It is now five weeks that we have been in this place, and we shall have to stay here until the “battering practice” is over. We have already got through our “rammers’ test.” I do not think it is a bad place myself, and most of the people seem to prefer it to Thule, where they spent the whole summer, except Mago our physician, who cannot endure either the Romans or the Sardinians, and who is longing to get back to the glittering quays and the broad market-places of Carthage. It is true that the Sardinians are a thievish race, and they seldom, if ever, speak the truth; moreover, they trade on the honesty and the good nature of our people, and our unfamiliarity with their various and uncouth jargons. For instance, a favourite plan of theirs is this: many of them gain their living by the catching of lobsters, which they send by Ostia to Rome to supply the banquets of the rich patricians of that city. One such fisherman came to the captain of our vessel with the following complaint: He professed that for many weeks he had toiled and caught a great number of lobsters; these lobsters, he said, he was keeping against the feasts of the Saturnalia at Rome, in a large wicker basket not far from the shore; and that some of our men having gone ashore in one of our swift and brass-prowed boats, had in the darkness of twilight collided with his wicker basket and caused the escape of many hundreds of live lobsters, for which loss he demanded a compensation amounting to two hundred talents. On consulting the Roman Magistrate of the place we learnt that this fisherman made a similar demand from every ship which visited the bay; moreover, that he had caught but one lobster. So although he reduced his demand to the eighth of one talent, it was refused to him. Another stratagem of the Sardinian native is to demand money for the poultry destroyed by the sailors of our ship. Every family in the village complained that their poultry had been annihilated by our unprincipled mariners, but little credence was lent to the tale, because at the moment when the complaint was made there was only one hen in the village, a dead one that had just perished of old age.