When Columbus and his crew, secretly fearful of falling off the good old planet Earth, sailed the unknown sea; while Cortes conquered Mexico (not yet calm); while Pizarro ravaged Peru; while Balboa ascended the Andean heights and “silent upon a peak in Darien” first saw the vast Pacific; while De Soto died and was buried; while Drake circumnavigated the globe; while Mary, Queen of Scots laid her head on the block and the axe fell; while the Invincible Armada hurrying northward away from the foe, sailed brokenly back to Spain by way of the Orkneys: while Julius Cæsar fell pierced with twenty-three wounds; while Hannibal crossed the Alps; while Alexander, world-conqueror, aged thirty-two died at old Babylon; while Pericles of Athens reigned imperishably; while Sardis burned and Sardis was avenged; while Marathon, Salamis, Thermopylæ, Platæa, Mycale were fighting; while Babylon the Great was captured by Cyrus; while the Memphian pyramids were building; while the great Sphinx of Gizeh rose solemnly; while griffins and dragons and gummy pterodactyls winged the air; while plesiosauri and ichthyosauri fought for the empire of ocean; while the original of the Pittsburgh Diplodocus Carnegiei was sixty feet somewhere—why, even then were the waters rolling over the rock now called Niagara; even then Niagara Falls that fall and shall fall were falling.
Sea Fights.
The hostile encounters by land throughout the historic ages have been practically countless; sea fights are few. Man feels intuitively that the yielding wave is not the fit place for battle. Salamis, Actium, Lepanto, Calais Roads are the chief naval engagements of history.
When Rome had won her first game in world conquest and all Italy was Rome, Carthage was mistress of the Mediterranean, and without her permission no man might even wash his hands in her “Phœnician Lake.” Triremes and quinqueremes with proudly curving prows scudded over the blue waters or huddled together in port as bevies of black swans.
And Rome had no fleet. But Rome could learn from her enemies; and when a wrecked Carthaginian galley was dashed against the Latian coast, Rome quickly learned the art of making galleys; and within two months the waving forest near the coast was metamorphosed into a fleet of one hundred and twenty Roman triremes.
And when the pain of growth was upon Rome making further conquest fatally necessary, she embarked unsteadily upon her late waving forest trees and went reeling forth to meet the swan bevies of the Mediterranean. The hostile fleets engaged and Rome’s was annihilated.
Then these sullen young-world children wildly wept, as did Romulus and Remus, perhaps, in the cave of the she-wolf. But when they were suckled and made strong with the milk of defeat, these wild young Romans built themselves another fleet. And Duillius devised a grappling contrivance whereby to catch and hold the enemy’s ship until a drawbridge could be thrown across o’er which the short-sword Roman soldiers might pass and so fight on the deck hand to hand as on land.
Again the hostile fleets engaged on the blue Mediterranean. But as the haughty quinqueremes with their decks filled with archers bore down upon the awkward Roman triremes, the grappling “hands” arose, the quinqueremes were grappled. Consternation prevailed among the Carthaginians as the drawbridges from ship to ship were thrown across, and the dreaded Roman soldiers short-sword in hand were seen slaughtering the archers and the rowers. Rome’s first naval victory was won.
If the blue Mediterranean could make known all that has taken place upon its waves and shores—what a Homer of the waters it would be! But nature is indifferent to the human tragedy.
That other scene off the coast of Carthage, after the second Punic war, when Rome demanded as a condition of peace that the Carthaginian fleet should be destroyed—yet burns upon the historic page, but the waters that once reddened with the flames just ripple unrememberingly. Five hundred galleys—towering quinqueremes, sturdy triremes—were led out from the harbor before the mourning gaze of the dethroned Queen of the Seas, and set on fire; she watched them blaze down to the laughing waters.