They were overwhelmed with immense disgust. They wished for
nothing more; they preferred to die.

Two days afterwards the weather became fine again, and hunger seized
them once more. It seemed to them that their stomachs were being
wrenched from them with tongs. Then they rolled about in convulsions,
flung handfuls of dust into their mouths, bit their arms, and burst into
frantic laughter.

They were still more tormented by thirst, for they had not a drop of
water, the leathern bottles having been completely dried up since the
ninth day. To cheat their need they applied their tongues to the metal
plates on their waist-belts, their ivory pommels, and the steel of their
swords. Some former caravan-leaders tightened their waists with ropes.
Others sucked a pebble. They drank urine cooled in their brazen helmets.

And they still expected the army from Tunis! The length of time which it
took in coming was, according to their conjectures, an assurance of its
early arrival. Besides, Matho, who was a brave fellow, would not desert
them. "'Twill be to-morrow!" they would say to one another; and then
to-morrow would pass.

At the beginning they had offered up prayers and vows, and practised all
kinds of incantations. Just now their only feeling to their divinities
was one of hatred, and they strove to revenge themselves by believing in
them no more.

Men of violent disposition perished first; the Africans held out
better than the Gauls. Zarxas lay stretched at full length among the
Balearians, his hair over his arm, inert. Spendius found a plant with
broad leaves filled abundantly with juice, and after declaring that it
was poisonous, so as to keep off the rest, he fed himself upon it.

They were too weak to knock down the flying crows with stones. Sometimes
when a gypaetus was perched on a corpse, and had been mangling it for
a long time, a man would set himself to crawl towards it with a javelin
between his teeth. He would support himself with one hand, and after
taking a good aim, throw his weapon. The white-feathered creature,
disturbed by the noise, would desist and look about in tranquil fashion
like a cormorant on a rock, and would then again thrust in its hideous,
yellow beak, while the man, in despair, would fall flat on his face in
the dust. Some succeeded in discovering chameleons and serpents. But it
was the love of life that kept them alive. They directed their souls to
this idea exclusively, and clung to exis