The Saguntines, debilitated by the long siege, their strength exhausted by hunger and sickness, could not withstand the clash. The Celtiberians wounded mercilessly with their two edged swords, and the company of sick men, women, and children, fell rapidly beneath their blows.
Actæon, fighting with his shield before his face and his sword raised against two vigorous soldiers, saw Sónnica receive a stab in the head and drop her weapons, doubling up in agony.
"Actæon! Actæon!" she cried, forgetting her bitterness, the fire of her old love returning to her with death.
She fell face downward on the ground. The Greek started toward her, but at the same instant his ears buzzed as if an immense mass had crashed upon his head; in his side he felt the chill of the steel perforating his flesh; everything turned black, and he sank to the ground, as if falling into a dark and gloomy pit the bottom of which he would never reach.
* * * * * *
The Greek awoke. His chest was weighted down by a form as heavy as a mountain. He was not sure whether he really existed. His members refused to obey him. Only with a painful effort could he open his eyes and understand confusedly why he was there.
Gradually he realized that the something which oppressed his breast was the corpse of a gigantic soldier. Actæon thought he remembered having plunged his sword into the body of the warrior the instant that he fell into the dense and mysterious night.
He looked around. A ruddy glow, as of an endless aurora, scintillated on the abandoned weapons and outlined silhouettes of the bodies lying in heaps or scattered over the field contracted in weird postures by their final convulsions.
In the background a city was burning. The blackened and shapeless structures stood out against the curtain of flames, and through their restless splendor the walls of the Acropolis trembled.
Actæon remembered all that had happened. That city was Saguntum; the conquerors could be heard howling through the streets; they were covered with blood; setting fire to the houses still untouched; cursing a people which only gave itself up after consuming its riches; killing in their fury whatever living thing they encountered in their way, and stabbing the wounded.