most desperate valor could do; but Scipio's cool, steady, and
well-calculated plans made irresistible progress, and hemmed them in
at last, within narrower and narrower limits, by a steadily-increasing
pressure, from which they found it impossible to break away.

Scipio had erected a sort of mole or pier upon the water near the
city, on which he had erected many large and powerful engines to
assault the walls. One night a large company of Carthaginians took
torches, not lighted, in their hands, together with some sort of
apparatus for striking fire, and partly by wading and partly by
swimming, they made their way through the water of the harbor toward
these machines. When they were sufficiently near, they struck their
lights and set their torches on fire. The Roman soldiers who had been
stationed to guard the machines were seized with terror at seeing all
these flashing fires burst out suddenly over the surface of the water,
and fled in dismay. The Carthaginians set the abandoned engines on
fire, and then, throwing their now useless torches into the flames,
plunged into the water again, and swam back in safety. But all this
desperate bravery did very little good. Scipio quietly repaired the
engines, and the siege went on as before.

But we can not describe in detail all the particulars of this
protracted and terrible struggle. We must pass on to the closing
scene, which as related by the historians of the day, is an almost
incredible series of horrors. After an immense number had been killed
in the assaults which had been made upon the city, besides the
thousands and thousands which had died of famine, and of the exposures
and hardships incident to such a siege, the army of Scipio succeeded
in breaking their way through the gates, and gaining admission to the
city. Some of the inhabitants were now disposed to contend no longer,
but to cast themselves at the mercy of the conqueror. Others, furious
in their despair, were determined to fight to the last, not willing to
give up the pleasure of killing all they could of their hated enemies,
even to save their lives. They fought, therefore, from street to
street, retreating gradually as the Romans advanced, till they found
refuge in the citadel. One band of Scipio's soldiers mounted to the
tops of the houses, the roofs being flat, and fought their way there,
while another column advanced in the same manner in the streets below.
No imagination can conceive the uproar and din