dits, mingled with laughter and
rude jeers whenever the devotee lay still or writhed or rose staggering
from some stroke of the vermilion hoofs.

But when the horseman drew bridle before the extreme left of the
centre, and, with eyes shaded by his hand, gazed long and earnestly at
the Roman array, the plaudits that had greeted his passage died away
into low murmurs and then silence. "The general is studying the enemy.
Be silent! Who knows but he would commune with Baal and Moloch? Be
silent!" So the word ran around and through the African squares.

Suddenly peals of laughter broke from the group of Carthaginian
officers that had ridden behind and who now clustered around him. The
calm that no devotion, no suffering, no danger of men could move, was
gone; the schalischim had turned from his measuring of the enemy to
smile and jest with his friends. Thereupon they threw back their heads
and laughed loud and long; and then the Africans noted it, and hoarse
cries of joy broke from their ranks. "The schalischim must be sure of
victory. Praise be to Melkarth!" Sergius saw a captain of one of the
squares run out and touch his forehead to the earth before his
commander; but no Roman heard the man's words pregnant with fate.

"Now, my father, let The Lion's Brood lead the beasts of all the fields
to their feast. We hunger, father, we hunger!"

And Hannibal had made answer, pointing northward toward the
plume-crested sea of blazing bronze, "Lo! friend; there are your meat
and wine."

Then a new roar of acclamation broke upward and rolled away to the
east. Two richly armed riders parted from the group and dashed off:
Maharbal, light and slender, bending far over his horse's neck, rode
headlong in Numidian fashion to his Numidians; Hasdrubal, erect and
dignified, galloped to head the Gaulish and Spanish horse upon the
banks of Aufidus; trumpets, drums, cymbals, crashed out in mad,
barbaric discords; and, with their horse-head standards tossing amid
the forest of spears, the Carthaginian line drove forward to the attack.

Running fast before the line of battle, Sergius could still make out,
even through the dust, those same naked men with lynx-hide bucklers,
dotting the plain at regular intervals, and each man's right arm seemed
always whirling about his head. The Roman light troops had pushed on
to skirmish, and now they began to fall back, though no arrow or
javelin could have reached them--could have flown to th