and set off right
and left towards the river and towards the town.

The phalanx exterminated all the remaining Barbarians at leisure. When
the swords appeared they would stretch out their throats and close their
eyelids. Others defended themselves to the last, and were knocked down
from a distance with flints like mad dogs. Hamilcar had desired the
taking of prisoners, but the Carthaginians obeyed him grudgingly, so
much pleasure did they derive from plunging their swords into the bodies
of the Barbarians. As they were too hot they set about their work with
bare arms like mowers; and when they desisted to take breath they would
follow with their eyes a horseman galloping across the country after a
fleeing soldier. He would succeed in seizing him by the hair, hold him
thus for a while, and then fell him with a blow of his axe.

Night fell. Carthaginians and Barbarians had disappeared. The elephants
which had taken to flight roamed in the horizon with their fired towers.
These burned here and there in the darkness like beacons nearly half
lost in the mist; and no movement could be discerned in the plain save
the undulation of the river, which was heaped with corpses, and was
drifting them away to the sea.

Two hours afterwards Matho arrived. He caught sight in the starlight of
long, uneven heaps lying upon the ground.

They were files of Barbarians. He stooped down; all were dead. He called
into the distance, but no voice replied.

That very morning he had left Hippo-Zarytus with his soldiers to march
upon Carthage. At Utica the army under Spendius had just set out, and
the inhabitants were beginning to fire the engines. All had fought
desperately. But, the tumult which was going on in the direction of
the bridge increasing in an incomprehensible fashion, Matho had struck
across the mountain by the shortest road, and as the Barbarians were
fleeing over the plain he had encountered nobody.

Facing him were little pyramidal masses rearing themselves in the shade,
and on this side of the river and closer to him were motionless lights
on the surface of the ground. In fact the Carthaginians had fallen
back behind the bridge, and to deceive the Barbarians the Suffet had
stationed numerous posts upon the other bank.

Matho, still advancing, thought that he could distinguish Punic engines,
for horses' heads which did not stir appeared in the air fixed upon
the tops of piles of staves which could not be seen; and further o