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 rending
crash. The wooden side is torn out of one, and mutilated, dismembered,
she rights herself, and lies a helpless thing upon the water. But a last
yellow gleam in the blue water shows where her consort has been dragged
to her end in the iron death-grapple of her foemen. The tiger-striped
flag of Carthage has sunk beneath the swirling surface, never more to be
seen upon the face of the sea.

For in that year a great cloud hung for seventeen days over the African
coast, a deep black cloud which was the dark shroud of the burning city.
And when the seventeen days were over, Roman ploughs were driven from
end to end of the charred ashes, and salt was scattered there as a sign
that Carthage should be no more. And far off a huddle of naked, starving
folk stood upon the distant mountains, and looked down upon the desolate
plain which had once been the fairest and richest upon earth. And they
understood too late that it is the law of heaven that the world is given
to the hardy and to the self-denying, whilst he who would escape the
duties of manhood will soon be stripped of the pride, the wealth, and
the power, which are the prizes which manhood brings.

THE CONTEST.

In the year of our Lord 66, the Emperor Nero, being at that time in the
twenty-ninth year of his life and the thirteenth of his reign, set sail
for Greece with the strangest company and the most singular design that
any monarch has ever entertained. With ten galleys he went forth
from Puteoli, carrying with him great stores of painted scenery and
theatrical properties, together with a number of knights and senators,
whom he feared to leave behind him at Rome, and who were all marked for
death in the course of his wanderings. In his train he took Natus, his
singing coach; Cluvius, a man with a monstrous voice, who should bawl
out his titles; and a thousand trained youths who had learned to applaud
in unison whenever their master sang or played in public. So deftly had
they been taught that each had his own role to play. Some did no more
than give forth a low deep hum