he left, and then was depressed; and like a giant arm
holding a cohort of pigmies in its hand, it laid the basketful of
men upon the edge of the wall. They leaped into the crowd and never
returned.

All the other tollenos were speedily made ready. But a hundred times
as many would have been needed for the capture of the town. They were
utilised in a murderous fashion: Ethiopian archers were placed in the
baskets; then, the cables having been fastened, they remained suspended
and shot poisoned arrows. The fifty tollenos commanding the battlements
thus surrounded Carthage like monstrous vultures; and the Negroes
laughed to see the guards on the rampart dying in grievous convulsions.

Hamilcar sent hoplites to these posts, and every morning made them drink
the juice of certain herbs which protected them against the poison.

One evening when it was dark he embarked the best of his soldiers
on lighters and planks, and turning to the right of the harbour,
disembarked on the Taenia. Then he advanced to the first lines of
the Barbarians, and taking them in flank, made a great slaughter. Men
hanging to ropes would descend at night from the top of the wall with
torches in their hands, burn the works of the Mercenaries, and then
mount up again.

Matho was exasperated; every obstacle strengthened his wrath, which led
him into terrible extravagances. He mentally summoned Salammbo to an
interview; then he waited. She did not come; this seemed to him like a
fresh piece of treachery,--and henceforth he execrated her. If he
had seen her corpse he would perhaps have gone away. He doubled the
outposts, he planted forks at the foot of the rampart, he drove caltrops
into the ground, and he commanded the Libyans to bring him a whole
forest that he might set it on fire and burn Carthage like a den of
foxes.

Spendius went on obstinately with the siege. He sought to invent
terrible machines such as had never before been constructed.

The other Barbarians, encamped at a distance on the isthmus, were amazed
at these delays; they murmured, and they were let loose.

Then they rushed with their cutlasses and javelins, and beat against
the gates with them. But the nakedness of their bodies facilitating the
infliction of wounds, the Carthaginians massacred them freely; and the
Mercenaries rejoiced at it, no doubt through jealousy about the plunder.
Hence there resulted quarrels and combats between them. Then, the
country having been ravaged,