An individual sacrifice was necessary, a perfectly voluntary oblation, which was considered as carrying the others along with it.But no one had appeared up to the present, and the seven passages leading from the barriers to the colossus were completely empty.Then the priests, to encourage the people, drew bodkins from their girdles and gashed their faces.The Devotees, who were stretched on the ground outside, were brought within the enclosure.A bundle of horrible irons was thrown to them, and each chose his own torture.They drove in spits between their breasts; they split their cheeks; they put crowns of thorns upon their heads; then they twined their arms together, and surrounded the children in another large circle which widened and contracted in turns.They reached to the balustrade, they threw themselves back again, and then began once more, attracting the crowd to them by the dizziness of their motion with its accompanying blood and shrieks.
By degrees people came into the end of the passages; they flung into the flames pearls, gold vases, cups, torches, all their wealth; the offerings became constantly more numerous and more splendid.At last a man who tottered, a man pale and hideous with terror, thrust forward a child; then a little black mass was seen between the hands of the colossus, and sank into the dark opening.The priests bent over the edge of the great flagstone,--and a new song burst forth celebrating the joys of death and of new birth into eternity.
The children ascended slowly, and as the smoke formed lofty eddies as it escaped, they seemed at a distance to disappear in a cloud.Not one stirred.Their wrists and ankles were tied, and the dark drapery prevented them from seeing anything and from being recognised.
Hamilcar, in a red cloak, like the priests of Moloch, was beside the Baal, standing upright in front of the great toe of its right foot.