No sooner had the Romans begun the attack, than Hamilcar ordered his ships to row away, as though they had been put to flight. As the Carthaginian had foreseen, two divisions of the Roman fleet followed, one of them having Regulus on board. On sped the Punic ships, eager to separate the Roman divisions from the rest of the fleet. When the enemy was some distance off, Hamilcar ordered his ships to turn, to attack the vessels that had followed them. But at close quarters, as the Carthaginians should have known, the Romans were more than a match for their foe. The bridges of the Roman ships fell, grappling the enemy’s vessels to their own, and in a fierce hand-to-hand fight Hamilcar and his ships were soon overpowered. Regulus then hastened to the help of his fourth division, which had been attacked by Hanno, and was now fighting desperately between two divisions of the enemy. Here, too, the Consul was successful, and forced Hanno to retreat. Meanwhile, the third division of the Roman fleet had been driven toward the coast, but had suffered little damage, for the Carthaginians feared to approach too near lest they should find themselves grappled by the Roman bridges. These they were learning to dread. The two Consuls soon set the third division free, and before long they had taken sixty-four of the Carthaginian ships with their crews, while more than thirty vessels had been sunk. As for the Romans, they had lost only twenty-four ships, and these were sunk not captured. The victory of Ecnomus left the way to Africa open, and after putting in on the Sicilian coast for repairs, the Roman fleet sailed away toward the Gulf of Carthage. CHAPTER LIII THE ROMAN LEGIONS IN AFRICA The Roman soldiers did not wish to sail to a strange land. Their dislike to the voyage grew as they listened to bewildering tales of these unknown regions. So they began to grumble, saying that the heat would overpower them, that they would be lost in the great forests of which they had been told, and that huge and poisonous serpents would certainly strangle them. Even one of the tribunes was disloyal, and encouraged the soldiers to complain. But Regulus paid no heed to the distress of the soldiers, and the fleet sailed on, until it reached the coast of Africa. The soldiers disembarked, and in a short time they found how foolish had been their fears. Instead of being lost in dark and fearful forests, they found themselves in a country that was beautiful and glad as a garden. Figs, larger than the Romans had ever seen, grew in abundance; harvests, more plentiful than they had deemed possible, waved golden in the fields. Houses, surrounded by vineyards, oliveyards and rich pasture land, roused the envy as well as the delight of the soldiers.