How many times had they not tried
to open up a passage! As to implore terms from the conqueror, by what
means could they do so? They did not even know where Hamilcar was.
The wind was blowing from the direction of the ravine. It made the sand
flow perpetually in cascades over the portcullis; and the cloaks and
hair of the Barbarians were being covered with it as though the earth
were rising upon them and desirous of burying them. Nothing stirred; the
eternal mountain seemed still higher to them every morning.
Sometimes flights of birds darted past beneath the blue sky in the
freedom of the air. The men closed their eyes that they might not see
them.
At first they felt a buzzing in their ears, their nails grew black, the
cold reached to their breasts; they lay upon their sides and expired
without a cry.
On the nineteenth day two thousand Asiatics were dead, with fifteen
hundred from the Archipelago, eight thousand from Libya, the youngest
of the Mercenaries and whole tribes--in all twenty thousand soldiers, or
half of the army.
Autaritus, who had only fifty Gauls left, was going to kill himself in
order to put an end to this state of things, when he thought he saw a
man on the top of the mountain in front of him.
Owing to his elevation this man did not appear taller than a dwarf.
Pages:
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409