s into the desert!" Her voice swelled; her cheeks
purpled. She added, "Where, pray, are you now? In a conquered town,
or in the palace of a master? And what master? Hamilcar the Suffet, my
father, the servant of the Baals! It was he who withheld from Lutatius
those arms of yours, red now with the blood of his slaves! Know you of
any in your own lands more skilled in the conduct of battles? Look! our
palace steps are encumbered with our victories! Ah! desist not! burn
it! I will carry away with me the genius of my house, my black serpent
slumbering up yonder on lotus leaves! I will whistle and he will follow
me, and if I embark in a galley he will speed in the wake of my ship
over the foam of the waves."

Her delicate nostrils were quivering. She crushed her nails against the
gems on her bosom. Her eyes drooped, and she resumed:

"Ah! poor Carthage! lamentable city! No longer hast thou for thy
protection the strong men of former days who went beyond the oceans to
build temples on their shores. All the lands laboured about thee, and
the sea-plains, ploughed by thine oars, rocked with thy harvests." Then
she began to sing the adventures of Melkarth, the god of the Sidonians,
and the father of her family.

She told of the ascent of the mountains of Ersiphonia, the journey to
Tartessus, and the war against Masisabal to avenge the queen of the
serpents:

"He pursued the female monster, whose tail undulated over the dead
leaves like a silver brook, into the forest, and came to a plain where
women with dragon-croups were round a great fire, standing erect on the
points of their tails. The blood-coloured moon was shining within a
pale circle, and their scarlet tongues, cloven like the harpoons of
fishermen, reached curling forth to the very edge of the flame."

Then Salammbo, without pausing, related how Melkarth, after vanquishing
Masisabal, placed her severed head on the prow of his ship. "At each
throb of the waves it sank beneath the foam, but the sun embalmed it; it
became harder than gold; nevertheless the eyes ceased not to weep, and
the tears fell into the water continually."

She sang all this in an old Chanaanite idiom, which the Barbarians did
not understand. They asked one another what she could be saying to them
with those frightful gestures which accompanied her speech, and mounted
round about her on the tables, beds, and sycamore boughs, they strove
with open mouths and craned necks to grasp the vague storie