This second attack was only a ruse to distract the defenders of the city from a more serious undertaking. Scipio had seen that the water in the lagoon was ebbing, and would soon be shallow. So he now ordered his men to step boldly into the water and carry their ladders to the low and carelessly guarded wall. His order was speedily carried out. The ladders were soon in position, and the next moment the Roman soldiers were climbing up into the city. Meanwhile the garrison was busy repulsing the attack upon her high and strongly guarded walls. But the Roman soldiers, having scaled their ladders, leaped into the city, killing the few guards whom they encountered. Quickly they made their way toward the gate, which was being assaulted from without. When they reached it they flung it open, and their comrades poured into the city, the garrison was overcome, and New Carthage was in the hands of Scipio. The young general was modest, and refused to claim all the glory of the victory. Part of it, at least, was due to Neptune, the god of the sea, for he, said Scipio, had come to him as he slept and bidden him enter the city by the lagoon. There was much booty to be gathered in the conquered city, and in the harbour a fleet of both warships and merchant vessels was captured. But the chief value of the victory was that the Romans had now possession of a town in the very centre of the enemy’s country, as well as of its best port. In 206 B.C. Scipio returned to Rome, able to say that he had left no Carthaginian soldier in Spain. But Scipio had done more than drive the enemy out of Spain. He had tried to win two powerful allies for his country, in Africa, and he had succeeded in gaining one. Syphax, King of Western Numidia, had been now on the side of Rome, now on that of Carthage. Scipio sailed to Africa to visit Syphax, and before he left him he believed that he had secured his fidelity to Rome. But although the king was charmed with the Roman, and said of him that he was ‘even more admirable in conversation than in war,’ when Scipio’s influence was removed he proved fickle as ever. In the end he went over to, and remained on, the side of the Carthaginians. The ally whom Scipio gained was an African prince named Masinissa. He had come to Spain with a body of Numidian cavalry, and promised that it should be at the service of Scipio when he landed in Africa. For this was now the young general’s great ambition--to carry the war with the Carthaginians into their own country. CHAPTER LXVIII SCIPIO SAILS TO AFRICA It was not usual to award a triumph to a Roman citizen who had been neither a prætor nor a Consul. Yet it may be that when Scipio returned to Italy in 206 B.C. he hoped to receive this honour, for he had served the State loyally and successfully.