At the same moment a cloud of black arrows whistled over the walls like a flock of birds. Tiles flew off, bits of plaster sprang from the merlons, and some fell from the wall with broken heads. From between the merlons stones and arrows leaped as an impetuous answer.
The defense of the city had begun!
CHAPTER VI
ASBYTE AND HANNIBAL
Hannibal lay tossing between the bright-hued coverings of his couch, unable to conciliate sleep.
The cocks had announced midnight, breaking the silence of the camp with their shrill voices, and the chieftain was yet awake, closing his eyes though unable to sleep. His rest was disturbed by the singing of a nightingale perched in a great tree from the branches of which hung his tent.
An earthenware lamp illuminated the mass of objects strewn carelessly around his bed. On the floor glistened cuirasses, greaves, and helmets, over which were thrown rich fabrics stolen from the Saguntine villas. Grecian furniture, delicately wrought toilette amphoræ, tapestries with mythological scenes, lay in a heap mingled with rawhide whips, shields of hippopotamus hide, and the rags of Hannibal's personal costume, for, though a lover of glittering arms, he was careless and dirty in his dress. Elegant Grecian vases he put to the vilest uses. An alabaster crater covered by a shield served as a seat; a huge terra cotta vase, decorated by a Grecian artist with the adventures of Achilles, the African scornfully used in a manner calculated to express the height of his contempt for refinement. Pieces of statues and columns destroyed during the tempest of invasion were sunk in the ground, making seats for Hannibal's captains when a council was held in the chieftain's tent. It was the spoil of war, looted and thrown about in a fever of robbery. Only a small portion of it had reached the chief, who felt absolute scorn for artistic beauty except when stamped on precious metals. He sneered at the gods of this land as he did at those of his own country and of the world; he spat upon the marble forms of divinities which filled the camp, as if they were scraps of worthless stone, good for nothing but to be hurled by a catapult against the enemy.
Impelled by nervous excitement, which prevented his sleeping, he raised up in his couch, and the lamplight shone full upon his face. He was no longer the Celtiberian shepherd, dishevelled and ferocious, whom Actæon had met in the port of Saguntum. Divested of his disguise he showed what he was—a young man of medium height, with strong and well proportioned limbs, without display of exaggerated muscles, but revealing in his body the temper of steel, a vitality capable in supreme moments of the most stupendous achievements. His face was slightly bronzed, and his hair lay around his head in thick short curls like a black and lustrous turban, completely covering his forehead, and leaving exposed the lobes of his ears, from which hung great discs of bronze. His beard was thick and curly; his nose straight and somewhat prominent, and his eyes, large and imperious, always looked sidewise, with an expression of profound astuteness and unapproachable reserve. His muscular neck was habitually bent, inclining his head toward the right, as if to more clearly catch the sounds around him.
He wore a simple, dirty, and threadbare sagum, like any one of those Celtiberians who lay snoring in the tents roundabout, and, as a sign of command, there shone on his wrists two broad golden bracelets, which added strength by their confinement of the tendons and muscles of the arm.
For more than a month he had been before the walls of Saguntum without achieving any advantage. He had spent the whole of that afternoon directing his engines of war without result, and now in his solitude this want of success irritated his nerves, and dispelled his sleep. The petted child of victory, he had conquered in open fight the most savage tribes of Iberia; he had dragged his elephants over the crests of lofty mountains, crossing rivers, breaking trails through forests, seeing warlike hordes fall prostrate before him as if he were a god, but now, for the first time in his life he encountered a stubborn enemy, which behind sheltering walls mocked at him and would not suffer him to advance a step.