. Suddenly his
eyeballs flamed, his livid face contracted; and raising both his lean
arms he shouted out abuse at him.

Matho did not hear it; but he felt so furious and cruel a look entering
his heart that he uttered a roar. He hurled his long axe at him; some
people threw themselves upon Schahabarim; and Matho seeing him no more
fell back exhausted.

A terrible creaking drew near, mingled with the rhythm of hoarse voices
singing together.

It was the great helepolis surrounded by a crowd of soldiers. They were
dragging it with both hands, hauling it with ropes, and pushing it with
their shoulders,--for the slope rising from the plain to the terrace,
although extremely gentle, was found impracticable for machines of such
prodigious weight. However, it had eight wheels banded with iron, and it
had been advancing slowly in this way since the morning, like a mountain
raised upon another. Then there appeared an immense ram issuing from its
base. The doors along the three fronts which faced the town fell down,
and cuirassed soldiers appeared in the interior like pillars of iron.
Some might be seen climbing and descending the two staircases which
crossed the stories. Some were waiting to dart out as soon as the cramps
of the doors touched the walls; in the middle of the upper platform the
skeins of the ballistas were turning, and the great beam of the catapult
was being lowered.

Hamilcar was at that moment standing upright on the roof of Melkarth. He
had calculated that it would come directly towards him, against what was
the most invulnerable place in the wall, which was for that very reason
denuded of sentries. His slaves had for a long time been bringing
leathern bottles along the roundway, where they had raised with clay
two transverse partitions forming a sort of basin. The water was flowing
insensibly along the terrace, and strange to say, it seemed to cause
Hamilcar no anxiety.

But when the helepolis was thirty paces off, he commanded planks to
be placed over the streets between the houses from the cisterns to
the rampart; and a file of people passed from hand to hand helmets and
amphoras, which were emptied continually. The Carthaginians, however,
grew indignant at this waste of water. The ram was demolishing the wall,
when suddenly a fountain sprang forth from the disjointed stones. Then
the lofty brazen mass, nine stories high, which contained and engaged
more than three thousand soldiers, began to rock gen