al himself, who bade them follow
him out of the camp and tie the faggots on to the horns of the oxen.
This was soon done, and then the faggots were kindled by a burning
torch, and the oxen were driven up a low ridge which stretched before
the pass.

'Help the drivers get them on to the ridge,' he said to his light
troops, 'and then pass them, shouting and making all the noise you
can.'

The march was conducted silently for some distance, but no sooner did
the soldiers break out into shrieks and yells than the oxen grew
frightened and wildly rushed hither and thither. The Romans in the
defile below heard the shouts and saw the bobbing lights, but could not
tell what they meant. Leaving their post, the whole four thousand
climbed the ridge, where they found the Carthaginians. But it was still
too dark for the Romans to see what these strange lights really were, so
they drew up on the ridge to wait till daybreak, by which time Hannibal
and most of his army were safe through the pass, when he sent back some
of his Spanish troops to help the force he had left behind him. The
troops speedily defeated the entire army of Fabius, who had now come up,
and then, joining Hannibal, pushed on to Apulia.

[Illustration: The whole four thousand climbed the ridge.]

A howl of rage rang through Rome at the news that they had once more
been outwitted, and all Fabius' wise generalship was forgotten in this
fresh defeat. Yet, had they stopped to think, the fault did not lie with
the dictator, whose plans had been well laid, but with the commander of
the troops in the pass, who, instead of sending out scouts to find out
the cause of the disturbance on the ridge, moved his whole body of men,
leaving the defile unguarded. Perhaps Hannibal, in arranging the
surprise, had known something of the commander and what to expect of
him; or he may merely have counted--as he had often done before--on the
effects of curiosity. But time after time he traded on the weakness of
man, and always succeeded.

* * * * *

It was in June 216 B.C. that Hannibal gained his last great battle in
Italy. He had remained for many months near the river Ofanto, which runs
into the Adriatic, but in the beginning of summer he threw himself into
the town of Cannae, used by the Romans as a storehouse for that part of
Italy.

A Roman army of ninety thousand men amply supplied was coming swiftly to
meet him along the splendid roads, and he