still hiss above them. Now
we can understand those empty portholes and those trailing oars.

Nor were the crew in better case than their slaves. The decks were
littered with wounded and dying men. It was but a remnant who still
remained upon their feet. The most lay exhausted upon the fore-deck,
while a few of the more zealous were mending their shattered armour,
restringing their bows, or cleaning the deck from the marks of combat.
Upon a raised platform at the base of the mast stood the sailing-master
who conned the ship, his eyes fixed upon the distant point of Megara
which screened the eastern side of the Bay of Carthage. On the
after-deck were gathered a number of officers, silent and brooding,
glancing from time to time at two of their own class who stood apart
deep in conversation. The one, tall, dark, and wiry, with pure, Semitic
features, and the limbs of a giant, was Magro, the famous Carthaginian
captain, whose name was still a terror on every shore, from Gaul to the
Euxine. The other, a white-bearded, swarthy man, with indomitable
courage and energy stamped upon every eager line of his keen, aquiline
face, was Gisco the politician, a man of the highest Punic blood, a
Suffete of the purple robe, and the leader of that party in the state
which had watched and striven amid the selfishness and slothfulness of
his fellow-countrymen to rouse the public spirit and waken the public
conscience to the ever-increasing danger from Rome. As they talked, the
two men glanced continually, with earnest anxious faces, towards the
northern skyline.

"It is certain," said the older man, with gloom in his voice and
bearing, "none have escaped save ourselves."

"I did not leave the press of the battle whilst I saw one ship which I
could succour," Magro answered. "As it was, we came away, as you saw,
like a wolf which has a hound hanging on to either haunch. The Roman
dogs can show the wolf-bites which prove it. Had any other galley won
clear, they would surely be with us by now, since they have no place of
safety save Carthage."

The younger warrior glanced keenly ahead to the distant point which
marked his native city. Already the low, leafy hill could be seen,
dotted with the white villas of the wealthy Ph[oe]nician merchants.
Above them, a gleaming dot against the pale blue morning sky, shone the
brazen roof of the citadel of Byrsa, which capped the sloping town.

"Already they can see us from the watch-towers," he remark