The great trench was full to overflowing;
the wounded were massed pell-mell with the dead and dying beneath the
footsteps of the living. Calcined trunks formed black spots amid opened
entrails, scattered brains, and pools of blood; and arms and legs
projecting half way out of a heap, would stand straight up like props in
a burning vineyard.
The ladders proving insufficient the tollenos were brought into
requisition,--instruments consisting of a long beam set transversely
upon another, and bearing at its extremity a quadrangular basket which
would hold thirty foot-soldiers with their weapons.
Matho wished to ascend in the first that was ready. Spendius stopped
him.
Some men bent over a capstan; the great beam rose, became horizontal,
reared itself almost vertically, and being overweighted at the end, bent
like a huge reed. The soldiers, who were crowded together, were hidden
up to their chins; only their helmet-plumes could be seen. At last when
it was twenty cubits high in the air it turned several times to the
right and to the left, and then was depressed; and like a giant arm
holding a cohort of pigmies in its hand, it laid the basketful of
men upon the edge of the wall. They leaped into the crowd and never
returned.
All the other tollenos were speedily made ready.
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