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.  However, Autaritus recognised a shield shaped like a trefoil on his left arm.  “A Carthaginian!” he exclaimed, and immediately throughout the plain, before the portcullis and beneath the rocks, all rose.  The soldier was walking along the edge of the precipice; the Barbarians gazed at him from below.

Spendius picked up the head of an ox; then having formed a diadem with two belts, he fixed it on the horns at the end of a pole in token of pacific intentions.  The Carthaginian disappeared.  They waited.

At last in the evening a sword-belt suddenly fell from above like a stone loosened from the cliff.  It was made of red leather covered with embroidery, with three diamond stars, and stamped in the centre, it bore the mark of the Great Council:  a horse beneath a palm-tree.  This was Hamilcar’s reply, the safe-conduct that he sent them.

They had nothing to fear; any change of fortune brought with it the end of their woes.  They were moved with extravagant joy, they embraced one another, they wept.  Spendius, Autaritus, and Zarxas, four Italiotes, a Negro and two Spartans offered themselves as envoys.  They were immediately accepted.  They did not know, however, by what means they should get away.

But a cracking sounded in the direction of the rocks; and the most elevated of them, after rocking to and fro, rebounded to the bottom.  In fact, if they were immovable on the side of the Barbarians—­for it would have been necessary to urge them up an incline plane, and they were, moreover, heaped together owing to the narrowness of the gorge—­on the others, on the contrary, it was sufficient to drive against them with violence to make them descend.  The Carthaginians pushed them, and at daybreak they projected into the plain like the steps of an immense ruined staircase.

The Barbarians were still unable to climb them.  Ladders were held out for their assistance; all rushed upon them.  The discharge of a catapult drove the crowd back; only the Ten were taken away.

They walked amid the Clinabarians, leaning their hands on the horses’ croups for support.

Now that their first joy was over they began to harbour anxieties.  Hamilcar’s demands would be cruel.  But Spendius reassured them.

“I will speak!” And he boasted that he knew excellent things to say for the safety of the army.