CHAPTER XVII.
MOVE AND COUNTERMOVE.
The great festival of Hammon, with all its lurid splendours, did notfail to produce something at least of the effect which the authoritieshad expected from it. The flagging zeal of the Carthaginian peopleregained its old energy; the hope that their country might yet be savedto them, a hope almost abandoned during the last few months, began torevive. Hammon, they thought, must be propitiated by a piety so devoted,must interfere to save so dutiful a city.
There was, indeed, need of all the encouragement that could be had, forthe situation of the civil population of Carthage was precarious in theextreme. The Senate had not neglected to lay up in the time of peacesuch provisions for the war that they knew to be impending as it hadbeen possible to collect. But the work had had to be done almost bystealth. Rome had watched with suspicion anything that looked likepreparations for war, and had remonstrated more than once against thepurchase of unnecessary stores.
What was done in this way had to be done without the knowledge of herregularly appointed agents and of residents who were secretly in herpay. Something had been accomplished; the garrison had ample supplies;the houses of the upper class were, for the most part, well furnished.But the poor, who had no room for stores in their dwellings, even ifthey had the means to purchase them in advance, were dangerously near towant. It is for the needs of this class that public provision has to bemade in any city that expects to be besieged, and it was in respect ofthis public provision that the action of the Carthaginian government hadbeen hampered.
Things had grown rapidly worse since the building of the walled campacross the isthmus. Nothing could now be brought into the besieged cityby land. The sea was still partly open. The Roman fleet kept up ablockade, but it was not really effective. As soon as the wind began toblow from the sea the war-ships had to stand off from the shore, and theblockade-runners had their opportunity. Prices ruled so high in the citythat a trader who contrived to take safely to its destination one cargoout of two made a very handsome profit.
All the fishing population of the African coast for a hundred miles oneither side of the besieged city was busily employed in the traffic.Light vessels drawing but little water were chiefly used, for they couldbe safely navigated in places where a war-ship would inevitably havegrounded. So rudely and cheaply were they built that the loss, if theywere wrecked, was insignificant. The great difficulty was the weather;if this continued to be fine for ten days together, a large part of thebesieged population came within an easily measurable distance ofstarvation.
Scipio now resolved on making a great counter-move--he would block upthe approach to the harbour. He had, in fact, for some time pastforeseen the necessity of taking this step, and had prepared a vastamount of material for the work, employing great numbers of the nativepopulation in quarrying stone and cutting timber. So much had beenaccomplished in this way that when the time came for executing the worklittle more than the actual construction remained to be done. This wasnot so difficult as it had seemed. The harbour mouth was not very farfrom the shore occupied by the Romans.
The first thing was to lay a foundation for the mole that it wasproposed to build. This was done by sinking huge blocks of roughly-hewnstone, chiefly during moonless nights. During this stage of the work thebesieged took little heed of what was going on, or, anyhow, took nopains to interrupt or hinder it. There was a suspicion, and more than asuspicion, of Scipio's purpose, but Hasdrubal, himself indolent andincompetent, haughtily refused to listen to any suggestion from hissubordinates. But even Hasdrubal was roused when the structure reachedthe surface of the water. What he saw was a mole, more than thirty yardsbroad, stretching across the mouth of the harbour, and shutting offevery channel available even for the smallest craft.
Hasdrubal now developed, or accepted, a plan which for a time at leastwas a virtual check to Scipio's move. He kept up a brisk discharge ofmissiles on the men employed in building the mole. So sharp andcontinuous was it that the besiegers had little attention to give towhat was being done on the opposite side of the harbour. It was asurprise, and a very unwelcome surprise to them, that no sooner had theystopped up one mouth of the harbour, than they found that another exithad been created. The whole population, every man, woman, and child inthe city, that could ply a spade or a pick, wheel a barrow-load or carrya basket of earth, had been working night and day at excavating anothermouth to the harbour.
Nor was this all; a still greater surprise, so great, indeed, as to bealmost overwhelming, remained behind.
One of the conditions of the peace granted to Carthage after the fataldefeat of Zama[37] had been the surrender of all the ships of war buttwenty. In a way this condition had been observed. There had never beenmore than twenty ships in commission at one time; but the old hulks hadnot always been destroyed. At first they had been kept to serve variouspurposes; latterly, as another war began to loom in the future, they hadbeen preserved with the intention of using them again. A number ofmerchant vessels also were furnished with crews and an armament that wasat least passably effective.
And, marvellous to relate, all this had been done without the knowledgeof the besiegers. There was a constant flow of deserters from the city,increasing as time went on and the prospects of Carthage became less andless hopeful. Yet none of them had any definite information to give.That something was going on they knew; they had heard for some time agreat sound of hammering--that, indeed, had been audible in the Romancamp when the wind blew from the dockyard--but the restrictions onadmission to the arsenals had been rigidly enforced. So there ended theinformation which they were able to give.
Nothing, then, could have exceeded the astonishment of the besiegerswhen a new fleet, the existence of which no one had suspected, issuedfrom a harbour mouth which no one had ever seen. A thin bank of earthhad been kept to the last, so that to observers from outside, as also tothe Roman ships as they cruised backwards and forwards along the coast,nothing appeared to have been changed. When everything else was ready,all the available labour in Carthage was set to work to clear this bankaway. The task was finished by dawn. At sunrise the new fleet,magnificently equipped, for there had been a lavish expenditure on theornament as well as the armament of the ships, sailed out of the harbourby its new exit.
Unfortunately for Carthage there was no one to make the most of theopportunity. A vigorous attack on the Roman fleet--scattered as it was,and altogether unprepared for action, some of the ships being underrepair, and nearly all of them but half-manned, their crews beinglargely employed on shore--might have been successful, and have evenpostponed the fate of Carthage. But it was not to be. Hasdrubal,self-opinionated and incapable, paralysed everything and everybody. Thefleet paraded for a while along the coast, and had the barren honour ofholding without dispute, for that day at least, the possession of thesea.
"The crews must be exercised first," said Hasdrubal, who was on boardwhat we may call the flag-ship, to the veteran who directed itsnavigation; "but in a few days--"
"There's no exercise like fighting," growled the old man as he turnedaway.
And this was the common opinion of Carthage. So strong and so generalwas it, and so vigorously expressed, that Hasdrubal could not afford todisregard it. Word was passed round to the captains that they must beready to engage the next day. In the morning, accordingly, the fleetsailed out again. Every one was in high spirits, for it is an immenserelief for those who have been long cooped up within walls, occupiedwith the tedious task of a protracted defence, to renew the moreadventurous and interesting experience of attack. Some victories werewon. One of the Carthaginian ships contrived to ram two antagonists inrapid succession. This vessel was a present to the state by one of themerchant companies, and no expense had been spared in making it of thestrongest build and furnishing it with an effective crew of freeborn,well-paid rowers. Another captured one of the Roman ships by boarding.Cleanor was serving in this, and, owing to the death of one and thedisablement of the other of his superior o
fficers, had the unexpectedhonour of leading the boarders. There was a sharp struggle, butultimately the Roman crew was overpowered and compelled to surrender.
On the other hand, there were counterbalancing, or almostcounterbalancing losses, for towards the end of the day the Romans hadrecovered from their surprise, and more than held their own.
Scipio was everywhere, conspicuous in the scarlet cloak of thegeneral-in-command. Once as he passed he was well within a javelin-throwof our hero. Cleanor, as he doubted whether he ought not to do his bestto rid Carthage of a formidable enemy, fancied that he saw a smile ofrecognition on his face. When it grew dark, the struggle was suspendedby mutual consent.
The next morning it was renewed. This time fortune declared itselfunequivocally against Carthage. It was not that there was any markedfalling-off in the efficiency or courage of the crews. It was the shipsthemselves that began to fail. Many, as has been said, were old hulkspatched up to serve again. Two days of incessant use, with occasionalcollisions with friends and enemies, had not improved them. The seamsbegan to open and old leaks to show themselves, so that by noon at leasta score were more or less water-logged. Those that had suffered most,about half the number, fell into the hands of the enemy. Five otherships were sunk.
The Roman loss was less than half of this amount. It was not a crushingdefeat, but it was sufficient to show that Carthage could not hopefor deliverance from her fleet. Still, some advantage remained tothe besieged. It would be impossible to close up the new mouth ofthe harbour, so deep was the water into which it opened. On thisside, therefore, the Roman blockade could never be made complete.Notwithstanding this gain, the whole result was a heavy discouragement.
FOOTNOTE:
37: The battle which brought the Second Punic War to a conclusion in 202 B.C.
Lords of the World: A story of the fall of Carthage and Corinth Page 19
