“Greeting! blessing!  Eye of Khamon! ah! deliver us!  ’Tis the fault of the rich! they want to put you to death!  Take care of yourself, Barca!”

He made no reply, as if the loud clamour of oceans and battles had completely deafened him.  But when he was below the staircase leading down from the Acropolis, Hamilcar raised his head, and looked with folded arms upon the temple of Eschmoun.  His gaze mounted higher still, to the great pure sky; he shouted an order in a harsh voice to his sailors; the trireme leaped forward; it grazed the idol set up at the corner of the mole to stay the storms; and in the merchant harbour, which was full of filth, fragments of wood, and rinds of fruit, it pushed aside and crushed against the other ships moored to stakes and terminating in crocodiles’ jaws.  The people hastened thither, and some threw themselves into the water to swim to it.  It was already at the very end before the gate which bristled with nails.  The gate rose, and the trireme disappeared beneath the deep arch.

The Military Harbour was completely separated from the town; when ambassadors arrived, they had to proceed between two walls through a passage which had its outlet on the left in front of the temple of Khamon.  This great expanse of water was as round as a cup, and was bordered with quays on which sheds were built for sheltering the ships.  Before each of these rose two pillars bearing the horns of Ammon on their capitals and forming continuous porticoes all round the basin.  On an island in the centre stood a house for the marine Suffet.

The water was so limpid that the bottom was visible with its paving of white pebbles.  The noise of the streets did not reach so far, and Hamilcar as he passed recognised the triremes which he had formerly commanded.

Not more than twenty perhaps remained, under shelter on the land, leaning over on their sides or standing upright on their keels, with lofty poops and swelling prows, and covered with gildings and mystic symbols.  The chimaeras had lost their wings, the Pataec Gods their arms, the bulls their silver horns;—­and half-painted, motionless, and rotten as they were, yet full of associations, and still emitting the scent of voyages, they all seemed to say to him, like mutilated soldiers on seeing their master again, “’Tis we! ’tis we! and you too are vanquished!”

No one excepting the marine Suffet might enter the admiral’s house.  So long as there was no proof of his death he was considered as still in existence.  In this way the Ancients avoided a master the more, and they had not failed to comply with the custom in respect to Hamilcar.