But an enormous crowd was discharging from the side
streets. He was caught by the hips, lifted up and carried away outside
the ramparts to a spot where the terrace was high.
Matho shouted a command and all the shields sank upon the helmets; he
leaped upon them in order to catch hold somewhere so as to re-enter
Carthage; and, flourishing his terrible axe, ran over the shields, which
resembled waves of bronze, like a marine god, with brandished trident,
over his billows.
However, a man in a white robe was walking along the edge of the
rampart, impassible, and indifferent to the death which surrounded him.
Sometimes he would spread out his right hand above his eyes in order
to find out some one. Matho happened to pass beneath him. Suddenly his
eyeballs flamed, his livid face contracted; and raising both his lean
arms he shouted out abuse at him.
Matho did not hear it; but he felt so furious and cruel a look entering
his heart that he uttered a roar. He hurled his long axe at him; some
people threw themselves upon Schahabarim; and Matho seeing him no more
fell back exhausted.
A terrible creaking drew near, mingled with the rhythm of hoarse voices
singing together.
It was the great helepolis surrounded by a crowd of soldiers. They were
dragging it with both hands, hauling it with ropes, and pushing it with
their shoulders,--for the slope rising from the plain to the terrace,
although extremely gentle, was found impracticable for machines of such
prodigious weight.
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