e foe. Sergius
watched in surprise their confusion and terror as they sought to plunge
among the legionaries or hide themselves behind the horsemen; nor had
they fled unscathed. Here a man ran by screaming and clasping his
shattered hand to his breast; then another staggered up, with arm
hanging broken at his side, while the big drops of blood fell slowly
from his fingers; and yet a third appeared, pale and helpless,
supported between two companions.

Sounds, too, now dull and heavy, and again ringing and metallic, seemed
to punctuate the roar of the advancing host. Sergius saw a horseman
near him clap his hand to his forehead and plunge headlong to the
earth: horses reared and snorted, some fell with ugly, red blotches on
their breasts and throats; the clangour and the thuds came
faster--faster; for now the clay and leaden bullets of the slingers
fell in showers, like hailstones, and it was good armour that turned
them.

Manlius had leaped down to aid a friend who was reeling helplessly,
with both eyes beaten out, and, a moment later, he approached Sergius,
holding up a slinger's bullet. The red had sunken into the lines of
the stamped inscription, and displayed them in hideous relief, "This to
your back, sheep!"

"That is always the way with barbarians," sneered Marcus Decius. "No
blow without an insult--look! They shall have blows themselves, soon,
that will need no insults to piece them out."

Paullus had watched with eagerness, with anxiety, for the signal to
advance. Varro seemed to hesitate, while the great masses of Rome,
lashed by the bitter rain of the slings, writhed and groaned in anguish
and rage; the light troops had disappeared, and the Balearians, now
close at hand, leaped and slung without let or hindrance. Then it was
that Paullus, waiting no longer, made a sign to his trumpeters.
"Scatter me that rabble!" he cried, and the cavalry clarions raised
their voices in one long, swelling peal of sound.

"Close! close!" rose the shout of battle, and the Roman horse dashed
forward into the dust cloud--forward upon the slingers that suddenly
were not there, had vanished, as it were, into the earth itself.

The straight trumpets and curved horns of the legions were ringing
behind them, stirred to life at last, but the horsemen did not hear.
What were those looming up ahead? Not naked slingers--armoured
cavalry! Hasdrubal with his Gauls and Spaniards were before them--upon
them; and all sense an