e us cleverer. By dint of work we
may make fortune bend. She loves politicians. She will yield!"

He returned to Matho and took him by the arm.

"Master, at present the Carthaginians are sure of their victory. You
have quite an army which has not fought, and your men obey YOU. Place
them in the front: mine will follow to avenge themselves. I have still
three thousand Carians, twelve hundred slingers and archers, whole
cohorts! A phalanx even might be formed; let us return!"

Matho, who had been stunned by the disaster, had hitherto thought of
no means of repairing it. He listened with open mouth, and the bronze
plates which circled his sides rose with the leapings of his heart. He
picked up his sword, crying:

"Follow me; forward!"

But when the scouts returned, they announced that the Carthaginian dead
had been carried off, that the bridge was in ruins, and that Hamilcar
had disappeared.

CHAPTER IX

IN THE FIELD

Hamilcar had thought that the Mercenaries would await him at Utica, or
that they would return against him; and finding his forces insufficient
to make or to sustain an attack, he had struck southwards along the
right bank of the river, thus protecting himself immediately from a
surprise.

He intended first to wink at the revolt of the tribes and to detach them
all from the cause of the Barbarians; then when they were quite isolated
in the midst of the provinces he would fall upon them and exterminate
them.

In fourteen days he pacified the region comprised between Thouccaber
and Utica, with the towns of Tignicabah, Tessourah, Vacca, and others
further to the west. Zounghar built in the mountains, Assoura celebrated
for its temple, Djeraado fertile in junipers, Thapitis, and Hagour
sent embassies to him. The country people came with their hands full of
provisions, implored his protection, kissed his feet and those of the
soldiers, and complained of the Barbarians. Some came to offer him bags
containing heads of Mercenaries killed, so they said, by themselves, but
which they had cut off corpses; for many had lost themselves in their
flight, and were found dead here and there beneath the olive trees and
among the vines.

On the morrow of his victory, Hamilcar, to dazzle the people, had sent
to Carthage the two thousand captives taken on the battlefield. They
arrived in long companies of one hundred men each, all with their arms
fastened behind their backs with a bar of bronze which caught them