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.