They came to the captains and besought them to grant them something that would alleviate their sufferings.  The others made no reply; or, seized with fury, would pick up a stone and fling it in their faces.

Several, in fact, carefully kept a reserve of food in a hole in the ground—­a few handfuls of dates, or a little meal; and they ate this during the night, with their heads bent beneath their cloaks.  Those who had swords kept them naked in their hands, and the most suspicious remained standing with their backs against the mountain.

They accused their chiefs and threatened them.  Autaritus was not afraid of showing himself.  With the Barbaric obstinacy which nothing could discourage, he would advance twenty times a day to the rocks at the bottom, hoping every time to find them perchance displaced; and swaying his heavy fur-covered shoulders, he reminded his companions of a bear coming forth from its cave in springtime to see whether the snows are melted.

Spendius, surrounded by the Greeks, hid himself in one of the gaps; as he was afraid, he caused a rumour of his death to be spread.

They were now hideously lean; their skin was overlaid with bluish marblings.  On the evening of the ninth day three Iberians died.

Their frightened companions left the spot.  They were stripped, and the white, naked bodies lay in the sunshine on the sand.

Then the Garamantians began to prowl slowly round about them.  They were men accustomed to existence in solitude, and they reverenced no god.  At last the oldest of the band made a sign, and bending over the corpses they cut strips from them with their knives, then squatted upon their heels and ate.  The rest looked on from a distance; they uttered cries of horror;—­many, nevertheless, being, at the bottom of their souls, jealous of such courage.

In the middle of the night some of these approached, and, dissembling their eagerness, asked for a small mouthful, merely to try, they said.  Bolder ones came up; their number increased; there was soon a crowd.  But almost all of them let their hands fall on feeling the cold flesh on the edge of their lips; others, on the contrary, devoured it with delight.

That they might be led away by example, they urged one another on mutually.  Such as had at first refused went to see the Garamantians, and returned no more.  They cooked the pieces on coals at the point of the sword; they salted them with dust, and contended for the best morsels.  When nothing was left of the three corpses, their eyes ranged over the whole plain to find others.

But were they not in possession of Carthaginians—­twenty captives taken in the last encounter, whom no one had noticed up to the present?  These disappeared; moreover, it was an act of vengeance.  Then, as they must live, as the taste for this food had become developed, and as they were dying, they cut the throats of the water-carriers, grooms, and all the serving-men belonging to the Mercenaries.  They killed some of them every day.  Some ate much, recovered strength, and were sad no more.