rst joy was over they began to harbour anxieties.
Hamilcar's demands would be cruel. But Spendius reassured them.

"I will speak!" And he boasted that he knew excellent things to say for
the safety of the army.

Behind all the bushes they met with ambushed sentries, who prostrated
themselves before the sword-belt which Spendius had placed over his
shoulder.

When they reached the Punic camp the crowd flocked around them, and they
thought that they could hear whisperings and laughter. The door of a
tent opened.

Hamilcar was at the very back of it seated on a stool beside a table on
which there shone a naked sword. He was surrounded by captains, who were
standing.

He started back on perceiving these men, and then bent over to examine
them.

Their pupils were strangely dilated, and there was a great black circle
round their eyes, which extended to the lower parts of their ears; their
bluish noses stood out between their hollow cheeks, which were chinked
with deep wrinkles; the skin of their bodies was too large for their
muscles, and was hidden beneath a slate-coloured dust; their lips were
glued to their yellow teeth; they exhaled an infectious odour; they
might have been taken for half-opened tombs, for living sepulchres.

In the centre of the tent, on a mat on which the captains were about to
sit down, there was a dish of smoking gourds. The Barbarians fastened
their eyes upon it with a shivering in all their limbs, and tears came
to their eyelids; nevertheless they restrained themselves.

Hamilcar turned away to speak to some one. Then they all flung
themselves upon it, flat on the ground. Their faces were soaked in the
fat, and the noise of their deglutition was mingled with the sobs of joy
which they uttered. Through astonishment, doubtless, rather than pity,
they were allowed to finish the mess. Then when they had risen Hamilcar
with a sign commanded the man who bore the sword-belt to speak. Spendius
was afraid; he stammered.

Hamilcar, while listening to him, kept turning round on his finger a
big gold ring, the same which had stamped the seal of Carthage upon the
sword-belt. He let it fall to the ground; Spendius immediately picked it
up; his servile habits came back to him in the presence of his master.
The others quivered with indignation at such baseness.

But the Greek raised his voice and spoke for a long time in rapid,
insidious, and even violent fashion, setting forth the crimes of Hanno,
who