They moved forward the rope ladders, straight ladders, and sambucas, the latter consisting of two poles from which a series of bamboos terminating in a moveable bridge were lowered by means of tackling.  They formed numerous straight lines resting against the wall, and the Mercenaries mounted them in files, holding their weapons in their hands.  Not a Carthaginian showed himself; already two thirds of the rampart had been covered.  Then the battlements opened, vomiting flames and smoke like dragon jaws; the sand scattered and entered the joints of their armour; the petroleum fastened on their garments; the liquid lead hopped on their helmets and made holes in their flesh; a rain of sparks splashed against their faces, and eyeless orbits seemed to weep tears as big as almonds.  There were men all yellow with oil, with their hair in flames.  They began to run and set fire to the rest.  They were extinguished in mantles steeped in blood, which were thrown from a distance over their faces.  Some who had no wounds remained motionless, stiffer than stakes, their mouths open and their arms outspread.

The assault was renewed for several days in succession, the Mercenaries hoping to triumph by extraordinary energy and audacity.

Sometimes a man raised on the shoulders of another would drive a pin between the stones, and then making use of it as a step to reach further, would place a second and a third; and, protected by the edge of the battlements, which stood out from the wall, they would gradually raise themselves in this way; but on reaching a certain height they always fell back again.  The great trench was full to overflowing; the wounded were massed pell-mell with the dead and dying beneath the footsteps of the living.  Calcined trunks formed black spots amid opened entrails, scattered brains, and pools of blood; and arms and legs projecting half way out of a heap, would stand straight up like props in a burning vineyard.

The ladders proving insufficient the tollenos were brought into requisition,—­instruments consisting of a long beam set transversely upon another, and bearing at its extremity a quadrangular basket which would hold thirty foot-soldiers with their weapons.

Matho wished to ascend in the first that was ready.  Spendius stopped him.

Some men bent over a capstan; the great beam rose, became horizontal, reared itself almost vertically, and being overweighted at the end, bent like a huge reed.  The soldiers, who were crowded together, were hidden up to their chins; only their helmet-plumes could be seen.  At last when it was twenty cubits high in the air it turned several times to the right and to the left, and then was depressed; and like a giant arm holding a cohort of pigmies in its hand, it laid the basketful of men upon the edge of the wall.  They leaped into the crowd and never returned.

All the other tollenos were speedily made ready.  But a hundred times as many would have been needed for the capture of the town.  They were utilised in a murderous fashion:  Ethiopian archers were placed in the baskets; then, the cables having been fastened, they remained suspended and shot poisoned arrows.  The fifty tollenos commanding the battlements thus surrounded Carthage like monstrous vultures; and the Negroes laughed to see the guards on the rampart dying in grievous convulsions.