"Then let us train!"

"Too late! A full year is needful to turn a man to a soldier. Where
will you--where will your city be within the year? Nay, there is but
one chance for us. If we give up our commerce and our colonies, if we
strip ourselves of all that made us great, then perchance the Roman
conqueror may hold his hand."

And already the last sea-fight of Carthage was coming swiftly to an end
before them. Under their very eyes the two Roman galleys had shot in,
one on either side of the vessel of Black Magro. They had grappled with
him, and he, desperate in his despair, had cast the crooked flukes of
his anchors over their gunwales, and bound them to him in an iron grip,
whilst with hammer and crowbar he burst great holes in his own
sheathing. The last Punic galley should never be rowed into Ostia, a
sight for the holiday-makers of Rome. She would lie in her own waters.
And the fierce, dark soul of her rover captain glowed as he thought that
not alone should she sink into the depths of the mother sea.

Too late did the Romans understand the man with whom they had to deal.
Their boarders who had flooded the Punic decks felt the planking sink
and sway beneath them. They rushed to gain their own vessels; but they,
too, were being drawn downwards, held in the dying grip of the great red
galley. Over they went and ever over. Now the deck of Magro's ship is
flush with the water, and the Romans, drawn towards it by the iron bonds
which held them, are tilted downwards, one bulwark upon the waves,
one reared high in the air. Madly they strain to cast off the death
grip of the galley. She is under the surface now, and ever swifter,
with the greater weight, the Roman ships heel after her. There is a