do not approach me. I do not want it now; it would do me
harm. If I fall and you can find me among the slain, you will know what
my last thought has been."

Leaning on her lance she moved away between the rows of tents, followed
by the black horse, which sniffed at her footprints in faithful
devotion.

Day was breaking. The camp fires were nearly extinguished, and around
the dying embers the men could be seen arising from the ground,
stretching their benumbed limbs, and shaking out the pieces of cloth in
which they had been wrapped. Horses whinnied, tugging at their stake
ropes, and the soldiers set them free, driving them to the river to
water and clean them.

Along every road huge carts were approaching the camp laden with
provisions and forage, and the creaking of their axles mingled with the
songs of the soldiers, who had arisen in good spirits and recalled their
distant homes, singing in their native tongues.

It was a confusion of voices and cries. Each tribe camped by itself; one
people greeted the other with joyous shouts. From every side floated
odors of naked, sweaty flesh, and of strange stews boiling in the pots;
the hammers of the carpenters echoed loudly as they worked upon the
siege-engines which would soon be hurling stones and darts against the
walls. Warriors in flowing mantles, mounted on prancing steeds, galloped
between the city and the camp, examining the battlements of Saguntum,
reddened by the sun's first rays, where the defenders were beginning to
stir among the merlons. Hannibal with uncovered head was sitting on a
remnant of a wall, the ruin of a villa demolished by the besiegers, also
studying the city.

He was resolved to begin the attack as soon as his army had finished
making the morning preparations. Fifteen hundred Africans, armed with
pickaxes, were gathering on the outskirts of the camp. They were going
to attack that portion of the city which threw its ramparts into the
level, open plain, thereby permitting unobstructed approach to its base.
In other divisions of the camp the Celtiberian infantry was forming with
long ladders to attempt the walls on many sides at once. The engines of
war advanced, the catapults, with the thick bow tightly drawn by elastic
cords, ready to fling the stone deposited in the groove of the long arm;
the battering-rams vibrating on their chains as they moved. The
walking-towers, light, with walls of interlaced osiers, trundled upon
massive disks crown