he
followed the fugitives, he would have pursued me and my whole army into
the sea, so great was the alarm of our troops and so tremendous the
force of the Vandal assault. Then the camp and the infantry would both
have been destroyed. Or if he had even gone from Decimum back to
Carthage, he could have destroyed without resistance Fara and his men,
for expecting no attack from the rear, they were scattered singly or in
couples along the streets and in the fields, pillaging the slain. And
once in possession of Carthage he could easily have taken our ships,
anchored near the city,--without crews,--and thus cut off from us every
hope of victory or retreat."

But King Gelimer did neither. A sudden paralysis attacked the power
which had just overthrown everything in its way.

Prisoners told us that, as he dashed down the hillside, spurring his
cream-colored charger far in advance of all his men, he saw in the
narrow pass at the southern entrance of Decimum the corpse of his young
brother lying first of all the bodies in the road. With a loud cry of
anguish, he sprung from his horse, threw himself upon the lifeless boy,
and thus checked the advance of his troops. Their foremost horses, held
back with difficulty by the riders that they might not trample on the
King and the lad, reared, plunged, and kicked, throwing those behind
into confusion, and stopped the whole chase. The King raised in his
arms the mangled and bloody body (for our horsemen had dashed over it);
then breaking again into cries of agony, he placed it on his charger
and ordered it to be buried by the roadside with royal honors. The
whole did not probably occupy fifteen minutes, but that quarter of an
hour wrested from the Barbarians the victory they had already won.

Meanwhile Belisarius rushed to meet our fugitives, thundered at them in
his resonant leonine voice his omnipotent "Halt," showed them, lifting
his helmet, his face flaming with a wrath which his warriors dreaded
more than the spears of all the Barbarians, brought the deeply shamed
men to a stand, arranged them, amid terrible reproaches, in the best
order possible in the haste, and, after learning all he could
concerning the position and strength of the Vandals, led them to the
attack upon Gelimer and his army.

The Vandals did not withstand it. The sudden, mysterious check of their
advance had bewildered, perplexed, discouraged them; besides, their
best strength had been exhausted in the furiou