He rushed on toward Sónnica's villa. The Greek hesitated a moment; he deliberated whether he should go back in search of his beloved, but he ended by setting out on a gallop toward the city, and as he neared it, he rode at full speed around the walls. He went for a look at the highway from the mountains which gave Saguntum communication with the towns by a branch which led to Sætatis and Denia. As he approached he began to meet the refugees of whom the slave had told him.
They flooded the road like an inundation. The flocks and herds were bleating and lowing under the lash, crowding in between the wagons; women were running, carrying great bundles on their heads, and dragging along the children clutching at the folds of their tunics; boys were driving horses laden with furniture and clothing thrown together haphazard in the precipitation of flight, and ewes leaped to the sides of the road to escape the wheels which, catching their dragging fleece, almost crushed them.
The Greek, riding into the stream of fugitives, opened passage with his horse through the seething wave of wagons and animals, rustics and slaves, in which people of different towns were confusedly mingled, while members of scattered families were calling to one another desperately through the clouds of dust.
The fleeing multitude was clearing away. Actæon was beginning to meet the stragglers; poor old women traveling with vacillating step, bearing on their shoulders some lamb which constituted their entire fortune; old men crushed by the weight of pots and clothing; sick people dragging themselves along by the aid of a staff; abandoned animals wandering among the olive trees near the highway, that suddenly darted forward at full speed through the fields as if scenting their masters; children seated on a stone weeping, abandoned by their kindred.
Soon the road was empty. The last of the refugees were left behind, and Actæon saw before him only the narrow tongue of red earth winding along the mountain slopes, without a solitary being to break the monotony of the road with his shadow.
The gallop of his horse resounded like distant thunder through the profound silence. It seemed as if Nature had expired as she guessed the approach of war. Even the ancient trees, the twisted olives which had stood for centuries, the great fig trees which rose like green cupolas against the mountain slopes, remained motionless, as if terrified at the approach of that something which caused the people to abandon their homes and to flee into the city.
Actæon rode through a village. Closed doors! Silent streets! From the interior of a cabin he thought he heard a faint groan—some sick person forsaken by his kindred in their haste to escape. Then he passed a great closed villa. Behind the high mud walls a dog was howling in despair.
Then once more solitude, silence, absence of life, a paralysis that seemed to creep over the fields. Night began to fall. From afar, as if diffused and mellowed by the distance, he heard a muffled booming; something like the surging of an invisible sea, the swelling roar of an inundation.
The Greek left the road; his horse began to climb a cultivated hill, his hoofs sinking into the red soil of the vineyards. From the height he could dominate the landscape for a great distance.
The sun's last rays dyed the mountain slopes a brilliant orange. On the winding red road shone like a rivulet of sparks the cuirasses of a group of horsemen approaching cautiously on a trot, as if exploring the way. Actæon recognized them; they were the Numidian cavalry with white and floating mantles, while, mingled with them galloped other warriors of less imposing stature, waving lances and making their small horses caracole. The Greek smiled as he recognized Hannibal's Amazons, the famous squadron he had seen in New Carthage, formed of the wives and daughters of soldiers, commanded by the valorous Asbyte, daughter of Iarbas, the Garamantan of Fezzan.
Behind this group, the road was deserted for some distance. Against the background, like a dark monster moving with serpentine undulations, loomed the army, an immense girdle upon which glittered the lances like a line of fire broken at intervals by square bulks, which advanced like moving towers. These were the elephants.
Suddenly a new sun seemed to rise behind the army, illuminating its footsteps. A lurid light filled the horizon, and upon this ruddy background the serrated outlines of an immense mass were traced. A village was in flames. Hannibal's troops, composed of mercenaries from all countries, and from barbarian tribes in the interior, intended to terrify the hostile city, hence immediately upon entering Saguntine territory they laid waste the fields and set fire to the dwellings. Actæon feared to become surrounded by the Numidians and the Amazons, and riding down from the height he started toward Saguntum at a desperate gallop.
It was after dark when he reached the city, and he had to call his friend Mopsus and make himself known before the gate would open to him.
"Have you seen them?" asked the archer.
"Before the cock crows they will be before our walls."
The city presented an extraordinary aspect. The streets were illuminated with bonfires. Pine torches burned in doorways and windows, and the multitude of fugitives huddled in the public squares, filling the porticos, and lying on the thresholds. All the Saguntines had streamed into the city.
The Forum was a camp. The flocks and herds were crowded between the four colonnades without space to move, stamping and bellowing; sheep sprang about on the steps of the temples; families of rustics boiled pots on the Attic bases of the marble columns, and the glow of so many fires, flickering on the façades of the houses, seemed to communicate a thrill of alarm to the entire city. The magistrates ordered the fugitives lying in the streets obstructing traffic to get up, and lodged them in the slaves' quarters of the dwellings of the rich, or had them conducted to the Acropolis to camp in its innumerable buildings. The herds also were driven thither by the light of torches, between a double row of almost naked men who beat the oxen when they tried to escape down the sides of the sacred mountain.
Rising above the murmur of the multitude sounded blasts from trumpets and conch shells calling the citizens to form ready for defending the walls. Merchants, dressed in bronze loricas, their faces covered by the Grecian helmet crested with an enormous brush of horsehair, issued from their houses, tearing themselves from the arms of wives and children, and strode majestically through the crowds of rustics, bow in hand, their spears over their shoulders, and their swords clanking against their nude thighs, their limbs covered to the knees with the copper greaves. The young men dragged to the walls enormous stones to hurl down upon the besiegers, and they laughed on being assisted by the women who were eager to take part in the combat. Old men with venerable beards, rich members of the Senate, opened passage, followed by slaves with great bundles of spears and swords, distributing the arms among the strongest country people, first making sure if they were freemen.
The city seemed to rejoice. Hannibal was coming! The more enthusiastic had actually been anxious lest the African would not dare to present himself before their walls; but there he was, and all laughed, thinking that Carthage would perish in the fall of Hannibal here at the feet of Saguntum, as soon as Rome should rally to the aid of the city.
The Saguntine ambassadors were already in Rome, and her legions would soon arrive and crush the besiegers at a blow. Some, in their enthusiastic optimism, inclined to the marvelous, believing that, by a miracle of the gods, the great deed would happen within a few hours, and that as soon as day should dawn, at the very instant when Hannibal's army had begun to invest Saguntum, a countless galaxy of sails would appear on the blue of the Sucronian gulf—the fleet convoying the invincible veterans of Rome.
Nearly the entire city was on the walls. The multitude crowded upon them until many had to catch hold of the merlons to keep from falling.
Outside the ramparts darkness reigned absolute. The frogs that inhabited the pools along the river were hushed as if terrified; the dogs that wandered vagabond through the champaign barked ceaselessly; they sensed the presence of hidden beings moving in the shadows surrounding the city.
Obscurity augmented the anxious uncertainty of the watchers on the walls. Suddenly a point of light pierced the darkness of the plain; another and then another flash, in different places at a distance from the city. They were torches guiding the steps of the approaching army. Before the ruddy spot of light silhouettes of men and horses were seen to pass. Far off on the hilltops gleamed bonfires, serving as signals to straggling troops.
These lights exasperated the more impatient. Some of the younger men could no longer remain inactive, and drawing their bows, began to shoot their arrows. Promptly came response from out the darkness. A whistling passed over the heads of the crowd, and from the houses near the wall some tiles flew off with a crash. Sling-shots from the enemy!
Thus the night passed. When the cocks crowed announcing dawn a great part of the multitude had fallen asleep, wearied with straining their eyes into the darkness where buzzed the invisible foe.
When the sun rose the Saguntines saw Hannibal's entire army before their walls, on the side toward the river. Actæon, as he noted the location of the troops, could not repress a smile.
"He well knows the lay of the land. His visit to the city has stood him in good stead. Even in the dark he has chosen the only point from which Saguntum can be attacked."
The whole side of the mountain was free of besiegers. His army had encamped between the river and the lower part of the city, occupying the orchards, the gardens of the villas, the beautiful section of which the rich of Saguntum were so proud.
Soldiers came and went through the luxurious villas, preparing their morning meal; they made kindling of sumptuous furniture to light their camp fires; they wrapped themselves in garments they had found, and they cut down trees to make room for setting up their tents. Across the river, over the immense domain, groups of horsemen scattered out to take possession of villages, of villas, of the innumerable buildings which rose above the verdure of the plain, abandoned to the mercy of the enemy.
The first things to attract the attention of the Saguntines, exciting a childish curiosity, were the elephants. They stood in a row on the opposite side of the river, enormous, ashen-hued, like tumescences uprisen from the earth within the night, their green-painted ears drooping like fans, from time to time waving their trunks which seemed like gigantic leeches, trying to suck in the blue of the sky. Their drivers, assisted by the soldiers, unbound the square towers resting on their backs, and rolled up the heavy trappings which covered their flanks when engaged in battle. They set them free, as if the fertile plain were to them an immense stable, their drivers being convinced that the siege would be a lengthy undertaking, and that while it lasted they would not need the assistance of the terrible beasts, so appreciated in battle.
Near the elephants, along the river bank, stood the engines of war, the catapults, the battering-rams, the movable towers, complicated structures of wood and bronze, drawn by rosaries of double yokes of oxen having enormous backward curving horns.
As if suffering from an eruption the fields were covered with pustules of diverse colors, tents of cloth, of straw, or of skins, some conical, others square, the majority mound-shaped like ant hills, around which swarmed the armed multitude.
The Saguntines, from the top of the walls, examined the besieging army that seemed to fill the whole plain, and which was being joined by a ceaseless stream of new crowds on foot and on horseback, flowing in from every road, and seeming to roll down from the crests of the surrounding mountains. It was an agglomeration of diverse races, of different peoples; a bizarre collection of costumes, colors, and types, and those Saguntines who had been taught by travel recognized the different nations, and were pointing them out to their absorbed fellow citizens.
Some horsemen who seemed to fly, lying stretched along the backs of their swift barbs, were Numidians, Africans of feminine aspect, covered with white veils, wearing women's earrings and slippers, perfumed, with eyes painted black, but who were impetuous in combat and fought in full career using their lances with great skill. Around the camp fires in the gardens stalked athletic negroes from Libya, with kinky hair and glistening teeth, smiling in stupid satisfaction as they wrapped their naked limbs in garments of rich weave which they had just stolen, shivering with cold as soon as they drew away from the fire, as if suffering martyrdom in the cool morning air. These dark, shiny-skinned men, so seldom seen in Saguntum, excited the curiosity of the citizens almost as much as the Amazons who audaciously passed on a gallop close to the walls to obtain a better view of the city. They were young women, slender, their skins bronzed by exposure. Their hair floated behind their helmets like a barbaric decoration, and they wore no other clothing than a broad tunic open on the left side, displaying sinewy limbs clinging to their horses' ribs. Over the breast some wore corselets of bronze-scales, also open on the left side to give greater freedom in fighting, displaying the roundness of their small breasts made firm and hard by fatiguing exercise. They rode their wild nervous horses bareback, guiding them with a delicate bridle, and as they galloped in groups the ferocious animals bit and kicked each other, thus enlivening the desperate race. The Amazons approached close to the walls, laughing and hurling insults which the Saguntines did not understand; they waved their lances and shields; and when a cloud of arrows and stones was flung after them, they dashed away, with wind-swept drapery, turning their heads to repeat their mocking gestures.
The besieged distinguished in the dark crowd of soldiers the cuirasses of certain horsemen which shone like plates of gold. They were the Carthaginian captains, some rich men of Carthage who followed Hannibal, sons of opulent merchants who marched with the army more like shepherds than like chiefs, covered with metal from head to foot for protection against blows, and, with the genius of their race, more devoted to administering the conquests and in sharing the booty than in seeking glory in combat.
In addition to these people, those on the walls who were familiar with them pointed out the other troops of the besieging army. Some with skin the color of milk, with faded mustaches, and red horsehair tied to the crowns of their heads, who laid aside their military cloaks and tall boots of untanned leather to bathe in the river, were Gauls. The others, bronzed and so thin that their skeletons were outlined as if they would push through the skin, were Africans from the oases of the great desert, mysterious people, who with the beating of their small drums caused the moon to descend, and by playing the flute forced venomous serpents to dance. Mingling with them were the bulky Lusitanians, with limbs as strong as columns, and broad rock-like chests; those from Bætica, united to their horses day and night by a love which lasted all their lives; the hostile Celtiberians, bushy-haired and dirty, wearing their rags with arrogance; tribes from the North, who worshipped solitary menhirs as gods, and in the moonlight sought mysterious herbs for charms and philters; men of ferocious customs, in perpetual battle with hunger; barbarian people of whom horrifying tales were told, believed to devour the bodies of the conquered after a victory.
The Balearic slingers provoked laughter in spite of their ferocious aspect. From the walls the observers commented on the extravagant customs which prevailed in their island home, and the multitude burst into laughter contemplating the almost naked youths, carrying sticks with charred points which served them as lances, and having three slings, one wound around the forehead, another about the waist, and the third held in the hand. One of these slings was of horsehair, one of esparto, and the third of bull tendon, and one or the other was used according to the distance they had to throw.
They lived on their islands in caves or in the hollow spaces between huge masses of rock, and they were taught to use the sling while mere children. Their fathers set their bread some distance from them, and would not let them eat it until they had brought it down with a pebble. Their passion was drunkenness, and woman their strongest appetite. In combat they turned with scorn from prisoners who would bring high ransom to capture the women, and they not infrequently would exchange six strong slave men for a single slave woman. On the islands they were unfamiliar with gold and silver; the elders divining the evils of money, had prohibited the importation of coins, and the Balearic slingers in the service of Carthage, unable to carry their earnings to their country, spent their wages in drink or flung them generously into the hands of the loose and wretched women who followed the army. Their traditional customs amused the Saguntines. At their weddings, so said those who had visited the islands, it was customary for all the guests to embrace the bride in advance of the husband, and at funerals the corpse was beaten until the bones were crushed and converted into a shapeless mass which they forced into a narrow urn and buried under a heap of stones. Their slings were terrible. They hurled to great distances balls of sun-baked clay, conical at their ends, and bearing grotesque inscriptions dedicated to the one who received the blow, and in battle they flung stones weighing a pound with such force that the highest tempered armor failed to resist them.
In the rear of this warlike crowd ragged women of all colors scattered through the champaign; lean, naked children who did not know their parents; the parasites of war, who marched at the tail of the army to revel in the spoils of victory; females who at night lay down in one extreme of the camp and arose on the opposite in the morning, and, aged in the prime of their youth by fatigue and blows, died forsaken by the roadside; youngsters who looked upon all the soldiers of their race as their fathers, bearing on their backs on long marches the firewood or the flesh-pot of the warriors, and, in moments of fiercest struggle, when the fighting was hand to hand, they slipped between the adversaries' legs and bit them like rabid cur-dogs.
Actæon found Sónnica on the wall, gazing at the hostile camp in the first streak of dawn. The beautiful Greek had taken refuge in Saguntum the night before, followed by slaves and flocks, moving part of her riches from the villa to her warehouse. She had left behind rooms filled with paintings and mosaics; rich furniture, sumptuous table-service, all which would fall into the hands of the victor. And she and her fellow Greek saw peeping through the distant foliage the terrace of the villa with its statues, the tower of the doves and the roofs of the houses of the slaves, over which men, barely discernible, were running like insects. The invaders were there; perhaps they would amuse themselves by shooting their arrows at the brilliantly plumaged Asiatic birds, and by beating the old and sick slaves abandoned in the flight. Between the banana trees in the garden rose the smoke of a bonfire. The Greek woman and her lover guessed the destruction and rapine that were taking place. Sónnica grew sad, not at the loss of a part of her riches, but because they were rending her heart through destroying a place which had been witness to her first outbursts of love for the Athenian.
Some time after sunrise the Saguntine people cried out with indignation. Along the Road of the Serpent appeared groups of drunken and shouting women embracing soldiers. They were the lupas of the port, the miserable harlots who thronged around the temple of Aphrodite by night, and who were denied entrance to the city. When the first Carthaginian horsemen passed through the port these creatures had followed them with enthusiasm. Accustomed to the coarse blandishments of men of all countries, the presence of these soldiers, so different in dress and nationality, did not seem strange to them. The 'wolves' of the land were the same as those of the sea. They adored strong men, birds of prey which could destroy them with their talons, and they followed the Carthaginians to their camp, rejoicing in their hearts at the chance to approach the city without fear of punishment, and at being able to mock the besieged inhabitants with the concentrated odium of long years of humiliation.
They sang like mad women, flitting from one pair of greedy and trembling hands to the next which disputed for them as if in their eagerness they would tear them to pieces. They drank to intoxication from amphoræ of rich wines sacked from the villas; around their shoulders they flung cloths with threads of gold, stolen but a moment before; the Numidians with their moist gazelle-like eyes, looked upon them admiringly, bedecking them with crowns of grass, and they in turn bursting into bacchanal laughter, petted the kinky hair of the Ethiopians, who giggled like children, displaying their sharp cannibal teeth.
They gave themselves up to all manner of ribaldry near the long line of horses staked out in front of the tents, displaying their wantonness as a shameless insult to the besieged city, and the Saguntines who had witnessed undaunted the approach of the long defile of the enemy trembled with ire behind their merlons as they witnessed this offense of their courtesans.
"The wretches! Caninæ!"
The women of the city hissed and reviled them, pale with fury, leaning over the walls ready to spring into the camp to lay hold upon the strumpets, while they, as if the anger of the city only stimulated them, redoubled their laughter, adding insult to insult, and exciting the whole army to join with them.
A fresh cause of indignation infuriated anew the minds of the Saguntines. Some thought they saw something familiar in the appearance of one of the Celtiberian warriors riding at the head of a troop of cavalry. His gallant bearing on his horse, the arrogance with which he galloped with firm seat in the saddle, recalled to many the sightly procession of the Panathenaic festival. When he dismounted and removed his helmet, wiping away the sweat, all recognized him, and raised a shout of resentment. Alorcus! Even he! Another ingrate, faithless to the city which had overwhelmed him with honors and distinctions! His duty as chieftain compelled him to ignore his fraternal reception in Saguntum.
Blind with rage they drew their bows against him but the arrows fell short of the spot where the Celtiberians were encamped. The maddened crowd experienced one slight consolation. The groups along the wall made way for Theron, the priest of Hercules, who advanced with the majesty of a god, his eyes fixed on the enemy, insensible to the general adoration which surrounded him.
The Saguntines persuaded themselves that they beheld Hercules himself, who perhaps had abandoned his temple on the Acropolis to come down to their walls. He was nude; an enormous lion skin covered his back. The wild beast's claws were crossed over his breast, and his head was covered by the cranium of the animal, with bristling whiskers, sharp teeth, and yellow glass eyes which shone between the tossed golden mane. His right hand clutched without visible effort the entire trunk of an oak tree which served him as a cudgel in imitation of the mace of the god. His shoulders towered above all other heads. His breasts were round and strong as shields, on which the veins and sinews were traced like tendrils winding round the muscles, and his columnar limbs, all excited admiration. His virility was the very type of sovereign power. He was so enormous that his head seemed small between his great shoulders, exaggerated in size by the cushion of his muscles; his chest heaved like a bellows, and instinctively all took a step backward, fearing contact with that machine of flesh created for strength.
Sónnica's friends, the young gallants, who, even on this extraordinary occasion had not forgotten to paint their faces, followed and admired him, ordering the crowd, to give them passage.
"Hail, Theron!" shouted Lachares. "We will see what Hannibal will do when he meets you in battle."
"Hail to the Saguntine Hercules!" replied the other youths, leaning weakly on the backs of their little slave boys.
The giant looked over the encampment, in which trumpets began to sound, and the soldiers ran to form in rank. The slingers cautiously advanced, sheltering themselves behind buildings and hummocks. The attack was about to begin. On the walls the bowmen drew their bows, and the boys piled up stones to hurl with their slings. The old men compelled the women to retire. At the head of the stairway leading up to the top of the wall, Euphobias the philosopher stood haranguing in the midst of a group, paying no heed to the indignation of his hearers.
"Blood is going to flow," he shouted; "you will all perish, and for what? I ask you what do you gain by not obeying Hannibal? You will always have a master, and it is just as well to be friends of Carthage as of Rome. The siege will be prolonged, and you will die of hunger; I shall outlive you all, because I know hunger from of old like a faithful friend. But again I ask you, what more does it profit you to be Romans than Carthaginians? Live and enjoy! Leave shedding of blood to the butchers, and before you think of putting another man to death, study your own selves. If you would give heed to my wisdom, if instead of scorning me, you would feed me in exchange for my advice, you would not be shut up in your city like foxes in a trap."
A chorus of imprecations and a row of threatening fists answered the philosopher.
"Parasite! Slave of poverty!" they shouted. "You are worse than those lupas who throw themselves at the barbarians."
Euphobias, whose insolence increased as the indignation blazed higher, opened his mouth to reply; but he hesitated, beholding a dark mass which shut out the sunlight. The gigantic Theron was before him, looking at him as scornfully as would one of those elephants that the besiegers had near the river. He raised his left hand carelessly, as if he were going to flip off an insect; he barely grazed the insolent face when the philosopher tumbled down the steps from the wall, his head bleeding, silent, bumping from step to step without a groan, like a man accustomed to such caresses, and convinced that pain is but a figment of the imagination.
At the same moment a cloud of black arrows whistled over the walls like a flock of birds. Tiles flew off, bits of plaster sprang from the merlons, and some fell from the wall with broken heads. From between the merlons stones and arrows leaped as an impetuous answer.
The defense of the city had begun!
CHAPTER VI
ASBYTE AND HANNIBAL
Hannibal lay tossing between the bright-hued coverings of his couch, unable to conciliate sleep.
The cocks had announced midnight, breaking the silence of the camp with their shrill voices, and the chieftain was yet awake, closing his eyes though unable to sleep. His rest was disturbed by the singing of a nightingale perched in a great tree from the branches of which hung his tent.
An earthenware lamp illuminated the mass of objects strewn carelessly around his bed. On the floor glistened cuirasses, greaves, and helmets, over which were thrown rich fabrics stolen from the Saguntine villas. Grecian furniture, delicately wrought toilette amphoræ, tapestries with mythological scenes, lay in a heap mingled with rawhide whips, shields of hippopotamus hide, and the rags of Hannibal's personal costume, for, though a lover of glittering arms, he was careless and dirty in his dress. Elegant Grecian vases he put to the vilest uses. An alabaster crater covered by a shield served as a seat; a huge terra cotta vase, decorated by a Grecian artist with the adventures of Achilles, the African scornfully used in a manner calculated to express the height of his contempt for refinement. Pieces of statues and columns destroyed during the tempest of invasion were sunk in the ground, making seats for Hannibal's captains when a council was held in the chieftain's tent. It was the spoil of war, looted and thrown about in a fever of robbery. Only a small portion of it had reached the chief, who felt absolute scorn for artistic beauty except when stamped on precious metals. He sneered at the gods of this land as he did at those of his own country and of the world; he spat upon the marble forms of divinities which filled the camp, as if they were scraps of worthless stone, good for nothing but to be hurled by a catapult against the enemy.
Impelled by nervous excitement, which prevented his sleeping, he raised up in his couch, and the lamplight shone full upon his face. He was no longer the Celtiberian shepherd, dishevelled and ferocious, whom Actæon had met in the port of Saguntum. Divested of his disguise he showed what he was—a young man of medium height, with strong and well proportioned limbs, without display of exaggerated muscles, but revealing in his body the temper of steel, a vitality capable in supreme moments of the most stupendous achievements. His face was slightly bronzed, and his hair lay around his head in thick short curls like a black and lustrous turban, completely covering his forehead, and leaving exposed the lobes of his ears, from which hung great discs of bronze. His beard was thick and curly; his nose straight and somewhat prominent, and his eyes, large and imperious, always looked sidewise, with an expression of profound astuteness and unapproachable reserve. His muscular neck was habitually bent, inclining his head toward the right, as if to more clearly catch the sounds around him.
He wore a simple, dirty, and threadbare sagum, like any one of those Celtiberians who lay snoring in the tents roundabout, and, as a sign of command, there shone on his wrists two broad golden bracelets, which added strength by their confinement of the tendons and muscles of the arm.
For more than a month he had been before the walls of Saguntum without achieving any advantage. He had spent the whole of that afternoon directing his engines of war without result, and now in his solitude this want of success irritated his nerves, and dispelled his sleep. The petted child of victory, he had conquered in open fight the most savage tribes of Iberia; he had dragged his elephants over the crests of lofty mountains, crossing rivers, breaking trails through forests, seeing warlike hordes fall prostrate before him as if he were a god, but now, for the first time in his life he encountered a stubborn enemy, which behind sheltering walls mocked at him and would not suffer him to advance a step.
The city of merchants and farmers which he had studied from within, looking scornfully upon its opulence and effeminacy, threatened to break the current of his good luck, and, finding it indomitable, and reflecting upon his enemies in Carthage, upon the wrath of Rome, and realizing that time was passing while he was making no headway, the chieftain experienced a gust of anxiety.
He had chosen well the vulnerable point of Saguntum. His engines of war were placed before the lower part of the city where the walls projected into the valley, upon an open, level plain, which permitted the advance of the battering-rams; but scarcely had the hundreds of naked men who dragged the heavy machines come within range than such a shower of arrows fell about them that those who were not pinned to the ground had to flee for their lives.
Sometimes, under cover of the mantelets, which advanced on wheels, and through the loopholes of which the Carthaginian bowmen shot, they managed to get the battering-rams to the foot of the wall, but while that part of the city was the most exposed to attack, the ramparts which in the upper portion of Saguntum were of adobe had here a stony rock base, and in vain the bronze rams'-heads which formed the ends of the beams, pounded and pounded, operated by hundreds of arms. Showers of arrows and stones fell upon the besiegers, breaking the shields which covered them. A great tower dominated the whole area around the assailants, sowing death among them without exposure to the besieged, and not content with this, under the impulse of their passion, they frequently sprang forth from behind the ramparts, knifing the Carthaginians.
Each of these sallies cost Hannibal's army severe losses. The Africans had begun to tell with superstitious dread of a naked giant, wearing a lion's skin, and brandishing a tree-trunk, who charged at the head of the Saguntines, and at each blow ploughed a broad furrow through the assailants. The Ethiopians saw in him a terrible and sanguinary divinity, like those which they worshipped in their oases; the Celtiberians declared that it was Hercules, descended from Olympus to protect the city.
Hannibal recognized him in the battles from afar. It was Theron, the priest whom he had seen one morning on the Acropolis, and whose extraordinary vigor he had admired. But in spite of knowing his human origin, he could not overcome the terror of the troops at the instant when they saw towering above all the helmets that invulnerable lion's head which seemed to change the course of the arrows and stones.
Moreover the besieged counted on the assistance of the phalaric. It was well known that among the merchants and agriculturists there figured men expert in war, who had traveled through many lands. The memory of his boyhood companion, Actæon, the Greek adventurer, surged through Hannibal's mind. He, surely, must be the introducer of the phalaric, a dart wrapped in tow and dipped in pitch. The shaft sped blazing through the air like a stream of fire, with its long iron head capable of piercing the shield and the cuirass, and even if the terrible missile should not penetrate the armor, its flames set fire to the clothing; the combatants threw down their arms to put out the fire, and thus stood exposed to the blows of the enemy. The same warriors who had fought against the most determined and barbaric tribes of Iberia, flung away their shields and fled before those meteors of fire which came from the walls of Saguntum whistling and scattering sparks.
Thus time passed; the besiegers gained nothing, and Hannibal was dominated by a galling impatience. Fire of Baal! He, chained to these walls which he could not make his own, while Hanno's faction was conspiring in Carthage, preparing the downfall of the Barcas if he should fail in taking Saguntum; planning, perhaps, his delivery to Rome when she should demand him on finding her treaties violated. In despair he threw himself back once more upon his couch, seeking the oblivion of sleep with the eagerness of one who must needs forget. He blew out the light, but lay open-eyed in the darkness. The bluish glint of the moon filtered through an opening in the cupola of his tent, shimmering upon the cuirasses which in the darkness shone like phosphorescent fishes. Outside, the nightingale continued singing.
Hannibal grew frantic. Accursed bird that was keeping him awake! He could sleep in the din of battle! Accustomed from boyhood to the camp, the hoarse songs of the mercenaries and the whinnying of horses would fail to arouse him, and the harsh trumpet-blast of war had been his lullaby. But the sweet song of that bird, its incessant melodious trill, annoyed him like the buzzing of a hornet.
He sprang from his couch; he groped in the dark amid the litter of arms, fabrics, and furniture; he burst out through the doorway of his tent, and the fresh night soothed his tempestuous spirit.
The moon was shining in a cloudless sky; the breeze was warm, although it was the end of autumn; stars scintillated; the nightingale's trills were answered by another and yet another bird, throughout the expanse of the valley. The camp lay at rest. The flames were flickering out from dying bonfires near which soldiers were sleeping along with women and children of the army, wrapped in rags and in rich stolen fabrics; the horses picketed to the ground, pointed their nodding heads in a straight line; in the distance, the beleaguered city crouched dark and silent as if asleep, but a faint glow escaping through loopholes in its walls produced the effect of half-open eyes watching while feigning sleep.
Hannibal leaped over the trusted soldiers who slept near the door of his tent. They raised up as they heard his footsteps, but recognizing the chief, lay down on the ground again and continued snoring. They were veterans from Hamilcar's wars, who looked with almost religious veneration on the lion cub of their old captain.
As he turned the corner of the tent he drew his bow to shoot at the bird hidden in the foliage; but he started in surprise on seeing a white figure standing near the trunk of the tree, shining in the moonlight.
It was a woman, an Amazon. On her head and on her breast glistened the helmet of gold and the cuirass of scales; her white linen tunic fell over her limbs, outlining her form, and her strong bare arms were resting on her lance with its shoe driven into the ground. Her dark eyes were fastened on Hannibal's tent with strange, unblinking persistence, as if she were dreaming awake, and the night-wind lightly swayed her floating hair. Behind her stood a black horse with glossy coat, nervous legs, and eyes injected with blood, destitute of saddle or bridle, his mane unbound; he was bending down to lick the border of the Amazon's tunic and her nude feet, like a dog which followed her everywhere.
"Asbyte!" exclaimed Hannibal, surprised at the apparition. "What are you doing here?"
The queen of the Amazons seemed to awake, and seeing the chief, she fixed on him the moist and impassioned gaze of her large eyes.
"I could not sleep," she said with a voice languid and measured. "I spent the first part of the night dreaming horrible dreams. The Goddess Tanith will not guard my repose, and I have seen the shade of my father Iarbas announcing my approaching death."
"Death!" exclaimed Hannibal, laughing. "Who thinks of death?"
"Am I then immortal? Do I not fight like any one of your soldiers? I hurl myself impetuously through forests of lances; feathered shafts hiss around me like a trailing mantle of invisible birds; I scorn the phalarics with their streams of fire—but some day I shall die; my dreams foretell it."
Asbyte, as if fearing to show too great melancholy in the presence of Hannibal, added bitterly:
"Let death come when it will! It does not frighten me as it does the merchants of Carthage who hate you. If it disturbed my sleep it was because when I awoke I thought of you. I cannot explain to myself why I thought that you also might die, and to your death, Hannibal, I cannot be resigned. You should live long like a god. I knew that you sleep alone in your tent; that, to better conceal your movements you keep no guards to watch while you slumber, and I felt the need of doing something for you, of spending the night leaning on my lance near your couch to prevent the treachery of an enemy."
"What madness!" exclaimed the African, laughing.
"Hannibal," said the beautiful Amazon gravely, "remember Hasdrubal, the husband of your sister. The dagger of a slave was enough to put an end to him."
"Hasdrubal was doomed to die," said the chieftain, with the conviction of fatalism. "The fate of Carthage demanded his death. It was necessary that Hasdrubal should succumb to make way for Hannibal. But Hannibal has no one to replace him, and he shall live even though he were to sleep surrounded by enemies. My sleep is light and my arm is sure; he who slips into the tent of Hannibal enters his tomb."
Asbyte contemplated with loving admiration the young hero, who had flung down his bow, and while he spoke of his strength he raised his powerful arms, and the moon enlarged their shadow in such wise that as they moved he seemed to embrace the camp, the city, the whole valley, like a supernatural being.
The Amazon drew near leaning her lance against the trunk of a tree. On laying down her weapon she seemed to throw off her warlike mien, and she approached Hannibal with feminine sweetness, gazing upon him with the moist, timid eyes of the antelopes that frisk about the oases of her native land.
"Besides," she murmured, "I came because I needed to be near you. To guard your sleep gives me indescribable joy. I feel the delight of an exalting sacrifice in keeping vigil over you when you know it not. I never have an opportunity to speak with you. By day I see you on horseback among the Carthaginians with their golden armor, who flock around you; on foot directing those who push the engines of war, helping them, often, to excite their enthusiasm; but I see you always from afar, as a chieftain, as a hero, never as a man. Do you remember those days in the citadel of New Carthage when I had just arrived from Africa with the reinforcements which caused you to utter shouts of enthusiasm?"
"Asbyte! Asbyte!" murmured Hannibal, repelling her with a movement of his arms, as if the recollection annoyed him.
"Do not be angry, Hannibal; listen to me. I must speak to you. Give me at least the consolation of seeing you near, of telling you what I feel. If not, why have I come to Iberia, joining my fate to yours?"
The chieftain glanced around, as if fearing that someone might be listening to his conversation with the Amazon.
"Fear not," said Asbyte, divining his thought. "Mago, your brother, sleeps far from here with Maherbal, the favorite captain. My Numidians are at the opposite end of the camp. You surround yourself only with Iberians in order to encourage their fidelity with such a proof of confidence, and they do not understand Phœnician."
Reassured by Asbyte's answer, Hannibal lowered his head and crossed his arms, resigned to listen.
"You are as hard and disdainful as a god," sighed the Amazon. "The woman who loves you feels within her the fire of Moloch, and you will not deign to quench it even with a glance of kindness, nor with a smile. You have a heart of bronze; your eyes ever gaze aloft, and you cannot see those who crawl to approach you. You imagine that you have made me happy because you lead me from battle to battle, from conquest to conquest, and you consider that my happiness consists in having my hands, which used to be adorned with rings, calloused by the lance; my face, which in other times was covered with costly unguents brought from Egypt by my caravans, hardened by the cheek-pieces of the helmet. I have become rude and fierce like a man. Though I possess gardens far away where an eternal springtime dwells, I have suffered hunger and thirst at your side. I know not who I am; I doubt my sex, seeing my body made ugly by fatigue. My skin, over which the hands of my slaves used to slip as if it were a mirror, is now as hard as that of a crocodile. If I do not seem as hideous as the troop of wasted females which follows your soldiers it is because my youth has not forsaken me. And all this for whom? For you who will not deign to look at me; for you who have forgotten our first meeting; for you who see in Asbyte only a good friend, an esteemed ally, who came to you bringing a strong array of fighters. Hannibal! Lightning-flash of Baal! You are as great as a demigod, but you do not know human beings. You see in me only an Amazon, a warrior virgin like those of whom the Grecian poets sing—but I am a woman!"
Asbyte sadly and silently searched the face of the pensive Hannibal.
"You have forgotten, perhaps, how we met," she added, presently, with melancholy tone. "I dwelt happy in my oasis until I rushed to your side, drawn by some irresistible charm that emanates from your person. I, the daughter of Iarbas the Garamantan, wearied of the comforts of my house, of the songs of my slaves, and of the splendors which the merchants flung from the caravans at my feet, went into the desert hunting lions with Iarbas, and the warriors marveled when the most savage colts trembled, obedient and timid, as soon as they felt me on their backs. I was strong, and I was beautiful. Scarcely had I grown out of my girlhood than the bravest of the Numidian sheikhs came seeking hospitality of my father that they might see me, and they told of their flocks and of their warriors, proposing an alliance to Iarbas. And I, indifferent, cold, kept my thoughts ever on Carthage where I once had been in company with my father to adjust the tribute with the rich men of the Senate. Ah, the magnificent city, the immense city, with her temples as huge as towns and her gigantic gods!"
Wandering from the trend of her ideas, she fell into enthusiastic reminiscence of Carthage, the great city which after all her travels and warlike adventures was still a vivid memory. She called to mind the dwellings of the rich Carthaginians, with their polychrome walls finished by brilliant spheres of metal and of glass; the great marble temples, with their mysterious groves through which resounded the lyres and cymbals of the priests; the temple of Tanith surrounded by rose gardens, perfumed hiding places which served as shelters for the sacred phallic rites in honor of the goddess; and then the port, the immense port, with a whole city of ships which poured into the metropolis a continual stream of riches from all over the world, tin from Brittania, copper from Italy, silver from Iberia, gold from Ophir, frankincense from Saba, amber from northern seas, purple from Tyre, ebony and ivory from Ethiopia, spices and pearls from India, and brilliant fabrics from nameless and mysterious peoples of Asia who dwelt at the uttermost borders of the world, wrapped in the mists of legend.
She adored the city, not only for its splendors, but far more because it harbored partisans of the Barcas, the supporters of the heroic family whose deeds the Numidian warriors recounted in the moonlight, and of whom Hannibal, who added renown to his name in the wars of Iberia when still a boy, was the glorious descendant.
"My people ever loved your people," continued the Amazon. "If my father Iarbas submitted to the domination of Carthage, it was because at the head of it was Hamilcar, an African, a Numidian like ourselves. I hate the Carthaginian merchants as bitterly as you do—those ancient Phœnicians from the rock-bound Aradus who prospered and reproduced like worms, afterwards to cross the sea and take possession of our beautiful soil of Africa. I hate the ship figured upon so many of your coins and temples, because it is the sign of the avaricious people who came to exploit us, but I adore the Carthaginian charger, the Numidian horse, the symbol of our past."
Then she spoke of the charm which the glory of the Barcas had exercised over her mind from afar. She had loved Hannibal without realizing it, influenced by tales of his achievements which had reached her ears. She imagined him fighting like a young lion at his father's side, among herds of bulls with flaming horns, and among burning chariots which the Iberians drove against the Carthaginian invader; she thought of him, mad with fury, before the body of Hamilcar, and then languishing from inaction beside the beautiful Hasdrubal, conciliatory and pacific, until the moment when, his brother being assassinated by the dagger of a Gaul, the whole army acclaimed the youth as chieftain.
Her father Iarbas had just died, and she, now become queen of her tribes, heard that Hannibal, thirsting for glory and for combat, was isolated in the fortress of New Carthage, with no other troops than the remnant of the army which Hamilcar had taken to Iberia. The rich of Carthage, enemies of the Barcas, fearing the populace, dared not deprive Hamilcar's son of the chieftancy which his soldiers tendered him; they confirmed it by their silence, but they kept him isolated, without resources, left to his own devices, so that the natives should put an end to him, or at the most, that he might conquer a small territory on the Iberian coast in which the ambition of the Barcas would gradually become extinguished.
"Then I flew to your side," continued Asbyte. "I wished to know the man and to save the hero. I turned over a great part of my riches to the merchants of Carthage for the loan of their ships; I kindled the enthusiasm of the most warlike of my tribes to follow me; even their daughters imitated me, and went lion hunting, galloping all day long, lance in hand, drawn on by my mad adventure, and one afternoon, when perhaps you were weeping, believing your hopes of glory dead, you beheld from the height of the citadel of New Carthage a whole fleet coming from Africa. Do you remember? Tell me! Do you remember how you received me?"
"Yes, and I shall never forget it," said Hannibal gently. "Those days are my happiest memory."
"You received me as if I were a divinity, as if Ashtoreth, who illumines our nights had descended from the sky to give you her protection. You were oblivious to my warriors and saw only me, and scorning your ambitions for the moment we spent the nights lying on the terrace of the citadel, and the stars were witnesses to our interminable embraces. But, alas! that joy was like the roses from Egypt which last but a day in the vases of the rich women of Carthage. Soon the pride of conquest returned to you, the ambition of the chieftain. You admired the training of my Numidians more than my beauty when, of an afternoon, outside the walls they astounded your old warriors by hurling darts while kneeling on their horses, which ran so fast that they raised the dust with their bellies. We went out to fight with the Olcades, the Vaccæi, all those Iberian tribes which yesterday you fought and which to-day follow you. Led by you I fought like a soldier, and I considered myself happy when on the long marches, imitating our horses which lovingly put their heads together, you bent toward me, striking your helmet against mine to kiss me. Finally—not even that! What am I? One warrior more in your camp; a friend worthy of gratitude, who brought you assistance on seeing you abandoned by Carthage, with no other force than a handful of veterans and some elephants. In the battles if you see me in danger you fly to defend me; but afterwards, in the camp, on the long marches, a few words of friendship, a cold smile as to any one of your captains. Your heart has closed against me. Am I not Asbyte, she whom you knew in New Carthage? Do you not love me when you see me made ugly and hardened by war? Tell me that, and I will become a woman again, I will bedeck myself with jewels, I will abandon my Amazons and surround myself with Greek slaves, I will cover myself with ointments which will change my skin back to its pristine freshness, and I will follow you on your marches lying on a litter with curtains of purple."
"No!" Hannibal made haste to reply, with enthusiasm. "I love you as you are. The beloved of Hannibal can only be an Amazon like yourself, who have made many warriors fall beneath your charger."
"Then why do you flee from me? Why do you abandon me, why forget the sweetness of our early love? See that nightingale, at which a moment ago you aimed your arrow! In the midst of an army camp, before a besieged city, it sings and sings, calling to its mate, heedless of the horrors of war, unconscious of the stench of blood which rises from these fields. Let us be like him! Let us make war; but let us also love each other, and let us ride through the battles with our bodies thrilled with love!"
"No, Asbyte," said the African gloomily. "That felicity is impossible; I love you, but we cannot understand each other. You complain because I see in you only an Amazon, when you are a woman; you, in return, see in me only a man, and I am more than man. I am not the demigod you imagine; I am something more; I am a formidable machine of war, without heart or sense of pity, created only to crush men and nations who obstruct my passage."
Hannibal said this with conviction, beating his firm chest, straightening his figure with sombre majesty as he declared his destructive power.
"I would love you if I were a man capable of wasting my time in such sweet folly, but when have you seen the eagle spend all his time in the nest caressing his mate, without desire to soar aloft and fall upon the quarry? Those who have talons cannot caress, and I was born to make prey of the world, or else for the world to crush me. Love? A sweet occupation, I grant you! In the past, full of blood and of battles, the only oases of my joy were those days in New Carthage when I believed that Tanith herself, with all her divine beauty, had deigned to come down to my arms. But that is over; Hannibal has other loves that attract him and dominate him; he loves his sword, he loves all that the enemy possesses, and he cannot sleep with tranquility for thinking of Rome, whom he desires to crush within these arms! How far away she is!"
The Amazon made a gesture of despair at the passion with which the chieftain declared his ambitions.
"You might complain," continued Hannibal, "if you saw that my thoughts were filled with the image of another woman. Whom have I loved but you? To draw to me those barbarians who follow me, to league them by ties of blood to my enterprises, I took to wife the daughter of an Iberian kinglet. Yes, and where is she? Does she follow me as do you? She remains in New Carthage, spinning her gay-colored wools, and she scarcely thinks of me, because never for a moment did the charms of the barbarian virgin move me. I love only you. Hannibal can fall tremulous with passion only into arms like yours, hardened by use of the lance. But be worthy of him! Think not as do other women; seek not new lovers; unite yourself to me, so that both together we can think of possessing and of hating, of making the world ours!"
As if exalted by his own words, the African, with glowing eyes, approached Asbyte, caressing her arms, while he breathed in her face his ambitious plans.
"I must be lord of the world! I want Carthage, only Carthage, to exist upon the earth, because Carthage is my native land! Had I been born a Roman, Rome should be mistress! With my name I mean to obliterate the memory of Alexander the Macedonian, to be greater than he, to conquer wider territories, and I dream of undertakings less easy than dominating the Asiatics, weakened by the softening tendency of the sun and of riches. Rome is sturdy, she is stronger than our republic of merchants corroded by avarice and pleasure; her hands are calloused by the plow handle and the lance—then against Rome am I headed! Alexander! How weak is his glory! It is easy to march to the conquest of the world when one is the son of Philip, who leaves as inheritance an army seasoned by a hundred victories, when one has an obedient kingdom at one's back, and even in childhood has the good fortune to receive instruction from Aristotle. The difficult thing is to be Hannibal, abandoned by my country, with no other resources than those I can find for myself; having to face at the same time the fury of the enemy and the treachery and intrigue of my fellow countrymen, reared far from my father, among astute merchants who, keeping me as hostage, sought to avoid future danger by diverting my warlike instincts; with no other culture than a little Greek which Sosilon the Spartan taught me; but despite all this, Hannibal wars with fate, and he is conquering. If Alexander is admired for his conquests in the land of the rising sun, some day the world will be startled at seeing me, after having crushed men, dominating Nature herself by crossing the loftiest glaciers and changing the positions of mountains to continue on my way. Look at me well, Asbyte, and you will be convinced that it is as useless to try to arouse human sentiments in my heart as to soften the breast of the enormous bronze Moloch which we have in Carthage! A moment ago, in the solitude of my tent, I felt weak and disheartened, but talking with you revives my strength. Look at me well; you are in the presence of one who fears neither men nor gods!"
"The gods!" exclaimed Asbyte with a throb of terror. "Do you not fear that they will punish you?"
A peal of laughter, sarcastic, tinged with deep scorn, answered the Amazon.
"The gods!" exclaimed Hannibal. "I live among warriors of all nations. Each one adores his own gods, and I know so many, so many, that I do not believe in any of them, and I jest at them all. In Carthage I adored Moloch; here you have often seen me dedicate sacrifices to the Iberian divinities, to attract the people to me. If some day I enter as a conqueror that city where my thought continually dwells, the populace shall acclaim me, seeing me climb to the Capitol to offer thanks to their gods. I believe only in force and strategy. I have but one tutelary god—war, who makes giants of men, giving them the omnipotence of divinity. If on becoming lord of the earth, I find no one with whom to fight, I shall die, thinking the world empty!"
The Amazon bowed her head, overcome with sadness.
"I realize now that you will never be mine, Hannibal! You love war above all things else, and will be faithful to it as long as you live. You are indeed a bird of prey; the momentary love of a slave woman satisfies you; the wounded and weeping woman who falls into the power of your soldiers as they enter a city through a breach in its walls satiates you. You will never understand love and its sweetness."
Hannibal shrugged his shoulders scornfully.
"I love victory, success! The laurel which Greek heroes bound upon their brows in the triumph has for me a more penetrating perfume than the roses of the poets. Cease your laments, Asbyte; be a warrior, and forget that you are a woman; I will love you more. You shall be my brother in arms. Why think of those nights of love when I was still in misfortune and lacking in soldiers, now that all Iberia follows me and I see my dreams of world-power beginning to be realized? Look over this camp, where infinite tongues are spoken, and where each tribe dresses in a different costume. They flow in like streams which swell the torrent. Each day new warriors appear. How many are they? No one knows. Maherbal said yesterday that there were a hundred and twenty thousand; I believe that soon there will be a hundred and eighty thousand. Blind faith in Hannibal draws them on; they feel that with me they march to victory; perhaps their gods have told them that this is but the beginning of a series of achievements which will astound the world. Ponder over it, Asbyte! These peoples have spent their lives fighting among themselves; they hated each other, and yet the sword of Hannibal is a shepherd's crook which guides them like a common flock; and after this miracle would you have me waste my time loving you, staying in my tent lying at your feet, my head upon your knees, listening to you while you sing the dreamy songs of the oasis? No! Lightning of Baal! The city stands before us, mocking at the greatest army ever gathered together on the fields of Iberia, and this must stop. The hempen tent must crush the tower of stone. Sharpen well your lance, daughter of Iarbas; prepare your faithful steed, my beloved! That mysterious breeze which I always perceive on the eve of a victory blows around me. This very day we shall enter Saguntum."
He glanced to the east as if impatient for the coming of dawn.
The moon shone less clearly; the sky darkened, its blue becoming more dense, and on the side toward the sea a broad belt of violet light appeared.
"It will soon be morning," continued the African. "This night, Asbyte, you shall sleep in the ivory couch of some rich Greek woman, and you shall have at your feet the Elders of the city to serve you as slaves."
"No, Hannibal. This day which is now beginning will never end for me. I still see the shade of Iarbas, as it appeared to me before the first cock-crow. I shall die, Hannibal!"
"Die! Can you believe that? Before the enemy reaches you he must pass over Hannibal's body. You are my brother in arms! I will be at your side!"
"Even so, I must die. My father cannot deceive me."
"Are you afraid? Are you trembling, daughter of the Garamantan? Ah, at last the woman! Stay in your tent! Do not approach the walls! I will go and seek you when the moment arrives for you to enter the city like a lady!"
Asbyte straightened her graceful figure as if she had just received a lashing. Her large eyes glowed with anger.
"I will leave you, Hannibal. Day is beginning to dawn. Make preparation for the assault, and you will find me ready when your troops give the signal. Knowing that I am going to die, I wish to ask you for one kiss, the last—No, do not approach me. I do not want it now; it would do me harm. If I fall and you can find me among the slain, you will know what my last thought has been."
Leaning on her lance she moved away between the rows of tents, followed by the black horse, which sniffed at her footprints in faithful devotion.
Day was breaking. The camp fires were nearly extinguished, and around the dying embers the men could be seen arising from the ground, stretching their benumbed limbs, and shaking out the pieces of cloth in which they had been wrapped. Horses whinnied, tugging at their stake ropes, and the soldiers set them free, driving them to the river to water and clean them.
Along every road huge carts were approaching the camp laden with provisions and forage, and the creaking of their axles mingled with the songs of the soldiers, who had arisen in good spirits and recalled their distant homes, singing in their native tongues.
It was a confusion of voices and cries. Each tribe camped by itself; one people greeted the other with joyous shouts. From every side floated odors of naked, sweaty flesh, and of strange stews boiling in the pots; the hammers of the carpenters echoed loudly as they worked upon the siege-engines which would soon be hurling stones and darts against the walls. Warriors in flowing mantles, mounted on prancing steeds, galloped between the city and the camp, examining the battlements of Saguntum, reddened by the sun's first rays, where the defenders were beginning to stir among the merlons. Hannibal with uncovered head was sitting on a remnant of a wall, the ruin of a villa demolished by the besiegers, also studying the city.
He was resolved to begin the attack as soon as his army had finished making the morning preparations. Fifteen hundred Africans, armed with pickaxes, were gathering on the outskirts of the camp. They were going to attack that portion of the city which threw its ramparts into the level, open plain, thereby permitting unobstructed approach to its base. In other divisions of the camp the Celtiberian infantry was forming with long ladders to attempt the walls on many sides at once. The engines of war advanced, the catapults, with the thick bow tightly drawn by elastic cords, ready to fling the stone deposited in the groove of the long arm; the battering-rams vibrating on their chains as they moved. The walking-towers, light, with walls of interlaced osiers, trundled upon massive disks crowned by the shields of the besiegers who concealed themselves behind them to hurl their missiles.
Hannibal hurried to his tent, passing between the cavalrymen who were deliberately grooming their horses and polishing their weapons, knowing that they were not to take part in the assault until the last moment. The chieftain armed himself lightly. He put on a short lorica of bronze scales, adjusted his helmet, selected a shield, and on leaving his tent he met Maherbal and his brother Mago, in charge of the reserves who remained in the camp.
"Your legs are unprotected," said his brother. "Are you not going to cover them with greaves?"
"No," replied the chieftain spiritedly. "We are going to make an assault, and to climb over the fallen walls one must have his legs free. The missiles will respect me as ever."
As he walked out of the camp he thought he saw the queen of the Amazons standing between two tents, following him with saddened eyes; but Asbyte, when her gaze met Hannibal's, moved away and turned her back upon him haughtily.
Trumpets blew, and the army stirred, marching against the city.
The mantelets rolled forward, veritable parapets of wood, through the interstices of which the bowmen shot. Under cover of these portable bulwarks the Africans armed with pickaxes advanced, while in other directions throughout the valley hurried the Celtiberians, carrying their ladders in front of them.
In an instant the walls were manned with defenders. Over the merlons appeared sinewy arms hurling missiles, slings swirled discharging stones, and bows bent followed by sharp hisses.
Hannibal, to animate the assailants, marched behind the fifteen hundred Africans, laughing at the projectiles which struck the wooden sides of the mantelets. Several nights, dragging himself on his belly, and at the risk of being taken prisoner, he had reached the foot of that rampart which projected on the valley side, and which formed the strongest wall of the city. The base was composed of great stones laid in clay. The chieftain being convinced that it was difficult to scale the walls, decided to open a breach through the foundation by undermining the reddish rampart before which his army had been confounded.
As they drew near it the Africans abandoned the shelter of the mantelets and hurled themselves furiously against the barrier of enormous stones. Naked, black, shouting, raising and lowering their muscular arms which ended in glittering iron-pointed pickaxes, they looked like infernal spirits sent by the Cabiric gods of Carthage for the destruction of the city. Stubborn and tenacious in their work of destruction, they growled and picked, insensible to the blows which fell from above.
The beleaguered people, infuriated by this audacity, scorned the Balearic slingers and archers who from a distance aimed over the merlons, and stepping into the crenels they cast down missiles and stones which, falling vertically, never failed to claim their victims. The Africans tumbled over with broken heads or crushed backs; arms and legs snapped like reeds beneath the weight of the stones, and more than one assailant was pinned to the ground by a dart which passed through his back. Over the palpitating bodies, the mangled flesh, the blood mixed with the clay from the walls, rushed fresh assailants, grasping the pickaxes from the hands of the dying, and taking up the work of destruction, pounding on the wall, beating it furiously as if it were an enemy standing before them. Africans, Celtiberians, Gauls, men of all colors and races crowded together, each cursing in his own language, frothing at the mouth with fury, with death hovering above them every instant, and surrounded by a din of howls and lamentations. Tormented by falling stones and blazing phalarics which set fire to their clothing and clung to their naked flesh, roasting them until they writhed in agony, they rushed to the river like animated torches.
Now a block in the wall was giving way! Now it rolled out of place! The most important thing was to remove the first; after it the others would follow. The besiegers burst into exclamations of savage joy; they heard Hannibal's voice encouraging them; but before raising their heads to rest a moment, a deafening howl arose among them. It was raining, but raining fiery, infernal drops which penetrated the bodies of the men like interminable knives. Up there on the walls a fire was smoking. The merchants were melting the great ingots of silver from their vaults, pouring the molten metal like a rain of death upon those who dared destroy the city walls.
The assailants fell back, roaring with fury, and sought refuge behind the mantelets. Hannibal raised his sword, striving with his blows to force them back to work, but in vain he exhorted them, haranguing of victory and of the necessity of destroying the wall; his soldiers retreated without turning their backs, looking with respect at the chieftain who seemed invulnerable, but complaining of the atrocious torment of the burns. Some wallowed on the ground kicking with pain, their lips covered with foam.
Suddenly it seemed as if the city had burst, hurling its inhabitants forth in all directions. In the distance the Celtiberians were seen to flee, flinging away their ladders. The populace rushed out en masse against the besiegers. The gates were too narrow to allow passage to the armed multitude which swirled through them and then spread out in all directions like a torrent which, having run boxed in between mountains, suddenly inundates the plain. Many impatient ones swung from the merlons to fall more quickly upon the enemy.
In a moment the whole space intervening between the walls and the camp was covered by attacking Saguntines and by fleeing besiegers. Hannibal felt himself dragged by the flight of his soldiers. The mantelets began to burn, and a crowd of women and boys, grasping torches, encircled the walking-towers, setting fire to their osier walls.
The Saguntines, forming in phalanxes, advanced, sweeping before them the besiegers who fled in disorder. Before its movable front of pikes and of arms flourishing broadswords, nothing could be seen but fugitive men who flung away their arms and leaped into the air pierced by arrows and lances.
The giant Theron came out in solitary majesty, as if he alone were a phalanx. The lion skin, and his enormous stature, attracted the gaze of all. His club rose and fell, crashing into the groups of fugitives and opening great swaths through their ranks.
"It is Hercules!" the besiegers shouted, with superstitious terror. "The god of Saguntum has come out against us!"
The presence of the giant accelerated the dispersion even more than the blows of the Saguntines.
Hannibal tried to advance, to face about; in vain he lifted up his voice, brandishing his sword. He was swept by the torrent of flight; his own soldiers crowded him along, blinded by the contagion of terror; they tramped on his heels, they pressed against his back with their heads bent low in swift retreat, and he had to make strenuous efforts to keep from being overwhelmed and trampled down. A moment more and the Saguntines, having destroyed every engine of war, reached the camp.
The chieftain was snarling curses and threats against his brother and Maherbal who did not come up with the reserves to stay the torrent of the rout. He saw the troops issuing from the camp hurriedly, but on foot and in disorder, with the precipitation produced by an unexpected event. Many of them were adjusting the straps of their cuirasses, and the different tribes were jostled together and minus their leaders, who in vain had trumpeters blow their horns to bring the hosts to order.
The Saguntines in the blind impulse of victory clashed with this reinforcement and almost routed it in the first encounter. Hannibal, who had managed to reunite a group of the bravest soldiers, presented a firm front to the Saguntines.
"This way! This way!" he shouted to those coming from the camp, who in their excitement did not know where to rally.
But at the same time his cries attracted the enemy. Theron, as if guided by his god, turned toward Hannibal, and soon his mace began to hammer at the shields of the Carthaginians. He hurled himself against them with cool courage, breaking their lances with a blow of his club, wounding himself on the swords which seemed to rebound from his powerful muscles, dripping blood beneath his lion skin, ferocious and magnificent, like unto a divinity. He never raised his knotty trunk without dropping an enemy at his feet.
The besiegers began to recede again before the pressure of the Saguntines; Hannibal was once more dragged by his men who were terrified by the savagery of the giant who seemed invulnerable, when an unexpected turn gave a new phase to the combat. The earth shook beneath a wild gallop, like the reverberation of rolling thunder, and leaning over their horses' necks, their hair floating from beneath their helmets, and their white tunics streaming around their naked limbs, Asbyte's Amazons fell upon the enemy with the violence of a hurricane. They came whooping, waving their lances, calling one to another to charge upon the denser groups, and the assailants fell back astonished at these women whom they saw near at hand for the first time, and who were now favored by the effect of surprise.
Looking between the heads which surrounded him, Hannibal saw Asbyte pass like a luminous flash, absolutely alone. The light of the sun, striking upon her helmet, encircled her with a nimbus of gold. Her lover's instinct had revealed to her where Hannibal stood surrounded by enemies, and she dashed to his support.
Succeeding events were rapid, instantaneous. Through the dust of the charge Hannibal barely made out what occurred, as if it were the fleeting agony of a dream.