d
against the wall, the ladders grappled them; and Barbarians' heads
appeared in the intervals of the battlements.

Beams supported by long files of men were battering at the gates; and,
in order to demolish the wall at places where the terrace was wanting,
the Mercenaries came up in serried cohorts, the first line crawling, the
second bending their hams, and the others rising in succession to the
last who stood upright; while elsewhere, in order to climb up, the
tallest advanced in front and the lowest in the rear, and all rested
their shields upon their helmets with their left arms, joining them
together at the edges so tightly that they might have been taken for an
assemblage of large tortoises. The projectiles slid over these oblique
masses.

The Carthaginians threw down mill-stones, pestles, vats, casks, beds,
everything that could serve as a weight and could knock down. Some
watched at the embrasures with fisherman's nets, and when the Barbarian
arrived he found himself caught in the meshes, and struggled like a
fish. They demolished their own battlements; portions of wall fell down
raising a great dust; and as the catapults on the terrace were shooting
over against one another, the stones would strike together and shiver
into a thousand pieces, making a copious shower upon the combatants.

Soon the two crowds formed but one great chain of human bodies; it
overflowed into the intervals in the terrace, and, somewhat looser at
the two extremities, swayed perpetually without advancing. They clasped
one another, lying flat on the ground like wrestlers. They crushed one
another. The women leaned over the battlements and shrieked. They
were dragged away by their veils, and the whiteness of their suddenly
uncovered sides shone in the arms of the Negroes as the latter buried
their daggers in them. Some corpses did not fall, being too much pressed
by the crowd, and, supported by the shoulders of their companions,
advanced for some minutes quite upright and with staring eyes. Some
who had both temples pierced by a javelin swayed their heads about like
bears. Mouths, opened to shout, remained gaping; severed hands flew
through the air. Mighty blows were dealt, which were long talked of by
the survivors.

Meanwhile arrows darted from the towers of wood and stone. The tollenos
moved their long yards rapidly; and as the Barbarians had sacked the
old cemetery of the aborigines beneath the Catacombs, they hurled the
tombston