he thought he saw aman 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 leftarm. “A Carthaginian!” he exclaimed, and immediately throughoutthe plain, before the portcullis and beneath the rocks, all rose. Thesoldier was walking along the edge of the precipice; the Barbariansgazed at him from below.
Spendius picked up the head of an ox; then having formed a diadem withtwo belts, he fixed it on the horns at the end of a pole in token ofpacific intentions. The Carthaginian disappeared. They waited.
At last in the evening a sword-belt suddenly fell from above like astone loosened
from the cliff. It was made of red leather covered withembroidery, with three diamond stars, and stamped in the centre, it borethe mark of the Great Council: a horse beneath a palm-tree. This wasHamilcar’s reply, the safe-conduct that he sent them.
They had nothing to fear; any change of fortune brought with it the endof their woes. They were moved with extravagant joy, they embraced oneanother, they wept. Spendius, Autaritus, and Zarxas, four Italiotes,a Negro and two Spartans offered themselves as envoys. They wereimmediately accepted. They did not know, however, by what means theyshould get away.
But a cracking sounded in the direction of the rocks; and the mostelevated of them, after rocking to and fro, rebounded to the bottom.In fact, if they were immovable on the side of the Barbarians—for itwould have been necessary to urge them up an incline plane, andthey were, moreover, heaped together owing to the narrowness of thegorge—on the others, on the contrary, it was sufficient to driveagainst them with violence to make them descend. The Carthaginianspushed them, and at daybreak they projected into the plain like thesteps of an immense ruined staircase.
The Barbarians were still unable to climb them. Ladders were held outfor their assistance; all rushed upon them. The discharge of a catapultdrove the crowd back; only the Ten were taken away.
They walked amid the Clinabarians, leaning their hands on the horses’croups for support.
Now that their first joy was over they began to harbour anxieties.Hamilcar’s demands would be cruel. But Spendius reassured them.
“I will speak!” And he boasted that he knew excellent things to sayfor the safety of the army.
Behind all the bushes they met with ambushed sentries, who prostratedthemselves before the sword-belt which Spendius had placed over hisshoulder.
When they reached the Punic camp the crowd flocked around them, and theythought that they could hear whisperings and laughter. The door of atent opened.
Hamilcar was at the very back of it seated on a stool beside a table onwhich there shone a naked sword. He was surrounded by captains, who werestanding.
He started back on perceiving these men, and then bent over to examinethem.
Their pupils were strangely dilated, and there was a great black circleround their eyes, which extended to the lower parts of their ears; theirbluish noses stood out between their hollow cheeks, which were chinkedwith deep wrinkles; the skin of their bodies was too large for theirmuscles, and was hidden beneath a slate-coloured dust; their lips wereglued to their yellow teeth; they exhaled an infectious odour; theymight have been taken for half-opened tombs, for living sepulchres.
In the centre of the tent, on a mat on which the captains were about tosit down, there was a dish of smoking gourds. The Barbarians fastenedtheir eyes upon it with a shivering in all their limbs, and tears cameto their eyelids; nevertheless they restrained themselves.
Hamilcar turned away to speak to some one. Then they all flungthemselves upon it, flat on the ground. Their faces were soaked in thefat, and the noise of their deglutition was mingled with the sobs of joywhich they uttered. Through astonishment, doubtless, rather than pity,they were allowed to finish the mess. Then when they had risen Hamilcarwith a sign commanded the man who bore the sword-belt to speak. Spendiuswas afraid; he stammered.
Hamilcar, while listening to him, kept turning round on his finger abig gold ring, the same which had stamped the seal of Carthage upon thesword-belt. He let it fall to the ground; Spendius immediately picked itup; his servile habits came back to him in the presence of his master.The others quivered with indignation at such baseness.
But the Greek raised his voice and spoke for a long time in rapid,insidious, and even violent fashion, setting forth the crimes of Hanno,whom he knew to be Barca’s enemy, and striving to move Hamilcar’spity by the details of their miseries and the recollection of theirdevotion; in the end he became forgetful of himself, being carried awayby the warmth of his temper.
Hamilcar replied that he accepted their excuses. Peace, then, was aboutto be concluded, and now it would be a definitive one! But he requiredthat ten Mercenaries, chosen by himself, should be delivered up to himwithout weapons or tunics.
They had not expected such clemency; Spendius exclaimed: “Ah! twentyif you wish, master!”
“No! ten will suffice,” replied Hamilcar quietly.
They were sent out of the tent to deliberate. As soon as they werealone, Autaritus protested against the sacrifice of their companions,and Zarxas said to Spendius:
“Why did you not kill him? his sword was there beside you!”
“Him!” said Spendius. “Him! him!” he repeated several times, asthough the thing had been impossible, and Hamilcar were an immortal.
They were so overwhelmed with weariness that they stretched themselveson their backs on the ground, not knowing at what resolution to arrive.
Spendius urged them to yield. At last they consented, and went in again.
Then the Suffet put his hand into the hands of the ten Barbarians inturn, and pressed their thumbs; then he rubbed it on his garment, fortheir viscous skin gave a rude, soft impression to the touch, a greasytingling which induced horripilation. Afterwards he said to them:
“You are really all the chiefs of the Barbarians, and you have swornfor them?”
“Yes!” they replied.
“Without constraint, from the bottom of your souls, with the intentionof fulfilling your promises?”
They assured him that they were returning to the rest in order to fulfilthem.
“Well!” rejoined the Suffet, “in accordance with the conventionconcluded between myself, Barca, and the ambassadors of the Mercenaries,it is you whom I choose and shall keep!”
Spendius fell swooning upon the mat. The Barbarians, as thoughabandoning him, pressed close together; and there was not a word, not acomplaint.
Their companions, who were waiting for them, not seeing them return,believed themselves betrayed. The envoys had no doubt given themselvesup to the Suffet.
They waited for two days longer; then on the morning of the third, theirresolution was taken. With ropes, picks, and arrows, arranged likerungs between strips of canvas, they succeeded in scaling the rocks; andleaving the weakest, about three thousand in number, behind them, theybegan their march to rejoin the army at Tunis.
Above the gorge there stretched a meadow thinly sown with shrubs; theBarbarians devoured the buds. Afterwards they found a field of beans;and everything disappeared as though a cloud of grasshoppers had passedthat way. Three hours later they reached a second plateau bordered by abelt of green hills.
Among the undulations of these hillocks, silvery sheaves shone atintervals from one another; the Barbarians, who were dazzled by thesun, could perceive confusedly below great black masses supporting them;these rose, as though they were expanding. They were lances in towers onelephants terribly armed.
Besides the spears on their breasts, the bodkin tusks, the brass plateswhich covered their sides, and the daggers fastened to their knee-caps,they had at the extremity of their tusks a leathern bracelet, inwhich the handle of a broad cutlass was inserted; they had set outsimultaneously from the back part of the plain, and were advancing onboth sides in parallel lines.
The Barbarians were frozen with a nameless terror. They did not even tryto flee. They already found themselves surrounded.
The elephants entered into this mass of men; and the spurs on theirbreasts divided it, the lances on their tusks upturned it likeploughshares; they cut, hewed, and hacked with the scythes on theirtrunks; the towers, which were full of phalaricas, looked like volcanoeson the march; nothing could be distinguished but a large heap, whereonhuman flesh, pieces of brass and blood made white spots, grey sheetsand red fuses. The horrible animals dug out black furrows as they passedthrough the midst of it all.
The fiercest was driven by a Numidian who was crowned with a diadem ofplumes. He hurled javelins with frightful quickness, giving at intervalsa long shrill whistle. The great beasts, docile as dogs, kep
t an eye onhim during the carnage.
The circle of them narrowed by degrees; the weakened Barbarians offeredno resistance; the elephants were soon in the centre of the plain.They lacked space; they thronged half-rearing together, and their tusksclashed against one another. Suddenly Narr’ Havas quieted them, andwheeling round they trotted back to the hills.
Two syntagmata, however, had taken refuge on the right in a bend ofground, had thrown away their arms, and were all kneeling with theirfaces towards the Punic tents imploring mercy with uplifted arms.
Their legs and hands were tied; then when they were stretched on theground beside one another the elephants were brought back.
Their breasts cracked like boxes being forced; two were crushed at everystep; the big feet sank into the bodies with a motion of the hauncheswhich made the elephants appear lame. They went on to the very end.
The level surface of the plain again became motionless. Night fell.Hamilcar was delighting himself with the spectacle of his vengeance, butsuddenly he started.
He saw, and all saw, some more Barbarians six hundred paces to theleft on the summit of a peak! In fact four hundred of the stoutestMercenaries, Etruscans, Libyans, and Spartans had gained the heights atthe beginning, and had remained there in uncertainty until now. Afterthe massacre of their companions they resolved to make their way throughthe Carthaginians; they were already descending in serried columns, in amarvellous and formidable fashion.
A herald was immediately despatched to them. The Suffet needed soldiers;he received them unconditionally, so greatly did he admire theirbravery. They could even, said the man of Carthage, come a littlenearer, to a place, which he pointed out to them, where they would findprovisions.
The Barbarians ran thither and spent the night in eating. Then theCarthaginians broke into clamours against the Suffet’s partiality forthe Mercenaries.
Did he yield to these outbursts of insatiable hatred or was it arefinement of treachery? The next day he came himself, without a swordand bare-headed, with an escort of Clinabarians, and announced tothem that having too many to feed he did not intend to keep them.Nevertheless, as he wanted men and he knew of no means of selecting thegood ones, they were to fight together to the death; he would then admitthe conquerors into his own body-guard. This death was quite as good asanother;—and then moving his soldiers aside (for the Punic standardshid the horizon from the Mercenaries) he showed them the one hundredand ninety-two elephants under Narr’ Havas, forming a single straightline, their trunks brandishing broad steel blades like giant armsholding axes above their heads.
The Barbarians looked at one another silently. It was not death thatmade them turn pale, but the horrible compulsion to which they foundthemselves reduced.
The community of their lives had brought about profound friendship amongthese men. The camp, with most, took the place of their country; livingwithout a family they transferred the needful tenderness to a companion,and they would fall asleep in the starlight side by side under thesame cloak. And then in their perpetual wanderings through all sorts ofcountries, murders, and adventures, they had contracted affections, onefor the other, in which the stronger protected the younger in the midstof battles, helped him to cross precipices, sponged the sweat of feversfrom his brow, and stole food for him, and the weaker, a child perhaps,who had been picked up on the roadside, and had then become a Mercenary,repaid this devotion by a thousand kindnesses.
They exchanged their necklaces and earrings, presents which they hadmade to one another in former days, after great peril, or in hours ofintoxication. All asked to die, and none would strike. A young fellowmight be seen here and there, saying to another whose beard was grey:“No! no! you are more robust! you will avenge us, kill me!” and theman would reply: “I have fewer years to live! Strike to the heart, andthink no more about it!” Brothers gazed on one another with claspedhands, and friend bade friend eternal farewells, standing and weepingupon his shoulder.
They threw off their cuirasses that the sword-points might be thrust inthe more quickly. Then there appeared the marks of the great blows whichthey had received for Carthage, and which looked like inscriptions oncolumns.
They placed themselves in four equal ranks, after the fashion ofgladiators, and began with timid engagements. Some had even bandagedtheir eyes, and their swords waved gently through the air like blindmen’s sticks. The Carthaginians hooted, and shouted to them that theywere cowards. The Barbarians became animated, and soon the combat asgeneral, headlong, and terrible.
Sometimes two men all covered with blood would stop, fall into eachother’s arms, and die with mutual kisses. None drew back. They rushedupon the extended blades. Their delirium was so frenzied that theCarthaginians in the distance were afraid.
At last they stopped. Their breasts made a great hoarse noise, andtheir eyeballs could be seen through their long hair, which hung downas though it had come out of a purple bath. Several were turning roundrapidly, like panthers wounded in the forehead. Others stood motionlesslooking at a corpse at their feet; then they would suddenly tear theirfaces with their nails, take their swords with both hands, and plungethem into their own bodies.
There were still sixty left. They asked for drink. They were told byshouts to throw away their swords, and when they had done so water wasbrought to them.
While they were drinking, with their faces buried in the vases, sixtyCarthaginians leaped upon them and killed them with stiletos in theback.
Hamilcar had done this to gratify the instincts of his army, and, bymeans of this treachery, to attach it to his own person.
The war, then, was ended; at least he believed that it was; Mathowould not resist; in his impatience the Suffet commanded an immediatedeparture.
His scouts came to tell him that a convoy had been descried, departingtowards the Lead Mountain. Hamilcar did not trouble himself about it.The Mercenaries once annihilated, the Nomads would give him no furthertrouble. The important matter was to take Tunis. He advanced by forcedmarches upon it.
He had sent Narr’ Havas to Carthage with the news of his victory; andthe King of the Numidians, proud of his success, visited Salammbô.
She received him in her gardens under a large sycamore tree, amidpillows of yellow leather, and with Taanach beside her. Her face wascovered with a white scarf, which, passing over her mouth and forehead,allowed only her eyes to be seen; but her lips shone in the transparencyof the tissue like the gems on her fingers, for Salammbô had bothher hands wrapped up, and did not make a gesture during the wholeconversation.
Narr’ Havas announced the defeat of the Barbarians to her. She thankedhim with a blessing for the services which he had rendered to herfather. Then he began to tell her about the whole campaign.
The doves on the palm trees around them cooed softly, and other birdsfluttered amid the grass: ring-necked glareolas, Tartessus quails andPunic guinea-fowl. The garden, long uncultivated, had multipliedits verdure; coloquintidas mounted into the branches of cassias, theasclepias was scattered over fields of roses, all kinds of vegetationformed entwinings and bowers; and here and there, as in the woods,sun-rays, descending obliquely, marked the shadow of a leaf upon theground. Domestic animals, grown wild again, fled at the slightestnoise. Sometimes a gazelle might be seen trailing scattered peacocks’feathers after its little black hoofs. The clamours of the distant townwere lost in the murmuring of the waves. The sky was quite blue, and nota sail was visible on the sea.
Narr’ Havas had ceased speaking; Salammbô was looking at him withoutreplying. He wore a linen robe with flowers painted on it, and with goldfringes at the hem; two silver arrows fastened his plaited hair at thetips of his ears; his right hand rested on a pike-staff adorned withcircles of electrum and tufts of hair.
As she watched him a crowd of dim thoughts absorbed her. This young man,with his gentle voice and feminine figure, captivated her eyes by thegrace of his person, and seemed to her like an elder sister sent by theBaals to protect her. The recollection of Matho came up
on her, nor didshe resist the desire to learn what had become of him.
Narr’ Havas replied that the Carthaginians were advancing towardsTunis to take it. In proportion as he set forth their chances of successand Matho’s weaknesses, she seemed to rejoice in extraordinary hope.Her lips trembled, her breast panted. When he finally promised to killhim himself, she exclaimed: “Yes! kill him! It must be so!”
The Numidian replied that he desired this death ardently, since he wouldbe her husband when the war was over.
Salammbô started, and bent her head.
But Narr’ Havas, pursuing the subject, compared his longings toflowers languishing for rain, or to lost travellers waiting for the day.He told her, further, that she was more beautiful than the moon, betterthan the wind of morning or than the face of a guest. He would bringfor her from the country of the Blacks things such as there were none inCarthage, and the apartments in their house should be sanded with golddust.
Evening fell, and odours of balsam were exhaled. For a long time theylooked at each other in silence, and Salammbô’s eyes, in the depthsof her long draperies, resembled two stars in the rift of a cloud.Before the sun set he withdrew.
The Ancients felt themselves relieved of a great anxiety, when heleft Carthage. The people had received him with even more enthusiasticacclamations than on the first occasion. If Hamilcar and the King of theNumidians triumphed alone over the Mercenaries it would be impossibleto resist them. To weaken Barca they therefore resolved to make the agedHanno, him whom they loved, a sharer in the deliverance of Carthage.
He proceeded immediately towards the western provinces, to take hisvengeance in the very places which had witnessed his shame. But theinhabitants and the Barbarians were dead, hidden, or fled. Then hisanger was vented upon the country. He burnt the ruins of the ruins, hedid not leave a single tree nor a blade of grass; the children and theinfirm, that were met with, were tortured; he gave the women to hissoldiers to be violated before they were slaughtered.
Often, on the crests of the hills, black tents were struck as thoughoverturned by the wind, and broad, brilliantly bordered discs, whichwere recognised as being chariot-wheels, revolved with a plaintive soundas they gradually disappeared in the valleys. The tribes, which hadabandoned the siege of Carthage, were wandering in this way through theprovinces, waiting for an opportunity, or for some victory to be gainedby the Mercenaries, in order to return. But, whether from terror orfamine, they all took the roads to their native lands, and disappeared.
Hamilcar was not jealous of Hanno’s successes. Nevertheless he was ina hurry to end matters; he commanded him to fall back upon Tunis; andHanno, who loved his country, was under the walls of the town on theappointed day.
For its protection it had its aboriginal population, twelve thousandMercenaries, and, in addition, all the Eaters of Uncleanness, forlike Matho they were riveted to the horizon of Carthage, and plebs andschalischim gazed at its lofty walls from afar, looking back in thoughtto boundless enjoyments. With this harmony of hatred, resistance wasbriskly organised. Leathern bottles were taken to make helmets; all thepalm-trees in the gardens were cut down for lances; cisterns were dug;while for provisions they caught on the shores of the lake big whitefish, fed on corpses and filth. Their ramparts, kept in ruins now by thejealousy of Carthage, were so weak that they could be thrown down with apush of the shoulder. Matho stopped up the holes in them with the stonesof the houses. It was the last struggle; he hoped for nothing, and yethe told himself that fortune was fickle.
As the Carthaginians approached they noticed a man on the rampart whotowered over the battlements from his belt upwards. The arrows thatflew about him seemed to frighten him no more than a swarm of swallows.Extraordinary to say, none of them touched him.
Hamilcar pitched his camp on the south side; Narr’ Havas, to hisright, occupied the plain of Rhades, and Hanno the shore of the lake;and the three generals were to maintain their respective positions, soas all to attack the walls simultaneously.
But Hamilcar wished first to show the Mercenaries that he would punishthem like slaves. He had the ten ambassadors crucified beside oneanother on a hillock in front of the town.
At the sight of this the besieged forsook the rampart.
Matho had said to himself that if he could pass between the walls andNarr’ Havas’s tents with such rapidity that the Numidians hadnot time to come out, he could fall upon the rear of the Carthaginianinfantry, who would be caught between his division and those inside. Hedashed out with his veterans.
Narr’ Havas perceived him; he crossed the shore of the lake, and cameto warn Hanno to dispatch men to Hamilcar’s assistance. Did he believeBarca too weak to resist the Mercenaries? Was it a piece of treachery orfolly? No one could ever learn.
Hanno, desiring to humiliate his rival, did not hesitate. He shoutedorders to sound the trumpets, and his whole army rushed upon theBarbarians. The latter returned, and ran straight against theCarthaginians; they knocked them down, crushed them under their feet,and, driving them back in this way, reached the tent of Hanno, who wasthen surrounded by thirty Carthaginians, the most illustrious of theAncients.
He appeared stupefied by their audacity; he called for his captains.Every one thrust his fist under his throat, vociferating abuse. Thecrowd pressed on; and those who had their hands on him could scarceretain their hold. However, he tried to whisper to them: “I will gaveyou whatever you want! I am rich! Save me!” They dragged him along;heavy as he was his feet did not touch the ground. The Ancients hadbeen carried off. His terror increased. “You have beaten me! I am yourcaptive! I will ransom myself! Listen to me, my friends!” and bornealong by all those shoulders which were pressed against his sides, herepeated: “What are you going to do? What do you want? You can seethat I am not obstanite! I have always been good-natured!”
A gigantic cross stood at the gate. The Barbarians howled: “Here!here!” But he raised his voice still higher; and in the names of theirgods he called upon them to lead him to the schalischim, because hewished to confide to him something on which their safety depended.
They paused, some asserting that it was right to summon Matho. He wassent for.
Hanno fell upon the grass; and he saw around him other crosses also, asthough the torture by which he was about to perish had been multipliedbeforehand; he made efforts to convince himself that he was mistaken,that there was only one, and even to believe that there were none atall. At last he was lifted up.
“Speak!” said Matho.
He offered to give up Hamilcar; then they would enter Carthage and bothbe kings.
Matho withdrew, signing to the others to make haste. It was a stratagem,he thought, to gain time.
The Barbarian was mistaken; Hanno was in an extremity when considerationis had to nothing, and, moreover, he so execrated Hamilcar that hewould have sacrificed him and all his soldiers on the slightest hope ofsafety.
The Ancients were languishing on the ground at the foot of the crosses;ropes had already been passed beneath their armpits. Then the oldSuffet, understanding that he must die, wept.
They tore off the clothes that were still left on him—and the horrorof his person appeared. Ulcers covered the nameless mass; the fat on hislegs hid the nails on his feet; from his fingers there hung what lookedlike greenish strips; and the tears streaming through the tubercles onhis cheeks gave to his face an expression of frightful sadness, forthey seemed to take up more room than on another human face. His royalfillet, which was half unfastened, trailed with his white hair in thedust.
They thought that they had no ropes strong enough to haul him up to thetop of the cross, and they nailed him upon it, after the Punic fashion,before it was erected. But his pride awoke in his pain. He began tooverwhelm them with abuse. He foamed and twisted like a marine monsterbeing slaughtered on the shore, and predicted that they would all endmore horribly still, and that he would be avenged.
He was. On the other side of the town, whence there now escaped jets offlame with column
s of smoke, the ambassadors from the Mercenaries werein their last throes.
Some who had swooned at first had just revived in the freshness of thewind; but their chins still rested upon their breasts, and their bodieshad fallen somewhat, in spite of the nails in their arms, which werefastened higher than their heads; from their heels and hands bloodfell in big, slow drops, as ripe fruit falls from the branches of atree,—and Carthage, gulf, mountains, and plains all appeared to themto be revolving like an immense wheel; sometimes a cloud of dust, risingfrom the ground, enveloped them in its eddies; they burned with horriblethirst, their tongues curled in their mouths, and they felt an icy sweatflowing over them with their departing souls.
Nevertheless they had glimpses, at an infinite depth, of streets,marching soldiers, and the swinging of swords; and the tumult of battlereached them dimly like the noise of the sea to shipwrecked men dyingon the masts of a ship. The Italiotes, who were sturdier than the rest,were still shrieking. The Lacedæmonians were silent, with eyelidsclosed; Zarxas, once so vigorous, was bending like a broken reed; theEthiopian beside him had his head thrown back over the arms of thecross; Autaritus was motionless, rolling his eyes; his great head ofhair, caught in a cleft in the wood, fell straight upon his forehead,and his death-rattle seemed rather to be a roar of anger. As toSpendius, a strange courage had come to him; he despised life now inthe certainty which he possessed of an almost immediate and an eternalemancipation, and he awaited death with impassibility.
Amid their swooning, they sometimes started at the brushing of featherspassing across their lips. Large wings swung shadows around them,croakings sounded in the air; and as Spendius’s cross was the highest,it was upon his that the first vulture alighted. Then he turned his facetowards Autaritus, and said slowly to him with an unaccountable smile:
“Do you remember the lions on the road to Sicca?”
“They were our brothers!” replied the Gaul, as he expired.
The Suffet, meanwhile, had bored through the walls and reachedthe citadel. The smoke suddenly disappeared before a gust of wind,discovering the horizon as far as the walls of Carthage; he even thoughtthat he could distinguish people watching on the platform of Eschmoun;then, bringing back his eyes, he perceived thirty crosses of extravagantsize on the shore of the Lake, to the left.
In fact, to render them still more frightful, they had been constructedwith tent-poles fastened end to end, and the thirty corpses of theAncients appeared high up in the sky. They had what looked like whitebutterflies on their breasts; these were the feathers of the arrowswhich had been shot at them from below.
A broad gold ribbon shone on the summit of the highest; it hung downto the shoulder, there being no arm on that side, and Hamilcar had somedifficulty in recognising Hanno. His spongy bones had given way underthe iron pins, portions of his limbs had come off, and nothing was lefton the cross but shapeless remains, like the fragments of animals thatare hung up on huntsmen’s doors.
The Suffet could not have known anything about it; the town in front ofhim masked everything that was beyond and behind; and the captains whohad been successively sent to the two generals had not re-appeared. Thenfugitives arrived with the tale of the rout, and the Punic army halted.This catastrophe, falling upon them as it did in the midst of theirvictory, stupefied them. Hamilcar’s orders were no longer listened to.
Matho took advantage of this to continue his ravages among theNumidians.
Hanno’s camp having been overthrown, he had returned against them.The elephants came out; but the Mercenaries advanced through the plainshaking about flaming firebrands, which they had plucked from the walls,and the great beasts, in fright, ran headlong into the gulf, wherethey killed one another in their struggles, or were drowned beneaththe weight of their cuirasses. Narr’ Havas had already launched hiscavalry; all threw themselves face downwards upon the ground; then, whenthe horses were within three paces of them, they sprang beneath theirbellies, ripped them open with dagger-strokes, and half the Numidianshad perished when Barca came up.
The exhausted Mercenaries could not withstand his troops. They retiredin good order to the mountain of the Hot Springs. The Suffet was prudentenough not to pursue them. He directed his course to the mouths of theMacaras.
Tunis was his; but it was now nothing but a heap of smoking rubbish. Theruins fell through the breaches in the walls to the centre of the plain;quite in the background, between the shores of the gulf, the corpses ofthe elephants drifting before the wind conflicted, like an archipelagoof black rocks floating on the water.
Narr’ Havas had drained his forests of these animals, taking young andold, male and female, to keep up the war, and the military force ofhis kingdom could not repair the loss. The people who had seen themperishing at a distance were grieved at it; men lamented in thestreets, calling them by their names like deceased friends: “Ah! theInvincible! the Victory! the Thunderer! the Swallow!” On the firstday, too, there was no talk except of the dead citizens. But on themorrow the tents of the Mercenaries were seen on the mountain of theHot Springs. Then so deep was the despair that many people, especiallywomen, flung themselves headlong from the top of the Acropolis.
Hamilcar’s designs were not known. He lived alone in his tent withnone near him but a young boy, and no one ever ate with them, not evenexcepting Narr’ Havas. Nevertheless he showed great deference to thelatter after Hanno’s defeat; but the king of the Numidians had toogreat an interest in becoming his son not to distrust him.
This inertness veiled skilful manouvres. Hamilcar seduced the heads ofthe villages by all sorts of artifices; and the Mercenaries were hunted,repulsed, and enclosed like wild beasts. As soon as they entered a wood,the trees caught fire around them; when they drank of a spring it waspoisoned; the caves in which they hid in order to sleep were walled up.Their old accomplices, the populations who had hitherto defended them,now pursued them; and they continually recognised Carthaginian armour inthese bands.
Many had their faces consumed with red tetters; this, they thought, hadcome to them through touching Hanno. Others imagined that it was becausethey had eaten Salammbô’s fishes, and far from repenting of it, theydreamed of even more abominable sacrileges, so that the abasement ofthe Punic Gods might be still greater. They would fain have exterminatedthem.
In this way they lingered for three months along the eastern coast, andthen behind the mountain of Selloum, and as far as the first sands ofthe desert. They sought for a place of refuge, no matter where.Utica and Hippo-Zarytus alone had not betrayed them; but Hamilcar wasencompassing these two towns. Then they went northwards at haphazardwithout even knowing the various routes. Their many miseries hadconfused their understandings.
The only feeling left them was one of exasperation, which went ondeveloping; and one day they found themselves again in the gorges ofCobus and once more before Carthage!
Then the actions multiplied. Fortune remained equal; but both sides wereso wearied that they would willingly have exchanged these skirmishes fora great battle, provided that it were really the last.
Matho was inclined to carry this proposal himself to the Suffet. One ofhis Libyans devoted himself for the purpose. All were convinced as theysaw him depart that he would not return.
He returned the same evening.
Hamilcar accepted the challenge. The encounter should take place thefollowing day at sunrise, in the plain of Rhades.
The Mercenaries wished to know whether he had said anything more, andthe Libyan added:
“As I remained in his presence, he asked me what I was waiting for.‘To be killed!’ I replied. Then he rejoined: ‘No! begone! thatwill be to-morrow with the rest.’”
This generosity astonished the Barbarians; some were terrified by it,and Matho regretted that the emissary had not been killed.
He had still remaining three thousand Africans, twelve hundredGreeks, fifteen hundred Campanians, two hundred Iberians, four hundredEtruscans, five hundred Samnites, forty Gauls, and a troop of Naffurs,nomad bandits
met with in the date region—in all seven thousand twohundred and nineteen soldiers, but not one complete syntagmata. Theyhad stopped up the holes in their cuirasses with the shoulder-blades ofquadrupeds, and replaced their brass cothurni with worn sandals. Theirgarments were weighted with copper or steel plates; their coats ofmail hung in tatters about them, and scars appeared like purple threadsthrough the hair on their arms and faces.
The wraiths of their dead companions came back to their souls andincreased their energy; they felt, in a confused way, that they were theministers of a god diffused in the hearts of the oppressed, and were thepontiffs, so to speak, of universal vengeance! Then they were enragedwith grief at what was extravagant injustice, and above all by the sightof Carthage on the horizon. They swore an oath to fight for one anotheruntil death.
The beasts of burden were killed, and as much as possible was eaten soas to gain strength; afterwards they slept. Some prayed, turning towardsdifferent constellations.
The Carthaginians arrived first in the plain. They rubbed the edges oftheir shields with oil to make the arrows glide off them easily; thefoot-soldiers who wore long hair took the precaution of cutting it onthe forehead; and Hamilcar ordered all bowls to be inverted from thefifth hour, knowing that it is disadvantageous to fight with the stomachtoo full. His army amounted to fourteen thousand men, or about doublethe number of the Barbarians. Nevertheless, he had never felt suchanxiety; if he succumbed it would mean the annihilation of the Republic,and he would perish on the cross; if, on the contrary, he triumphed, hewould reach Italy by way of the Pyrenees, the Gauls, and the Alps, andthe empire of the Barcas would become eternal. Twenty times during thenight he rose to inspect everything himself, down to the most triflingdetails. As to the Carthaginians, they were exasperated by theirlengthened terror. Narr’ Havas suspected the fidelity of hisNumidians. Moreover, the Barbarians might vanquish them. A strangeweakness had come upon him; every moment he drank large cups of water.
But a man whom he did not know opened his tent and laid on the ground acrown of rock-salt, adorned with hieratic designs formed with sulphur,and lozenges of mother-of-pearl; a marriage crown was sometimes sent toa betrothed husband; it was a proof of love, a sort of invitation.
Nevertheless Hamilcar’s daughter had no tenderness for Narr’ Havas.
The recollection of Matho disturbed her in an intolerable manner; itseemed to her that the death of this man would unburden her thoughts,just as people to cure themselves of the bite of a viper crush it uponthe wound. The king of the Numidians was depending upon her; he awaitedthe wedding with impatience, and, as it was to follow the victory,Salammbô made him this present to stimulate his courage. Then hisdistress vanished, and he thought only of the happiness of possessing sobeautiful a woman.
The same vision had assailed Matho; but he cast it from him immediately,and his love, that he thus thrust back, was poured out upon hiscompanions in arms. He cherished them like portions of his own person,of his hatred,—and he felt his spirit higher, and his arms stronger;everything that he was to accomplish appeared clearly before him. Ifsighs sometimes escaped him, it was because he was thinking of Spendius.
He drew up the Barbarians in six equal ranks. He posted the Etruscansin the centre, all being fastened to a bronze chain; the archers werebehind, and on the wings he distributed the Naffurs, who were mounted onshort-haired camels, covered with ostrich feathers.
The Suffet arranged the Carthaginians in similar order. He placed theClinabarians outside the infantry next to the velites, and the Numidiansbeyond; when day appeared, both sides were thus in line face to face.All gazed at each other from a distance, with round fierce eyes. Therewas at first some hesitation; at last both armies moved.
The Barbarians advanced slowly so as not to become out of breath,beating the ground with their feet; the centre of the Punic army formeda convex curve. Then came the burst of a terrible shock, like the crashof two fleets in collision. The first rank of the Barbarians had quicklyopened up, and the marksmen, hidden behind the others, discharged theirbullets, arrows, and javelins. The curve of the Carthaginians, however,flattened by degrees, became quite straight, and then bent inwards; uponthis, the two sections of the velites drew together in parallel lines,like the legs of a compass that is being closed. The Barbarians, whowere attacking the phalanx with fury, entered the gap; they were beinglost; Matho checked them,—and while the Carthaginian wings continuedto advance, he drew out the three inner ranks of his line; they sooncovered his flanks, and his army appeared in triple array.
But the Barbarians placed at the extremities were the weakest,especially those on the left, who had exhausted their quivers, and thetroop of velites, which had at last come up against them, was cuttingthem up greatly.
Matho made them fall back. His right comprised Campanians, who werearmed with axes; he hurled them against the Carthaginian left; thecentre attacked the enemy, and those at the other extremity, who wereout of peril, kept the velites at a distance.
Then Hamilcar divided his horsemen into squadrons, placed hoplitesbetween them, and sent them against the Mercenaries.
Those cone-shaped masses presented a front of horses, and their broadersides were filled and bristling with lances. The Barbarians found itimpossible to resist; the Greek foot-soldiers alone had brazen armour,all the rest had cutlasses on the end of poles, scythes taken from thefarms, or swords manufactured out of the fellies of wheels; thesoft blades were twisted by a blow, and while they were engaged instraightening them under their heels, the Carthaginians massacred themright and left at their ease.
But the Etruscans, riveted to their chain, did not stir; those who weredead, being prevented from falling, formed an obstruction with theircorpses; and the great bronze line widened and contracted in turn, assupple as a serpent, and as impregnable as a wall. The Barbarians wouldcome to re-form behind it, pant for a minute, and then set off againwith the fragments of their weapons in their hands.
Many already had none left, and they leaped upon the Carthaginians,biting their faces like dogs. The Gauls in their pride strippedthemselves of the sagum; they showed their great white bodies from adistance, and they enlarged their wounds to terrify the enemy. The voiceof the crier announcing the orders could no longer be heard in themidst of the Punic syntagmata; their signals were being repeated by thestandards, which were raised above the dust, and every one was sweptaway in the swaying of the great mass that surrounded him.
Hamilcar commanded the Numidians to advance. But the Naffurs rushed tomeet them.
Clad in vast black robes, with a tuft of hair on the top of the skull,and a shield of rhinoceros leather, they wielded a steel which had nohandle, and which they held by a rope; and their camels, which bristledall over with feathers, uttered long, hoarse cluckings. Each blade fellon a precise spot, then rose again with a smart stroke carrying off alimb with it. The fierce beasts galloped through the syntagmata. Some,whose legs were broken, went hopping along like wounded ostriches.
The Punic infantry turned in a body upon the Barbarians, and cut themoff. Their maniples wheeled about at intervals from one another. Themore brilliant Carthaginian weapons encircled them like golden crowns;there was a swarming movement in the centre, and the sun, striking downupon the points of the swords, made them glitter with white flickeringgleams. However, files of Clinabarians lay stretched upon the plain;some Mercenaries snatched away their armour, clothed themselves in it,and then returned to the fray. The deluded Carthaginians were severaltimes entangled in their midst. They would stand stupidly motionless,or else would back, surge again, and triumphant shouts rising in thedistance seemed to drive them along like derelicts in a storm. Hamilcarwas growing desperate; all was about to perish beneath the genius ofMatho and the invincible courage of the Mercenaries.
But a great noise of tabourines burst forth on the horizon. It was acrowd of old men, sick persons, children of fifteen years of age, andeven women, who, being unable to withstand their distress any longer,had set out from Carthage,
and, for the purpose of placing themselvesunder the protection of something formidable, had taken fromHamilcar’s palace the only elephant that the Republic nowpossessed,—that one, namely, whose trunk had been cut off.
Then it seemed to the Carthaginians that their country, forsaking itswalls, was coming to command them to die for her. They were seized withincreased fury, and the Numidians carried away all the rest.
The Barbarians had set themselves with their backs to a hillock inthe centre of the plain. They had no chance of conquering, or even ofsurviving; but they were the best, the most intrepid, and the strongest.
The people from Carthage began to throw spits, larding-pins and hammers,over the heads of the Numidians; those whom consuls had feared diedbeneath sticks hurled by women; the Punic populace was exterminating theMercenaries.
The latter had taken refuge on the top of the hill. Their circle closedup after every fresh breach; twice it descended to be immediatelyrepulsed with a shock; and the Carthaginians stretched forth their armspell-mell, thrusting their pikes between the legs of their companions,and raking at random before them. They slipped in the blood; the steepslope of the ground made the corpses roll to the bottom. The elephant,which was trying to climb the hillock, was up to its belly; it seemed tobe crawling over them with delight; and its shortened trunk, which wasbroad at the extremity, rose from time to time like an enormous leech.
Then all paused. The Carthaginians ground their teeth as they gazed atthe hill, where the Barbarians were standing.
At last they dashed at them abruptly, and the fight began again. TheMercenaries would often let them approach, shouting to them that theywished to surrender; then, with frightful sneers, they would killthemselves at a blow, and as the dead fell, the rest would mount uponthem to defend themselves. It was a kind of pyramid, which grew largerby degrees.
Soon there were only fifty, then only twenty, only three, and lastlyonly two—a Samnite armed with an axe, and Matho who still had hissword.
The Samnite with bent hams swept his axe alternately to the right andleft, at the same time warning Matho of the blows that were being aimedat him. “Master, this way! that way! stoop down!”
Matho had lost his shoulder-pieces, his helmet, his cuirass; he wascompletely naked, and more livid than the dead, with his hair quiteerect, and two patches of foam at the corners of his lips,—and hissword whirled so rapidly that it formed an aureola around him. Astone broke it near the guard; the Samnite was killed and the flood ofCarthaginians closed in, they touched Matho. Then he raised both hisempty hands towards heaven, closed his eyes, and, opening out his armslike a man throwing himself from the summit of a promontory into thesea, hurled himself among the pikes.
They moved away before him. Several times he ran against theCarthaginians. But they always drew back and turned their weapons aside.
His foot struck against a sword. Matho tried to seize it. He felthimself tied by the wrists and knees, and fell.
Narr’ Havas had been following him for some time, step by step,with one of the large nets used for capturing wild beasts, and, takingadvantage of the moment when he stooped down, had involved him in it.
Then he was fastened on the elephants with his four limbs forming across; and all those who were not wounded escorted him, and rushed withgreat tumult towards Carthage.
The news of the victory had arrived in some inexplicable way at thethird hour of the night; the clepsydra of Khamon had just completed thefifth as they reached Malqua; then Matho opened his eyes. There were somany lights in the houses that the town appeared to be all in flames.
An immense clamour reached him dimly; and lying on his back he looked atthe stars.
Then a door closed and he was wrapped in darkness.
On the morrow, at the same hour, the last of the men left in the Pass ofthe Hatchet expired.
On the day that their companions had set out, some Zuaeces who werereturning had tumbled the rocks down, and had fed them for some time.
The Barbarians constantly expected to see Matho appear,—and fromdiscouragement, from languor, and from the obstinacy of sick men whoobject to change their situation, they would not leave the mountain;at last the provisions were exhausted and the Zuaeces went away. It wasknown that they numbered scarcely more than thirteen hundred men, andthere was no need to employ soldiers to put an end to them.
Wild beasts, especially lions, had multiplied during the three yearsthat the war had lasted. Narr’ Havas had held a great battue,and—after tying goats at intervals—had run upon them and so driventhem towards the Pass of the Hatchet;—and they were now all living init when a man arrived who had been sent by the Ancients to find out whatthere was left of the Barbarians.
Lions and corpses were lying over the tract of the plain, and the deadwere mingled with clothes and armour. Nearly all had the face or an armwanting; some appeared to be still intact; others were completely driedup, and their helmets were filled with powdery skulls; feet which hadlost their flesh stood out straight from the knemides; skeletons stillwore their cloaks; and bones, cleaned by the sun, made gleaming spots inthe midst of the sand.
The lions were resting with their breasts against the ground and bothpaws stretched out, winking their eyelids in the bright daylight, whichwas heightened by the reflection from the white rocks. Others wereseated on their hind-quarters and staring before them, or else weresleeping, rolled into a ball and half hidden by their great manes; theyall looked well fed, tired, and dull. They were as motionless as themountain and the dead. Night was falling; the sky was striped with broadred bands in the west.
In one of the heaps, which in an irregular fashion embossed the plain,something rose up vaguer than a spectre. Then one of the lions sethimself in motion, his monstrous form cutting a black shadow on thebackground of the purple sky, and when he was quite close to the man, heknocked him down with a single blow of his paw.
Then, stretching himself flat upon him, he slowly drew out the entrailswith the edge of his teeth.
Afterwards he opened his huge jaws, and for some minutes uttered alengthened roar which was repeated by the echoes in the mountain, andwas finally lost in the solitude.
Suddenly some small gravel rolled down from above. The rustling of rapidsteps was heard, and in the direction of the portcullis and of the gorgethere appeared pointed muzzles and straight ears, with gleaming, tawnyeyes. These were the jackals coming to eat what was left.
The Carthaginian, who was leaning over the top of the precipice to look,went back again.
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