r.

Hanno fell upon the grass; and he saw around him other crosses also, as
though the torture by which he was about to perish had been multiplied
beforehand; he made efforts to convince himself that he was mistaken,
that there was only one, and even to believe that there were none at
all. At last he was lifted up.

"Speak!" said Matho.

He offered to give up Hamilcar; then they would enter Carthage and both
be kings.

Matho withdrew, signing to the others to make haste. It was a stratagem,
he thought, to gain time.

The Barbarian was mistaken; Hanno was in an extremity when consideration
is had to nothing, and, moreover, he so execrated Hamilcar that he
would have sacrificed him and all his soldiers on the slightest hope of
safety.

The Ancients were languishing on the ground at the foot of the crosses;
ropes had already been passed beneath their armpits. Then the old
Suffet, understanding that he must die, wept.

They tore off the clothes that were still left on him--and the horror
of his person appeared. Ulcers covered the nameless mass; the fat on his
legs hid the nails on his feet; from his fingers there hung what looked
like greenish strips; and the tears streaming through the tubercles on
his cheeks gave to his face an expression of frightful sadness, for
they seemed to take up more room than on another human face. His royal
fillet, which was half unfastened, trailed with his white hair in the
dust.

They thought that they had no ropes strong enough to haul him up to the
top of the cross, and they nailed him upon it, after the Punic fashion,
before it was erected. But his pride awoke in his pain. He began to
overwhelm them with abuse. He foamed and twisted like a marine monster
being slaughtered on the shore, and predicted that they would all end
more horribly still, and that he would be avenged.

He was. On the other side of the town, whence there now escaped jets of
flame with columns of smoke, the ambassadors from the Mercenaries were
in their last throes.

Some who had swooned at first had just revived in the freshness of the
wind; but their chins still rested upon their breasts, and their bodies
had fallen somewhat, in spite of the nails in their arms, which were
fastened higher than their heads; from their heels and hands blood
fell in big, slow drops, as ripe fruit falls from the branches of a
tree,--and Carthage, gulf, mountains, and plains all appeared to them
to be revolving like an immens