was poured upon their heads, and the grains that fell around them rang
like rebounding hail.

CHAPTER XII

THE AQUEDUCT

Twelve hours afterwards all that remained of the Mercenaries was a heap
of wounded, dead, and dying.

Hamilcar had suddenly emerged from the bottom of the gorge, and again
descended the western slope that looked towards Hippo-Zarytus, and
the space being broader at this spot he had taken care to draw the
Barbarians into it. Narr' Havas had encompassed them with his horse; the
Suffet meanwhile drove them back and crushed them. Then, too, they were
conquered beforehand by the loss of the zaimph; even those who
cared nothing about it had experienced anguish and something akin to
enfeeblement. Hamilcar, not indulging his pride by holding the field of
battle, had retired a little further off on the left to some heights,
from which he commanded them.

The shape of the camps could be recognised by their sloping palisades.
A long heap of black cinders was smoking on the side of the Libyans;
the devastated soil showed undulations like the sea, and the tents with
their tattered canvas looked like dim ships half lost in the breakers.
Cuirasses, forks, clarions, pieces of wood, iron and brass, corn, straw,
and garments were scattered about among the corpses; here and there a
phalarica on the point of extinction burned against a heap of baggage;
in some places the earth was hidden with shields; horses' carcasses
succeeded one another like a series of hillocks; legs, sandals, arms,
and coats of mail were to be seen, with heads held in their helmets by
the chin-pieces and rolling about like balls; heads of hair were hanging
on the thorns; elephants were lying with their towers in pools of blood,
with entrails exposed, and gasping. The foot trod on slimy things, and
there were swamps of mud although no rain had fallen.

This confusion of dead bodies covered the whole mountain from top to
bottom.

Those who survived stirred as little as the dead. Squatting in unequal
groups they looked at one another scared and without speaking.

The lake of Hippo-Zarytus shone at the end of a long meadow beneath
the setting sun. To the right an agglomeration of white houses extended
beyond a girdle of walls; then the sea spread out indefinitely; and the
Barbarians, with their chins in their hands, sighed as they thought of
their native lands. A cloud of grey dust was falling.

The evening wind blew; then every breast d