The blood-coloured moon was shining within a
pale circle, and their scarlet tongues, cloven like the harpoons of
fishermen, reached curling forth to the very edge of the flame."
Then Salammbo, without pausing, related how Melkarth, after vanquishing
Masisabal, placed her severed head on the prow of his ship. "At each
throb of the waves it sank beneath the foam, but the sun embalmed it; it
became harder than gold; nevertheless the eyes ceased not to weep, and
the tears fell into the water continually."
She sang all this in an old Chanaanite idiom, which the Barbarians did
not understand. They asked one another what she could be saying to them
with those frightful gestures which accompanied her speech, and mounted
round about her on the tables, beds, and sycamore boughs, they strove
with open mouths and craned necks to grasp the vague stories hovering
before their imaginations, through the dimness of the theogonies, like
phantoms wrapped in cloud.
Only the beardless priests understood Salammbo; their wrinkled hands,
which hung over the strings of their lyres, quivered, and from time
to time they would draw forth a mournful chord; for, feebler than old
women, they trembled at once with mystic emotion, and with the
fear inspired by men. The Barbarians heeded them not, but listened
continually to the maiden's song.
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