, with women and buffoons! Do not tell me that
the enterprise is impossible. Have not the Mercenaries already possessed
Rhegium and other fortified places in Italy? Who is to prevent you?
Hamilcar is away; the people execrate the rich; Gisco can do nothing
with the cowards who surround him. Command them! Carthage is ours; let
us fall upon it!"

"No!" said Matho, "the curse of Moloch weighs upon me. I felt it in her
eyes, and just now I saw a black ram retreating in a temple." Looking
around him he added: "But where is she?"

Then Spendius understood that a great disquiet possessed him, and did
not venture to speak again.

The trees behind them were still smoking; half-burned carcases of apes
dropped from their blackened boughs from time to time into the midst
of the dishes. Drunken soldiers snored open-mouthed by the side of the
corpses, and those who were not asleep lowered their heads dazzled by
the light of day. The trampled soil was hidden beneath splashes of red.
The elephants poised their bleeding trunks between the stakes of their
pens. In the open granaries might be seen sacks of spilled wheat, below
the gate was a thick line of chariots which had been heaped up by the
Barbarians, and the peacocks perched in the cedars were spreading their
tails and beginning to utter their cry.

Matho's immobility, however, astonished Spendius; he was even paler than
he had recently been, and he was following something on the horizon with
fixed eyeballs, and with both fists resting on the edge of the terrace.
Spendius crouched down, and so at last discovered at what he was gazing.
In the distance a golden speck was turning in the dust on the road to
Utica; it was the nave of a chariot drawn by two mules; a slave was
running at the end of the pole, and holding them by the bridle. Two
women were seated in the chariot. The manes of the animals were puffed
between the ears after the Persian fashion, beneath a network of blue
pearls. Spendius recognised them, and restrained a cry.

A large veil floated behind in the wind.

CHAPTER II

AT SICCA

Two days afterwards the Mercenaries left Carthage.

They had each received a piece of gold on the condition that they
should go into camp at Sicca, and they had been told with all sorts of
caresses:

"You are the saviours of Carthage! But you would starve it if you
remained there; it would become insolvent. Withdraw! The Republic will
be grateful to you later for all this con