Hannibal leaped over the trusted soldiers who slept near the door of his tent. They raised up as they heard his footsteps, but recognizing the chief, lay down on the ground again and continued snoring. They were veterans from Hamilcar's wars, who looked with almost religious veneration on the lion cub of their old captain.
As he turned the corner of the tent he drew his bow to shoot at the bird hidden in the foliage; but he started in surprise on seeing a white figure standing near the trunk of the tree, shining in the moonlight.
It was a woman, an Amazon. On her head and on her breast glistened the helmet of gold and the cuirass of scales; her white linen tunic fell over her limbs, outlining her form, and her strong bare arms were resting on her lance with its shoe driven into the ground. Her dark eyes were fastened on Hannibal's tent with strange, unblinking persistence, as if she were dreaming awake, and the night-wind lightly swayed her floating hair. Behind her stood a black horse with glossy coat, nervous legs, and eyes injected with blood, destitute of saddle or bridle, his mane unbound; he was bending down to lick the border of the Amazon's tunic and her nude feet, like a dog which followed her everywhere.
"Asbyte!" exclaimed Hannibal, surprised at the apparition. "What are you doing here?"
The queen of the Amazons seemed to awake, and seeing the chief, she fixed on him the moist and impassioned gaze of her large eyes.
"I could not sleep," she said with a voice languid and measured. "I spent the first part of the night dreaming horrible dreams. The Goddess Tanith will not guard my repose, and I have seen the shade of my father Iarbas announcing my approaching death."
"Death!" exclaimed Hannibal, laughing. "Who thinks of death?"
"Am I then immortal? Do I not fight like any one of your soldiers? I hurl myself impetuously through forests of lances; feathered shafts hiss around me like a trailing mantle of invisible birds; I scorn the phalarics with their streams of fire—but some day I shall die; my dreams foretell it."
Asbyte, as if fearing to show too great melancholy in the presence of Hannibal, added bitterly:
"Let death come when it will! It does not frighten me as it does the merchants of Carthage who hate you. If it disturbed my sleep it was because when I awoke I thought of you. I cannot explain to myself why I thought that you also might die, and to your death, Hannibal, I cannot be resigned. You should live long like a god. I knew that you sleep alone in your tent; that, to better conceal your movements you keep no guards to watch while you slumber, and I felt the need of doing something for you, of spending the night leaning on my lance near your couch to prevent the treachery of an enemy."