第24章

The next day a sort of languor took possession of the army.Now that their anger was over they were seized with anxiety.Matho was suffering from vague melancholy.It seemed to him that Salammbo had indirectly been insulted.These rich men were a kind of appendage to her person.He sat down in the night on the edge of the pit, and recognised in their groanings something of the voice of which his heart was full.

All, however, upbraided the Libyans, who alone had been paid.But while national antipathies revived, together with personal hatreds, it was felt that it would be perilous to give way to them.Reprisals after such an outrage would be formidable.It was necessary, therefore, to anticipate the vengeance of Carthage.Conventions and harangues never ceased.Every one spoke, no one was listened to;Spendius, usually so loquacious, shook his head at every proposal.

One evening he asked Matho carelessly whether there were not springs in the interior of the town.

"Not one!" replied Matho.

The next day Spendius drew him aside to the bank of the lake.

"Master!" said the former slave, "If your heart is dauntless, I will bring you into Carthage.""How?" repeated the other, panting.

"Swear to execute all my commands and to follow me like a shadow!"Then Matho, raising his arm towards the planet of Chabar, exclaimed:

"By Tanith, I swear!"

Spendius resumed:

"To-morrow after sunset you will wait for me at the foot of the aqueduct between the ninth and tenth arcades.Bring with you an iron pick, a crestless helmet, and leathern sandals."The aqueduct of which he spoke crossed the entire isthmus obliquely,--a considerable work, afterwards enlarged by the Romans.In spite of her disdain of other nations, Carthage had awkwardly borrowed this novel invention from them, just as Rome herself had built Punic galleys; and five rows of superposed arches, of a dumpy kind of architecture, with buttresses at their foot and lions' heads at the top, reached to the western part of the Acropolis, where they sank beneath the town to incline what was nearly a river into the cisterns of Megara.

Spendius met Matho here at the hour agreed upon.He fastened a sort of harpoon to the end of a cord and whirled it rapidly like a sling; the iron instrument caught fast, and they began to climb up the wall, the one after the other.

But when they had ascended to the first story the cramp fell back every time that they threw it, and in order to discover some fissure they had to walk along the edge of the cornice.At every row of arches they found that it became narrower.Then the cord relaxed.Several times it nearly broke.

At last they reached the upper platform.Spendius stooped down from time to time to feel the stones with his hand.

"Here it is," he said; "let us begin!" And leaning on the pick which Matho had brought they succeeded in dislodging one of the flagstones.

In the distance they perceived a troop of horse-men galloping on horses without bridles.Their golden bracelets leaped in the vague drapings of their cloaks.A man could be seen in front crowned with ostrich feathers, and galloping with a lance in each hand.

"Narr' Havas!" exclaimed Matho.

"What matter?" returned Spendius, and he leaped into the hole which they had just made by removing the flagstone.

Matho at his command tried to thrust out one of the blocks.But he could not move his elbows for want of room.