to close the mouth of the harbour. The city seemed lost, when the
success of this undertaking, which was at first ridiculed by the
Carthaginians as impracticable, became evident. But one surprise
was balanced by another. While the Roman labourers were constructing
the mole, work was going forward night and day for two months
in the Carthaginian harbour, without even the deserters being
able to tell what were the designs of the besieged. All of a
sudden, just as the Romans had completed the bar across the entrance
to the harbour, fifty Carthaginian triremes and a number of boats and
skiffs sailed forth from that same harbour into the gulf--while the
enemy were closing the old mouth of the harbour towards the south,
the Carthaginians had by means of a canal formed in an easterly
direction procured for themselves a new outlet, which owing to the
depth of the sea at that spot could not possibly be closed. Had the
Carthaginians, instead of resting content with a mere demonstration,
thrown themselves at once and resolutely on the half-dismantled and
wholly unprepared Roman fleet, it must have been lost; when they
returned on the third day to give the naval battle, they found the
Romans in readiness. The conflict came off without decisive result;
but on their return the Carthaginian vessels so ran foul of each
other in and before the entrance of the harbour, that the damage thus
occasioned was equivalent to a defeat. Scipio now directed his
attacks against the outer quay, which lay outside of the city walls
and was only protected for the exigency by an earthen rampart of recent
construction. The machines were stationed on the tongue of land,
and a breach was easily made; but with unexampled intrepidity the
Carthaginians, wading through the shallows, assailed the besieging
implements, chased away the covering force which ran off in such a
manner that Scipio was obliged to make his own troopers cut them
down, and destroyed the machines. In this way they gained time to