Two months later,--for I shall not weary my readers with describing the marriage festivities,--the good ship _Pallas_ lay ready for sea in the harbour of Utica. The piers and quays were filled with a dense crowd of spectators, for the fame of this adventurous voyage had spread through the city, and brought together a multitude of curious sight-seers. Loud and hearty were the cheers that went up as a soft breeze from the east slowly filled the sails, and the _Pallas_--her prow appropriately adorned with the figure of the goddess friend of Ulysses, prince of adventurous heroes--forged her way round the end of the western pier and shaped a course towards the setting sun.
Sail on, swift ship, to the region that lies beyond the darkness of the west. You leave behind you a world over which the shadows of civil strife and desolating war are gathering. Who knows what lies before you--Islands of the Blest, where nature smiles for ever, her fair face untouched by frost or storm, and where man still keeps primeval faith and innocence; or, perhaps, to a world that is but a meaner copy of that from which you are fleeing? Yet sail on, happy at least for the hour that is, in the unfaltering confidence of youth and hope.
I have departed, for convenience sake in the construction of my story, from historical truth in the date of Masinissa's death. This took place before the beginning of the Third Punic War. For the same reason, the Macedonian pretender is postdated. He had certainly disappeared from the scene before the autumn immediately preceding the fall of Carthage (when my hero is supposed to visit him).
If my readers fail to form a clear idea of the topography of Carthage, I must beg them not to blame me. This is a problem which no one has yet been able to solve.
Chelys is an imaginary place; the young Scipio an imaginary person.
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Punctuation and spelling standardized when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise unchanged. Simple typographical errors remedied; most retained.
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Page 305, last line, quotation marks: "a treasure" changed to 'a treasure'.
Page 310, last line, "he promise" changed to "he promises".