Utterly astounded, I held my tongue. Taking no notice of Hanno's clenched fist and gleaming eye, he went on, hiccupping as he spoke:
"That young man with the gold shoulder-belt, strip him to the skin, and pack him off to the slaves. I don't care for the other old scarecrows; do as you like with them; there's an ugly one-eyed rascal among them; hang him or behead him as you please, the sooner the better."
"What?" shrieked Himilco, in ungovernable rage; "what? do you call me a one-eyed rascal? and our captain, a Phœnician admiral, do you call him a scarecrow? By all the gods!"——
Belesys burst into a roar of laughter, repeated his orders that we should be put under arrest, and taking a cup from the nearest cup-bearer, drained it at a gulp and flung it back into the man's face.
"Handcuff them, I say!" he bawled again.
Several of his men approached to execute his bidding, but I shook off the hands of the Chaldean who ventured near me; Hannibal floored the man who was about to assail him, by planting his fist heavily in the fellow's eyes after the Cymri fashion in Prydhayn; Chamai, in genuine Celtic style, knocked down another by butting at him with his head in the middle of the stomach; but Bichri, the most agile of us all, took a much more determined measure. Bounding like a cat upon the couch, he fixed his knee firmly upon the general's breast, and with one hand caught hold of his beard, while with the other he held the point of his knife close enough to his throat to be felt.
"Capital, Bichri! well done!" shouted Hannibal, drawing his sword.
"Keep your hold, Bichri, and long live the King!" cried Chamai, following Hannibal's example.
Hanno and myself, resolved to act on the defensive, also drew our swords; Himilco tripped up another of the Chaldeans by one of those adroit turns of the hand with which a sailor knows so well how to take a landsman by surprise; and all my own sailors, seeing the aspect of affairs, in a moment set down their packages and unsheathed their cutlasses.
"Shall I cut his throat?" asked Bichri, coolly, appealing to me.