第71章

For prudence sake they had made a wide detour the day before.But they met with no one just now; the region being a sterile one, the Barbarians had not passed that way.

Gradually the devastation began again.Sometimes a piece of mosaic would be displayed in the centre of a field, the sole remnant of a vanished mansion; and the leafless olive trees looked at a distance like large bushes of thorns.They passed through a town in which houses were burnt to the ground.Human skeletons might be seen along the walls.There were some, too, of dromedaries and mules.Half-gnawed carrion blocked the streets.

Night fell.The sky was lowering and cloudy.

They ascended again for two hours in a westerly direction, when suddenly they perceived a quantity of little flames before them.

These were shining at the bottom of an ampitheatre.Gold plates, as they displaced one another, glanced here and there.These were the cuirasses of the Clinabarians in the Punic camp; then in the neighbourhood they distinguished other and more numerous lights, for the armies of the Mercenaries, now blended together, extended over a great space.

Salammbo made a movement as though to advance.But Schahabarim's man took her further away, and they passed along by the terrace which enclosed the camp of the Barbarians.A breach became visible in it, and the slave disappeared.

A sentry was walking upon the top of the entrenchment with a bow in his hand and a pike on his shoulder.

Salammbo drew still nearer; the Barbarian knelt and a long arrow pierced the hem of her cloak.Then as she stood motionless and shrieking, he asked her what she wanted.

"To speak to Matho," she replied."I am a fugitive from Carthage."He gave a whistle, which was repeated at intervals further away.

Salammbo waited; her frightened horse moved round and round, sniffing.

When Matho arrived the moon was rising behind her.But she had a yellow veil with black flowers over her face, and so many draperies about her person, that it was impossible to make any guess about her.

From the top of the terrace he gazed upon this vague form standing up like a phantom in the penumbrae of the evening.

At last she said to him:

"Lead me to your tent! I wish it!"

A recollection which he could not define passed through his memory.He felt his heart beating.The air of command intimidated him.

"Follow me!" he said.

The barrier was lowered, and immediately she was in the camp of the Barbarians.

It was filled with a great tumult and a great throng.Bright fires were burning beneath hanging pots; and their purpled reflections illuminating some places left others completely in the dark.There was shouting and calling; shackled horses formed long straight lines amid the tents; the latter were round and square, of leather or of canvas;there were huts of reeds, and holes in the sand such as are made by dogs.Soldiers were carting faggots, resting on their elbows on the ground, or wrapping themselves up in mats and preparing to sleep; and Salammbo's horse sometimes stretched out a leg and jumped in order to pass over them.

She remembered that she had seen them before; but their beards were longer now, their faces still blacker, and their voices hoarser.

Matho, who walked before her, waved them off with a gesture of his arm which raised his red mantle.Some kissed his hands; others bending their spines approached him to ask for orders, for he was now veritable and sole chief of the Barbarians; Spendius, Autaritus, and Narr' Havas had become disheartened, and he had displayed so much audacity and obstinacy that all obeyed him.

Salammbo followed him through the entire camp.His tent was at the end, three hundred feet from Hamilcar's entrenchments.

She noticed a wide pit on the right, and it seemed to her that faces were resting against the edge of it on a level with the ground, as decapitated heads might have done.However, their eyes moved, and from these half-opened mouths groanings escaped in the Punic tongue.

Two Negroes holding resin lights stood on both sides of the door.

Matho drew the canvas abruptly aside.She followed him.It was a deep tent with a pole standing up in the centre.It was lighted by a large lamp-holder shaped like a lotus and full of a yellow oil wherein floated handfuls of burning tow, and military things might be distinguished gleaming in the shade.A naked sword leaned against a stool by the side of a shield; whips of hippopotamus leather, cymbals, bells, and necklaces were displayed pell-mell on baskets of esparto-grass; a felt rug lay soiled with crumbs of black bread; some copper money was carelessly heaped upon a round stone in a corner, and through the rents in the canvas the wind brought the dust from without, together with the smell of the elephants, which might be heard eating and shaking their chains.

"Who are you?" said Matho.

She looked slowly around her without replying; then her eyes were arrested in the background, where something bluish and sparkling fell upon a bed of palm-branches.

She advanced quickly.A cry escaped her.Matho stamped his foot behind her.

"Who brings you here? why do you come?"

"To take it!" she replied, pointing to the zaimph, and with the other hand she tore the veils from her head.He drew back with his elbows behind him, gaping, almost terrified.

She felt as if she were leaning on the might of the gods; and looking at him face to face she asked him for the zaimph; she demanded it in words abundant and superb.