ced the effect of half-open eyes watching while feigning sleep.

Hannibal leaped over the trusted soldiers who slept near the door of his
tent. They raised up as they heard his footsteps, but recognizing the
chief, lay down on the ground again and continued snoring. They were
veterans from Hamilcar's wars, who looked with almost religious
veneration on the lion cub of their old captain.

As he turned the corner of the tent he drew his bow to shoot at the bird
hidden in the foliage; but he started in surprise on seeing a white
figure standing near the trunk of the tree, shining in the moonlight.

It was a woman, an Amazon. On her head and on her breast glistened the
helmet of gold and the cuirass of scales; her white linen tunic fell
over her limbs, outlining her form, and her strong bare arms were
resting on her lance with its shoe driven into the ground. Her dark eyes
were fastened on Hannibal's tent with strange, unblinking persistence,
as if she were dreaming awake, and the night-wind lightly swayed her
floating hair. Behind her stood a black horse with glossy coat, nervous
legs, and eyes injected with blood, destitute of saddle or bridle, his
mane unbound; he was bending down to lick the border of the Amazon's
tunic and her nude feet, like a dog which followed her everywhere.

"Asbyte!" exclaimed Hannibal, surprised at the apparition. "What are you
doing here?"

The queen of the Amazons seemed to awake, and seeing the chief, she
fixed on him the moist and impassioned gaze of her large eyes.

"I could not sleep," she said with a voice languid and measured. "I
spent the first part of the night dreaming horrible dreams. The Goddess
Tanith will not guard my repose, and I have seen the shade of my father
Iarbas announcing my approaching death."

"Death!" exclaimed Hannibal, laughing. "Who thinks of death?"

"Am I then immortal? Do I not fight like any one of your soldiers? I
hurl myself impetuously through forests of lances; feathered shafts hiss
around me like a trailing mantle of invisible birds; I scorn the
phalarics with their streams of fire--but some day I shall die; my
dreams foretell it."

Asbyte, as if fearing to show too great melancholy in the presence of
Hannibal, added bitterly:

"Let death come when it will! It does not frighten me as it does the
merchants of Carthage who hate you. If it disturbed my sleep it was
because when I awoke I thought of you. I cannot explain to myself why I
thought that