"Nevertheless, in the end I will get at him! I will conquer him! I will slay him! Ah! if I had been there!--" The thought of having missed the battle rendered him even more desperate than the defeat.

He snatched up his sword and threw it upon the ground.
"But how did the Carthaginians beat you ?" The former slave began to describe the manoeuvres.

Matho seemed to see them, and he grew angry.

The army from Utica ought to have taken Hamilcar in the rear instead of hastening to the bridge.
"Ah! I know!" said Spendius.
"You ought to have made your ranks twice as deep, avoided exposing the velites against the phalanx, and given free passage to the elephants.
Everything might have been recovered at the last moment; there was no necessity to fly." Spendius replied: "I saw him pass along in his large red cloak, with uplifted arms and higher than the dust, like an eagle flying upon the flank of the cohorts; and at every nod they closed up or darted forward; the throng carried us towards each other; he looked at me, and I felt the cold steel as it were in my heart." "He selected the day, perhaps ?" whispered Matho to himself.
They questioned each other, trying to discover what it was that had brought the Suffet just when circumstances were most unfavourable.
They went on to talk over the situation, and Spendius, to extenuate his fault, or to revive his courage, asserted that some hope still remained.
"And if there be none, it matters not!" said Matho; "alone, I will carry on the war!" "And I too!" exclaimed the Greek, leaping up; he strode to and fro, his eyes sparkling, and a strange smile wrinkled his jackal face.
"We will make a fresh start; do not leave me again! I am not made for battles in the sunlight--the flashing of swords troubles my sight; it is a disease, I lived too long in the ergastulum.

But give me walls to scale at night, and I will enter the citadels, and the corpses shall be cold before cock-crow! Show me any one, anything, an enemy, a treasure, a woman,--a woman," he repeated, "were she a king's daughter, and I will quickly bring your desire to your feet.