At last the oldest of the band made a sign, and bending over the corpses they cut strips from them with their knives, then squatted upon their heels and ate.

The rest looked on from a distance; they uttered cries of horror;--many, nevertheless, being, at the bottom of their souls, jealous of such courage.
In the middle of the night some of these approached, and, dissembling their eagerness, asked for a small mouthful, merely to try, they said.
Bolder ones came up; their number increased; there was soon a crowd.

But almost all of them let their hands fall on feeling the cold flesh on the edge of their lips; others, on the contrary, devoured it with delight.
That they might be led away by example, they urged one another on mutually.

Such as had at first refused went to see the Garamantians, and returned no more.

They cooked the pieces on coals at the point of the sword; they salted them with dust, and contended for the best morsels.
When nothing was left of the three corpses, their eyes ranged over the whole plain to find others.
But were they not in possession of Carthaginians--twenty captives taken in the last encounter, whom no one had noticed up to the present?
These disappeared; moreover, it was an act of vengeance.