or fell pierced with the weapons of their assailants, filling the air with their cries of agony and their shrieks of terror.  The horrors of the scene, far from allaying, only excited still more the ferocity of their bloodthirsty foes, and they pressed steadily and fiercely on, hour after hour, in their dreadful work of destruction.  It was one of those scenes of horror and woe such as those who have not witnessed them can not conceive of, and those who have witnessed can never forget.

[Sidenote:  Pompey’s flight to the camp.] [Sidenote:  Pompey in his tent.] [Sidenote:  His consternation and despair.]

When Pompey perceived that all was lost, he fled from the field in a state of the wildest excitement and consternation.  His troops were flying in all directions, some toward the camp, vainly hoping to find refuge there, and others in various other quarters, wherever they saw the readiest hope of escape from their merciless pursuers.  Pompey himself fled instinctively toward the camp.  As he passed the guards at the gate where he entered, he commanded them, in his agitation and terror, to defend the gate against the coming enemy, saying that he was going to the other gates to attend to the defenses there.  He then hurried on, but a full sense of the helplessness and hopelessness of his condition soon overwhelmed him; he gave up all thought of defense, and, passing with a sinking heart through the scene of consternation and confusion which reigned every where within the encampment, he sought his own tent, and, rushing into it, sank down, amid the luxury and splendor which had been arranged to do honor to his anticipated victory, in a state of utter stupefaction and despair.

CHAPTER VIII.

FLIGHT AND DEATH OF POMPEY.

[Sidenote:  Pursuit of the vanquished.] [Sidenote:  Pompey recovers himself.]

Caesar pursued the discomfited and flying bodies of Pompey’s army to the camp.  They made a brief stand upon the ramparts and at the gates in a vain and fruitless struggle against the tide of victory which they soon perceived must fully overwhelm them.  They gave way continually here and there along the lines of intrenchment, and column after column of Caesar’s followers broke through into the camp.  Pompey, hearing from his tent the increasing noise and uproar, was at length aroused from his stupor, and began to summon his faculties to the question what he was to do.  At length a party of fugitives, hotly pursued by some of Caesar’s soldiers, broke into his tent.  “What!” said Pompey, “into my tent too!” He had been for more than thirty years a victorious general, accustomed to all the deference and respect which boundless wealth, extended and absolute power, and the highest military rank could afford.  In the encampments which he had made, and in the cities which he had occupied from time to time, he had been the supreme and unquestioned master, and his tent, arranged and furnished, as it