Part 17 (1/2)
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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s; 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 were, moreover, heaped together owing to the narrowness of the gorge-on the others, on the contrary, it was sufficient to drive against them with violence to make them descend. The Carthaginians pushed them, and at daybreak they projected into the plain like the steps of an immense ruined staircase.
The Barbarians were still unable to climb them. Ladders were held out for their a.s.sistance; all rushed upon them. The discharge of a catapult drove 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 rea.s.sured them.
”I will speak!” And he boasted that he knew excellent things to say for the safety of the army.
Behind all the bushes they met with ambushed sentries, who prostrated themselves before the sword-belt which Spendius had placed over his shoulder.
When they reached the Punic camp the crowd flocked around them, and they thought that they could hear whisperings and laughter. The door of a tent opened.
Hamilcar was at the very back of it seated on a stool beside a table on which there shone a naked sword. He was surrounded by captains, who were standing.
He started back on perceiving these men, and then bent over to examine them.
Their pupils were strangely dilated, and there was a great black circle round their eyes, which extended to the lower parts of their ears; their bluish noses stood out between their hollow cheeks, which were c.h.i.n.ked with deep wrinkles; the skin of their bodies was too large for their muscles, and was hidden beneath a slate-coloured dust; their lips were glued to their yellow teeth; they exhaled an infectious odour; they might 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 to sit down, there was a dish of smoking gourds. The Barbarians fastened their eyes upon it with a s.h.i.+vering in all their limbs, and tears came to their eyelids; nevertheless they restrained themselves.
Hamilcar turned away to speak to some one. Then they all flung themselves upon it, flat on the ground. Their faces were soaked in the fat, and the noise of their deglut.i.tion was mingled with the sobs of joy which they uttered. Through astonishment, doubtless, rather than pity, they were allowed to finish the mess. Then when they had risen Hamilcar with a sign commanded the man who bore the sword-belt to speak. Spendius was afraid; he stammered.
Hamilcar, while listening to him, kept turning round on his finger a big gold ring, the same which had stamped the seal of Carthage upon the sword-belt. He let it fall to the ground; Spendius immediately picked it up; 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 fas.h.i.+on, setting forth the crimes of Hanno, whom he knew to be Barca's enemy, and striving to move Hamilcar's pity by the details of their miseries and the recollection of their devotion; in the end he became forgetful of himself, being carried away by the warmth of his temper.
Hamilcar replied that he accepted their excuses. Peace, then, was about to be concluded, and now it would be a definitive one! But he required that ten Mercenaries, chosen by himself, should be delivered up to him without weapons or tunics.
They had not expected such clemency; Spendius exclaimed: ”Ah! twenty if you wish, master!”
”No! ten will suffice,” replied Hamilcar quietly.
They were sent out of the tent to deliberate. As soon as they were alone, 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, as though the thing had been impossible, and Hamilcar were an immortal.
They were so overwhelmed with weariness that they stretched themselves on 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 in turn, and pressed their thumbs; then he rubbed it on his garment, for their viscous skin gave a rude, soft impression to the touch, a greasy tingling which induced horripilation. Afterwards he said to them: ”You are really all the chiefs of the Barbarians, and you have sworn for them?”
”Yes!” they replied.
”Without constraint, from the bottom of your souls, with the intention of fulfilling your promises?”
They a.s.sured him that they were returning to the rest in order to fulfil them.
”Well!” rejoined the Suffet, ”in accordance with the convention concluded between myself, Barca, and the amba.s.sadors of the Mercenaries, it is you whom I choose and shall keep!”
Spendius fell swooning upon the mat. The Barbarians, as though abandoning him, pressed close together; and there was not a word, not a complaint.
Their companions, who were waiting for them, not seeing them return, believed themselves betrayed. The envoys had no doubt given themselves up to the Suffet.
They waited for two days longer; then on the morning of the third, their resolution was taken. With ropes, picks, and arrows, arranged like rungs between strips of canvas, they succeeded in scaling the rocks; and leaving the weakest, about three thousand in number, behind them, they began their march to rejoin the army at Tunis.
Above the gorge there stretched a meadow thinly sown with shrubs; the Barbarians devoured the buds. Afterwards they found a field of beans; and everything disappeared as though a cloud of gra.s.shoppers had pa.s.sed that way. Three hours later they reached a second plateau bordered by a belt of green hills.
Among the undulations of these hillocks, silvery sheaves shone at intervals from one another; the Barbarians, who were dazzled by the sun, could perceive confusedly below great black ma.s.ses supporting them; these rose, as though they were expanding. They were lances in towers on elephants terribly armed.
Besides the spears on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the bodkin tusks, the bra.s.s plates which covered their sides, and the daggers fastened to their knee-caps, they had at the extremity of their tusks a leathern bracelet, in which the handle of a broad cutla.s.s was inserted; they had set out simultaneously from the back part of the plain, and were advancing on both sides in parallel lines.
The Barbarians were frozen with a nameless terror. They did not even try to flee. They already found themselves surrounded.
The elephants entered into this ma.s.s of men; and the spurs on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s divided it, the lances on their tusks upturned it like ploughshares; they cut, hewed, and hacked with the scythes on their trunks; the towers, which were full of phalaricas, looked like volcanoes on the march; nothing could be distinguished but a large heap, whereon human flesh, pieces of bra.s.s and blood made white spots, grey sheets and red fuses. The horrible animals dug out black furrows as they pa.s.sed through the midst of it all.
The fiercest was driven by a Numidian who was crowned with a diadem of plumes. He hurled javelins with frightful quickness, giving at intervals a long shrill whistle. The great beasts, docile as dogs, kept an eye on him during the carnage.
The circle of them narrowed by degrees; the weakened Barbarians offered no resistance; the elephants were soon in the centre of the plain. They lacked s.p.a.ce; they thronged half-rearing together, and their tusks clashed against one another. Suddenly Narr' Havas quieted them, and wheeling round they trotted back to the hills.
Two syntagmata, however, had taken refuge on the right in a bend of ground, had thrown away their arms, and were all kneeling with their faces towards the Punic tents imploring mercy with uplifted arms.
Their legs and hands were tied; then when they were stretched on the ground beside one another the elephants were brought back.
Their b.r.e.a.s.t.s cracked like boxes being forced; two were crushed at every step; the big feet sank into the bodies with a motion of the haunches which 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, but suddenly he started.
He saw, and all saw, some more Barbarians six hundred paces to the left on the summit of a peak! In fact four hundred of the stoutest Mercenaries, Etruscans, Libyans, and Spartans had gained the heights at the beginning, and had remained there in uncertainty until now. After the ma.s.sacre of their companions they resolved to make their way through the Carthaginians; they were already descending in serried columns, in a marvellous and formidable fas.h.i.+on.
A herald was immediately despatched to them. The Suffet needed soldiers; he received them unconditionally, so greatly did he admire their bravery. They could even, said the man of Carthage, come a little nearer, to a place, which he pointed out to them, where they would find provisions.
The Barbarians ran thither and spent the night in eating. Then the Carthaginians broke into clamours against the Suffet's partiality for the Mercenaries.