CHAPTER V.
AT THE FOOT OF THE ALPS.
When the carnage was completed and the last blow struck, Hannibal sent for his general of engineers. Monomachus shortly appeared before him, sword in hand, panting for breath, and covered with blood from head to foot. A large and long gash upon his swarthy cheek by no means lessened the ferocity of his appearance, at which Chœras, who was standing by, tittered audibly.
“Wherefore hast thou this most sanguinary aspect, oh my chief of pioneers?” quoth the general, in a tone of assumed severity, for he was really in high good humour. “Thou hast surely not quitted thy post on the opposite bank, where thy duties were to complete and guard the means of transport across the river, and joined in the fight wherewith thy duties had neither part nor parcel?”
Before replying, Monomachus calmly piled three corpses of the Gauls together, two below and then one on the top, upon which gruesome group he seated himself as comfortably as possible. Then wiping the blood streaming from his face, he replied:
“Nay, thanks be to the gods! I had no cause to leave my post on the elephant rafts to be able to slay a few of the cursed barbarians. But a party of about a dozen of them had in flight seized a boat, and, by the mercy of Moloch, just as I was fretting at mine inaction, they chanced to come my way. So I just killed the lot. One fellow, however, proved a bit nasty, and gave me this little remembrance.” Again he wiped his face. “He was the last of them all,” he continued, “so I had, fortunately, time to make an example of him, although he fought hard, and scarcely seemed to appreciate my kind attentions.”
“What didst thou do?” questioned Hannibal.
The butcher grinned ferociously, but made no reply at first.
“How didst thou make an example of him?” again questioned his commander.
“I took him by the waist,” answered Monomachus, “and, for all his struggles and cries, thrust his head into the mouth of that savage bull elephant, that king of beasts whom the men call Moloch. It was the champing up of his skull that has caused my armour and clothing to thus become somewhat discoloured.” And he looked down with a grim glance of satisfaction at his bloody attire.
“Methinks ’tis thou who should be named the king of beasts more rightly than the elephant after such an exploit as that; but, for all that, I thank thee, Monomachus, for thy skilful arrangements for the crossing of the river, and likewise for thy gallant defence of the raft, for Sosilus here, who was by me, taking notes as usual, pointed thee out to me while engaged in first killing the runaway Gauls, and then feeding the elephant on such unaccustomed food; and, by my troth, I think I saw thee slay nearer twenty than twelve of the barbarians. What was the exact number of them, by the by, Sosilus?”