less
looking at a corpse at their feet; then they would suddenly tear their
faces with their nails, take their swords with both hands, and plunge
them into their own bodies.

There were still sixty left. They asked for drink. They were told by
shouts to throw away their swords, and when they had done so water was
brought to them.

While they were drinking, with their faces buried in the vases, sixty
Carthaginians leaped upon them and killed them with stiletos in the
back.

Hamilcar had done this to gratify the instincts of his army, and, by
means of this treachery, to attach it to his own person.

The war, then, was ended; at least he believed that it was; Matho
would not resist; in his impatience the Suffet commanded an immediate
departure.

His scouts came to tell him that a convoy had been descried, departing
towards the Lead Mountain. Hamilcar did not trouble himself about it.
The Mercenaries once annihilated, the Nomads would give him no further
trouble. The important matter was to take Tunis. He advanced by forced
marches upon it.

He had sent Narr' Havas to Carthage with the news of his victory; and
the King of the Numidians, proud of his success, visited Salammbo.

She received him in her gardens under a large sycamore tree, amid
pillows of yellow leather, and with Taanach beside her. Her face was
covered with a white scarf, which, passing over her mouth and forehead,
allowed only her eyes to be seen; but her lips shone in the transparency
of the tissue like the gems on her fingers, for Salammbo had both
her hands wrapped up, and did not make a gesture during the whole
conversation.

Narr' Havas announced the defeat of the Barbarians to her. She thanked
him with a blessing for the services which he had rendered to her
father. Then he began to tell her about the whole campaign.

The doves on the palm trees around them cooed softly, and other birds
fluttered amid the grass: ring-necked glareolas, Tartessus quails and
Punic guinea-fowl. The garden, long uncultivated, had multiplied
its verdure; coloquintidas mounted into the branches of cassias, the
asclepias was scattered over fields of roses, all kinds of vegetation
formed entwinings and bowers; and here and there, as in the woods,
sun-rays, descending obliquely, marked the shadow of a leaf upon the
ground. Domestic animals, grown wild again, fled at the slightest noise.
Sometimes a gazelle might be seen trailing scattered peacocks' feathers
after it