oldiers came and went through the luxurious villas, preparing their
morning meal; they made kindling of sumptuous furniture to light their
camp fires; they wrapped themselves in garments they had found, and they
cut down trees to make room for setting up their tents. Across the
river, over the immense domain, groups of horsemen scattered out to take
possession of villages, of villas, of the innumerable buildings which
rose above the verdure of the plain, abandoned to the mercy of the
enemy.

The first things to attract the attention of the Saguntines, exciting a
childish curiosity, were the elephants. They stood in a row on the
opposite side of the river, enormous, ashen-hued, like tumescences
uprisen from the earth within the night, their green-painted ears
drooping like fans, from time to time waving their trunks which seemed
like gigantic leeches, trying to suck in the blue of the sky. Their
drivers, assisted by the soldiers, unbound the square towers resting on
their backs, and rolled up the heavy trappings which covered their
flanks when engaged in battle. They set them free, as if the fertile
plain were to them an immense stable, their drivers being convinced that
the siege would be a lengthy undertaking, and that while it lasted they
would not need the assistance of the terrible beasts, so appreciated in
battle.

Near the elephants, along the river bank, stood the engines of war, the
catapults, the battering-rams, the movable towers, complicated
structures of wood and bronze, drawn by rosaries of double yokes of
oxen having enormous backward curving horns.

As if suffering from an eruption the fields were covered with pustules
of diverse colors, tents of cloth, of straw, or of skins, some conical,
others square, the majority mound-shaped like ant hills, around which
swarmed the armed multitude.

The Saguntines, from the top of the walls, examined the besieging army
that seemed to fill the whole plain, and which was being joined by a
ceaseless stream of new crowds on foot and on horseback, flowing in from
every road, and seeming to roll down from the crests of the surrounding
mountains. It was an agglomeration of diverse races, of different
peoples; a bizarre collection of costumes, colors, and types, and those
Saguntines who had been taught by travel recognized the different
nations, and were pointing them out to their absorbed fellow citizens.

Some horsemen who seemed to fly, lying stretched along the back