upon them three times
to attract death, or had enclosed jackal's hair within them to put
cowardice into their hearts. Aloud, they invoked Melkarth's favour, and
in a whisper, his curse.

Then came the mob of baggage, beasts of burden, and stragglers. The sick
groaned on the backs of dromedaries, while others limped along leaning
on broken pikes. The drunkards carried leathern bottles, and the greedy
quarters of meat, cakes, fruits, butter wrapped in fig leaves, and snow
in linen bags. Some were to be seen with parasols in their hands, and
parrots on their shoulders. They had mastiffs, gazelles, and panthers
following behind them. Women of Libyan race, mounted on asses, inveighed
against the Negresses who had forsaken the lupanaria of Malqua for the
soldiers; many of them were suckling children suspended on their bosoms
by leathern thongs. The mules were goaded out at the point of the sword,
their backs bending beneath the load of tents, while there were numbers
of serving-men and water-carriers, emaciated, jaundiced with fever,
and filthy with vermin, the scum of the Carthaginian populace, who had
attached themselves to the Barbarians.

When they had passed, the gates were shut behind them, but the people
did not descend from the walls. The army soon spread over the breadth of
the isthmus.

It parted into unequal masses. Then the lances appeared like tall blades
of grass, and finally all was lost in a train of dust; those of the
soldiers who looked back towards Carthage could now only see its long
walls with their vacant battlements cut out against the edge of the sky.

Then the Barbarians heard a great shout. They thought that some from
among them (for they did not know their own number) had remained in the
town, and were amusing themselves by pillaging a temple. They laughed a
great deal at the idea of this, and then continued their journey.

They were rejoiced to find themselves, as in former days, marching all
together in the open country, and some of the Greeks sang the old song
of the Mamertines:

"With my lance and sword I plough and reap; I am master of the house!
The disarmed man falls at my feet and calls me Lord and Great King."

They shouted, they leaped, the merriest began to tell stories; the
time of their miseries was past. As they arrived at Tunis, some of
them remarked that a troop of Balearic slingers was missing. They were
doubtless not far off; and no further heed was paid to them.

Some wen