"By Tanith, I swear!"

Spendius resumed:

"To-morrow after sunset you will wait for me at the foot of the aqueduct
between the ninth and tenth arcades. Bring with you an iron pick, a
crestless helmet, and leathern sandals."

The aqueduct of which he spoke crossed the entire isthmus obliquely,--a
considerable work, afterwards enlarged by the Romans. In spite of her
disdain of other nations, Carthage had awkwardly borrowed this novel
invention from them, just as Rome herself had built Punic galleys; and
five rows of superposed arches, of a dumpy kind of architecture, with
buttresses at their foot and lions' heads at the top, reached to the
western part of the Acropolis, where they sank beneath the town to
incline what was nearly a river into the cisterns of Megara.

Spendius met Matho here at the hour agreed upon. He fastened a sort of
harpoon to the end of a cord and whirled it rapidly like a sling; the
iron instrument caught fast, and they began to climb up the wall, the
one after the other.

But when they had ascended to the first story the cramp fell back every
time that they threw it, and in order to discover some fissure they had
to walk along the edge of the cornice. At every row of arches they found
that it became narrower. Then the cord relaxed. Several times it nearly
broke.

At last they reached the upper platform. Spendius stooped down from time