eeling with their
faces towards the Punic tents imploring mercy with uplifted arms.

Their legs and hands were tied; then when they were stretched on the
ground beside one another the elephants were brought back.

Their breasts cracked like boxes being forced; two were crushed at every
step; the big feet sank into the bodies with a motion of the haunches
which made the elephants appear lame. They went on to the very end.

The level surface of the plain again became motionless. Night fell.
Hamilcar was delighting himself with the spectacle of his vengeance, but
suddenly he started.

He saw, and all saw, some more Barbarians six hundred paces to the
left on the summit of a peak! In fact four hundred of the stoutest
Mercenaries, Etruscans, Libyans, and Spartans had gained the heights at
the beginning, and had remained there in uncertainty until now. After
the massacre of their companions they resolved to make their way through
the Carthaginians; they were already descending in serried columns, in a
marvellous and formidable fashion.

A herald was immediately despatched to them. The Suffet needed soldiers;
he received them unconditionally, so greatly did he admire their
bravery. They could even, said the man of Carthage, come a little
nearer, to a place, which he pointed out to them, where they would find
provisions.

The Barbarians ran thither and spent the night in eating. Then the
Carthaginians broke into clamours against the Suffet's partiality for
the Mercenaries.

Did he yield to these outbursts of insatiable hatred or was it a
refinement of treachery? The next day he came himself, without a sword
and bare-headed, with an escort of Clinabarians, and announced to
them that having too many to feed he did not intend to keep them.
Nevertheless, as he wanted men and he knew of no means of selecting the
good ones, they were to fight together to the death; he would then admit
the conquerors into his own body-guard. This death was quite as good as
another;--and then moving his soldiers aside (for the Punic standards
hid the horizon from the Mercenaries) he showed them the one hundred and
ninety-two elephants under Narr' Havas, forming a single straight line,
their trunks brandishing broad steel blades like giant arms holding axes
above their heads.

The Barbarians looked at one another silently. It was not death that
made them turn pale, but the horrible compulsion to which they found
themselves reduced.

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