This death was quite as good as another;--and then moving his soldiers aside (for the Punic standards hid the horizon from the Mercenaries) he showed them the one hundred and ninety-two elephants under Narr' Havas, forming a single straight line, their trunks brandishing broad steel blades like giant arms holding axes above their heads.
The Barbarians looked at one another silently.

It was not death that made them turn pale, but the horrible compulsion to which they found themselves reduced.
The community of their lives had brought about profound friendship among these men.

The camp, with most, took the place of their country; living without a family they transferred the needful tenderness to a companion, and they would fall asleep in the starlight side by side under the same cloak.

And then in their perpetual wanderings through all sorts of countries, murders, and adventures, they had contracted affections, one for the other, in which the stronger protected the younger in the midst of battles, helped him to cross precipices, sponged the sweat of fevers from his brow, and stole food for him, and the weaker, a child perhaps, who had been picked up on the roadside, and had then become a Mercenary, repaid this devotion by a thousand kindnesses.
They exchanged their necklaces and earrings, presents which they had made to one another in former days, after great peril, or in hours of intoxication.

All asked to die, and none would strike.