第57章

He held in his spotted and sweat-covered horse with silver reins.The bands fastened to the horns on his helmet flapped in the wind behind him, and he had placed his oval shield beneath his left thigh.With a motion of his triple-pointed pike he checked the army.

The Tarentines leaped quickly upon their spare horses, and set off right and left towards the river and towards the town.

The phalanx exterminated all the remaining Barbarians at leisure.When the swords appeared they would stretch out their throats and close their eyelids.Others defended themselves to the last, and were knocked down from a distance with flints like mad dogs.Hamilcar had desired the taking of prisoners, but the Carthaginians obeyed him grudgingly, so much pleasure did they derive from plunging their swords into the bodies of the Barbarians.As they were too hot they set about their work with bare arms like mowers; and when they desisted to take breath they would follow with their eyes a horseman galloping across the country after a fleeing soldier.He would succeed in seizing him by the hair, hold him thus for a while, and then fell him with a blow of his axe.

Night fell.Carthaginians and Barbarians had disappeared.The elephants which had taken to flight roamed in the horizon with their fired towers.These burned here and there in the darkness like beacons nearly half lost in the mist; and no movement could be discerned in the plain save the undulation of the river, which was heaped with corpses, and was drifting them away to the sea.

Two hours afterwards Matho arrived.He caught sight in the starlight of long, uneven heaps lying upon the ground.

They were files of Barbarians.He stooped down; all were dead.He called into the distance, but no voice replied.

That very morning he had left Hippo-Zarytus with his soldiers to march upon Carthage.At Utica the army under Spendius had just set out, and the inhabitants were beginning to fire the engines.All had fought desperately.But, the tumult which was going on in the direction of the bridge increasing in an incomprehensible fashion, Matho had struck across the mountain by the shortest road, and as the Barbarians were fleeing over the plain he had encountered nobody.

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Matho, still advancing, thought that he could distinguish Punic engines, for horses' heads which did not stir appeared in the air fixed upon the tops of piles of staves which could not be seen; and further off he could hear a great clamour, a noise of songs, and clashing of cups.

Then, not knowing where he was nor how to find Spendius, assailed with anguish, scared, and lost in the darkness, he returned more impetuously by the same road.The dawn as growing grey when from the top of the mountain he perceived the town with the carcases of the engines blackened by the flames and looking like giant skeletons leaning against the walls.

All was peaceful amid extraordinary silence and heaviness.Among his soldiers on the verge of the tents men were sleeping nearly naked, each upon his back, or with his forehead against his arm which was supported by his cuirass.Some were unwinding bloodstained bandages from their legs.Those who were doomed to die rolled their heads about gently; others dragged themselves along and brought them drink.The sentries walked up and down along the narrow paths in order to warm themselves, or stood in a fierce attitude with their faces turned towards the horizon, and their pikes on their shoulders.Matho found Spendius sheltered beneath a rag of canvas, supported by two sticks set in the ground, his knee in his hands and his head cast down.

They remained for a long time without speaking.

At last Matho murmured: "Conquered!"

Spendius rejoined in a gloomy voice: "Yes, conquered!"And to all questions he replied by gestures of despair.