“Be silent!  Am I a pauper then?  No lies! speak the truth!  I wish to know all that I have lost to the last shekel, to the last cab!  Abdalonim, bring me the accounts of the ships, of the caravans, of the farms, of the house!  And if your consciences are not clear, woe be on your heads!  Go out!”

All the stewards went out walking backwards, with their fists touching the ground.

Abdalonim went up to a set of pigeon-holes in the wall, and from the midst of them took out knotted cords, strips of linen or papyrus, and sheeps’ shoulder-blades inscribed with delicate writing.  He laid them at Hamilcar’s feet, placed in his hands a wooden frame furnished on the inside with three threads on which balls of gold, silver, and horn were strung, and began: 

“One hundred and ninety-two houses in the Mappalian district let to the New Carthaginians at the rate of one bekah a moon.”

“No! it is too much! be lenient towards the poor people! and you will try to learn whether they are attached to the Republic, and write down the names of those who appear to you to be the most daring!  What next?”

Abdalonim hesitated in surprise at such generosity.

Hamilcar snatched the strips of linen from his hands.

“What is this? three palaces around Khamon at twelve kesitahs a month!  Make it twenty!  I do not want to be eaten up by the rich.”

The Steward of the stewards, after a long salutation, resumed: 

“Lent to Tigillas until the end of the season two kikars at three per cent., maritime interest; to Bar-Malkarth fifteen hundred shekels on the security of thirty slaves.  But twelve have died in the salt-marshes.”

“That is because they were not hardy,” said the Suffet, laughing.  “No matter! if he is in want of money, satisfy him!  We should always lend, and at different rates of interest, according to the wealth of the individual.”

Then the servant hastened to read all that had been brought in by the iron-mines of Annaba, the coral fisheries, the purple factories, the farming of the tax on the resident Greeks, the export of silver to Arabia, where it had ten times the value of gold, and the captures of vessels, deduction of a tenth being made for the temple of the goddess.  “Each time I declared a quarter less, Master!” Hamilcar was reckoning with the balls; they rang beneath his fingers.

“Enough!  What have you paid?”

“To Stratonicles of Corinth, and to three Alexandrian merchants, on these letters here (they have been realised), ten thousand Athenian drachmas, and twelve Syrian talents of gold.  The food for the crews, amounting to twenty minae a month for each trireme—­”

“I know!  How many lost?”

“Here is the account on these sheets of lead,” said the Steward.  “As to the ships chartered in common, it has often been necessary to throw the cargo into the seas, and so the unequal losses have been divided among the partners.  For the ropes which were borrowed from the arsenals, and which it was impossible to restore, the Syssitia exacted eight hundred kesitahs before the expedition to Utica.”