The victims, when scarcely at the edge of the opening, disappeared like a drop of water on a red-hot plate, and white smoke rose amid the great scarlet colour.

Nevertheless, the appetite of the god was not appeased.  He ever wished for more.  In order to furnish him with a larger supply, the victims were piled up on his hands with a big chain above them which kept them in their place.  Some devout persons had at the beginning wished to count them, to see whether their number corresponded with the days of the solar year; but others were brought, and it was impossible to distinguish them in the giddy motion of the horrible arms.  This lasted for a long, indefinite time until the evening.  Then the partitions inside assumed a darker glow, and burning flesh could be seen.  Some even believed that they could descry hair, limbs, and whole bodies.

Night fell; clouds accumulated above the Baal.  The funeral-pile, which was flameless now, formed a pyramid of coals up to his knees; completely red like a giant covered with blood, he looked, with his head thrown back, as though he were staggering beneath the weight of his intoxication.

In proportion as the priests made haste, the frenzy of the people increased; as the number of the victims was diminishing, some cried out to spare them, others that still more were needful.  The walls, with their burden of people, seemed to be giving way beneath the howlings of terror and mystic voluptuousness.  Then the faithful came into the passages, dragging their children, who clung to them; and they beat them in order to make them let go, and handed them over to the men in red.  The instrument-players sometimes stopped through exhaustion; then the cries of the mothers might be heard, and the frizzling of the fat as it fell upon the coals.  The henbane-drinkers crawled on all fours around the colossus, roaring like tigers; the Yidonim vaticinated, the Devotees sang with their cloven lips; the trellis-work had been broken through, all wished for a share in the sacrifice;—­and fathers, whose children had died previously, cast their effigies, their playthings, their preserved bones into the fire.  Some who had knives rushed upon the rest.  They slaughtered one another.  The hierodules took the fallen ashes at the edge of the flagstone in bronze fans, and cast them into the air that the sacrifice might be scattered over the town and even to the region of the stars.

The loud noise and great light had attracted the Barbarians to the foot of the walls; they clung to the wreck of the helepolis to have a better view, and gazed open-mouthed in horror.

CHAPTER XIV

THE PASS OF THE HATCHET

The Carthaginians had not re-entered their houses when the clouds accumulated more thickly; those who raised their heads towards the colossus could feel big drops on their foreheads, and the rain fell.