The army under Autaritus still remained before Tunis.  It was hidden behind a wall made with mud from the lake, and protected on the top by thorny brushwood.  Some Negroes had planted tall sticks here and there bearing frightful faces,—­human masks made with birds’ feathers, and jackals’ or serpents’ heads,—­which gaped towards the enemy for the purpose of terrifying him; and the Barbarians, reckoning themselves invincible through these means, danced, wrestled, and juggled, convinced that Carthage would perish before long.  Any one but Hanno would easily have crushed such a multitude, hampered as it was with herds and women.  Moreover, they knew nothing of drill, and Autaritus was so disheartened that he had ceased to require it.

They stepped aside when he passed by rolling his big blue eyes.  Then on reaching the edge of the lake he would draw back his sealskin cloak, unfasten the cord which tied up his long red hair, and soak the latter in the water.  He regretted that he had not deserted to the Romans along with the two thousand Gauls of the temple of Eryx.

Often the sun would suddenly lose his rays in the middle of the day.  Then the gulf and the open sea would seem as motionless as molten lead.  A cloud of brown dust stretching perpendicularly would speed whirling along; the palm trees would bend and the sky disappear, while stones would be heard rebounding on the animals’ cruppers; and the Gaul, his lips glued against the holes in his tent, would gasp with exhaustion and melancholy.  His thoughts would be of the scent of the pastures on autumn mornings, of snowflakes, or of the bellowing of the urus lost in the fog, and closing his eyelids he would in imagination behold the fires in long, straw-roofed cottages flickering on the marshes in the depths of the woods.

Others regretted their native lands as well as he, even though they might not be so far away.  Indeed the Carthaginian captives could distinguish the velaria spread over the courtyards of their houses, beyond the gulf on the slopes of Byrsa.  But sentries marched round them continually.  They were all fastened to a common chain.  Each one wore an iron carcanet, and the crowd was never weary of coming to gaze at them.  The women would show their little children the handsome robes hanging in tatters on their wasted limbs.

Whenever Autaritus looked at Gisco he was seized with rage at the recollection of the insult that he had received, and he would have killed him but for the oath which he had taken to Narr’ Havas.  Then he would go back into his tent and drink a mixture of barley and cumin until he swooned away from intoxication,—­to awake afterwards in broad daylight consumed with horrible thirst.