followed by seven triremes, bore down upon Adherbal and his triremes, feeling assured that the trireme, when once caught in the rapid strait, would not be able to return against the opposing current.  The Carthaginian, alarmed by the suddenness of the affair, hesitated for some little time whether he should follow the trireme, or turn his prows against the enemy.  This very delay put it out of his power to decline an action, for they were now within a weapon’s cast, and the enemy were bearing down upon him on all sides.  The current also had rendered it impossible to manage the ships.  Nor was the action like a naval engagement, inasmuch as it was in no respect subject to the control of the will, nor afforded any opportunity for the exercise of skill or method.  The nature of the strait and the tide, which solely and entirely governed the contest, carried the ships against those of their own and the enemy’s party indiscriminately, though striving in a contrary direction; so that you might see one ship which was flying whirled back by an eddy and driven against the victors, and another which was engaged in pursuit, if it had fallen into an opposite current, turning itself away as if for flight.  And when actually engaged, one ship while bearing down upon another with its beak directed against it, assuming an oblique position itself, received a stroke from the beak of the other; while another which lay with its side exposed to the enemy, receiving a sudden impulse, was turned round so as to present its prow.  While the triremes were thus engaged in a doubtful and uncertain contest, in which every thing was governed by chance, the Roman quinquereme, whether being more manageable in consequence of its weight, or by means of more banks of oars making its way through the eddies, sunk two triremes, and swept off the oars from one side of another, while sailing by it with great violence.  The rest too, had they come in its way, it would have disabled; but Adherbal, with his remaining four ships, sailed over into Africa.

31.  Laelius returned victorious into Carteia; and hearing there what had occurred at Gades, that the plot had been discovered, the conspirators sent to Carthage, and that the hopes which had brought them there had been completely frustrated, he sent a message to Lucius Marcius, to the effect that, unless they wished to waste time uselessly in lying before Gades, they should return to the general; and Marcius consenting to the proposal, they both returned to Carthage a few days after.  In consequence of their departure, Mago not only obtained a temporary relief from the dangers which beset him on all sides, both by sea and land, but also on hearing of the rebellion of the Ilergetians, conceived hopes of recovering Spain, and sent messengers to Carthage to the senate, who, at the same time that they represented to them in exaggerated terms both the intestine dissension in the Roman camp and the defection of their allies, might exhort them to send succours by which the empire of