sing Hanno. His spongy bones had given way under
the iron pins, portions of his limbs had come off, and nothing was left
on the cross but shapeless remains, like the fragments of animals that
are hung up on huntsmen's doors.

The Suffet could not have known anything about it; the town in front of
him masked everything that was beyond and behind; and the captains who
had been successively sent to the two generals had not re-appeared. Then
fugitives arrived with the tale of the rout, and the Punic army halted.
This catastrophe, falling upon them as it did in the midst of their
victory, stupefied them. Hamilcar's orders were no longer listened to.

Matho took advantage of this to continue his ravages among the
Numidians.

Hanno's camp having been overthrown, he had returned against them.
The elephants came out; but the Mercenaries advanced through the plain
shaking about flaming firebrands, which they had plucked from the walls,
and the great beasts, in fright, ran headlong into the gulf, where
they killed one another in their struggles, or were drowned beneath the
weight of their cuirasses. Narr' Havas had already launched his cavalry;
all threw themselves face downwards upon the ground; then, when the
horses were within three paces of them, they sprang beneath their
bellies, ripped them open with dagger-strokes, and half the Numidians
had perished when Barca came up.

The exhausted Mercenaries could not withstand his troops. They retired
in good order to the mountain of the Hot Springs. The Suffet was prudent
enough not to pursue them. He directed his course to the mouths of the
Macaras.

Tunis was his; but it was now nothing but a heap of smoking rubbish. The
ruins fell through the breaches in the walls to the centre of the plain;
quite in the background, between the shores of the gulf, the corpses of
the elephants drifting before the wind conflicted, like an archipelago
of black rocks floating on the water.

Narr' Havas had drained his forests of these animals, taking young and
old, male and female, to keep up the war, and the military force of
his kingdom could not repair the loss. The people who had seen them
perishing at a distance were grieved at it; men lamented in the streets,
calling them by their names like deceased friends: "Ah! the Invincible!
the Victory! the Thunderer! the Swallow!" On the first day, too, there
was no talk except of the dead citizens. But on the morrow the tents of
the Mercenaries we