The caravans had set out regularly at the winter equinox.  But of fifteen hundred men directing their course towards the extreme boundaries of Ethiopia with excellent camels, new leathern bottles, and supplies of painted cloth, but one had reappeared at Carthage—­the rest having died of fatigue or become mad through the terror of the desert;—­and he said that far beyond the Black Harousch, after passing the Atarantes and the country of the great apes, he had seen immense kingdoms, wherein the pettiest utensils were all of gold, a river of the colour of milk and as broad as the sea, forests of blue trees, hills of aromatics, monsters with human faces vegetating on the rocks with eyeballs which expanded like flowers to look at you; and then crystal mountains supporting the sun behind lakes all covered with dragons.  Others had returned from India with peacocks, pepper, and new textures.  As to those who go by way of the Syrtes and the temple of Ammon to purchase chalcedony, they had no doubt perished in the sands.  The caravans from Gaetulia and Phazzana had furnished their usual supplies; but he, the Chief of the Journeys, did not venture to fit one out just now.

Hamilcar understood; the Mercenaries were in occupation of the country.  He leaned upon his other elbow with a hollow groan; and the Chief of Farms was so afraid to speak that he trembled horribly in spite of his thick shoulders and his big red eyeballs.  His face, which was as snub-nosed as a mastiff’s, was surmounted by a net woven of threads of bark.  He wore a waist-belt of hairy leopard’s skin, wherein gleamed two formidable cutlasses.

As soon as Hamilcar turned away he began to cry aloud and invoke all the Baals.  It was not his fault! he could not help it!  He had watched the temperature, the soil, the stars, had planted at the winter solstice and pruned at the waning of the moon, had inspected the slaves and had been careful of their clothes.

But Hamilcar grew angry at this loquacity.  He clacked his tongue, and the man with the cutlasses went on in rapid tones: 

“Ah, Master! they have pillaged everything! sacked everything! destroyed everything!  Three thousand trees have been cut down at Maschala, and at Ubada the granaries have been looted and the cisterns filled up!  At Tedes they have carried off fifteen hundred gomors of meal; at Marrazana they have killed the shepherds, eaten the flocks, burnt your house—­your beautiful house with its cedar beams, which you used to visit in the summer!  The slaves at Tuburbo who were reaping barley fled to the mountains; and the asses, the mules both great and small, the oxen from Taormina, and the antelopes,—­not a single one left! all carried away!  It is a curse!  I shall not survive it!” He went on again in tears:  “Ah! if you knew how full the cellars were, and how the ploughshares shone!  Ah! the fine rams! ah! the fine bulls!—­”

Hamilcar’s wrath was choking him.  It burst forth: