Men of violent disposition perished first; the Africans held out
better than the Gauls. Zarxas lay stretched at full length among the
Balearians, his hair over his arm, inert. Spendius found a plant with
broad leaves filled abundantly with juice, and after declaring that it
was poisonous, so as to keep off the rest, he fed himself upon it.
They were too weak to knock down the flying crows with stones. Sometimes
when a gypaetus was perched on a corpse, and had been mangling it for
a long time, a man would set himself to crawl towards it with a javelin
between his teeth. He would support himself with one hand, and after
taking a good aim, throw his weapon. The white-feathered creature,
disturbed by the noise, would desist and look about in tranquil fashion
like a cormorant on a rock, and would then again thrust in its hideous,
yellow beak, while the man, in despair, would fall flat on his face in
the dust. Some succeeded in discovering chameleons and serpents. But it
was the love of life that kept them alive. They directed their souls to
this idea exclusively, and clung to existence by an effort of the will
that prolonged it.
The most stoical kept close to one another, seated in a circle here and
there, among the dead in the middle of the plain; and wrapped in their
cloaks they gave themselves up silently to their sadness.
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