CHAPTER XII.

PASSAGE OF THE HYDASPES.

Such were the injunctions laid upon Craterus. Between the island

and the great camp where Alexander had left this general, he posted

Meleager, Attalus, and Gorgias, with the Grecian mercenaries, cavalry

and infantry, giving them instructions to cross in detachments,

breaking up the army as soon as they saw the Indians already involved

in battle. He then picked the select body-guard called the Companions,

as well as the cavalry regiments of Hephaestion, Perdiccas, and

Demetrius, the cavalry from Bactria, Sogdiana, and Scythia, and the

Daan horse-archers; and from the phalanx of infantry the shield-bearing

guards, the brigades of Clitus and Coenus, with the archers and

Agrianians, and made a secret march, keeping far away from the bank

of the river, in order not to be seen marching towards the island

and headland, from which he had determined to cross. There the skins

were filled in the night with the hay which had been procured long

before, and they were tightly stitched up. In the night a furious

storm of rain occurred, by which his preparations and attempt to cross

were rendered still more unobserved, since the noise of the thunder

and the storm drowned with its din the clatter of the weapons and the

noise which arose from the orders given by the officers. Most of the

vessels, the thirty-oared galleys included with the rest, had been

cut in pieces by his order and conveyed to this place, where they had

been fixed together again[679] and hidden in the wood. At the approach

of daylight, both the wind and the rain calmed down; and the rest of

the army went over opposite the island, the cavalry mounting upon the

skins, and as many of the foot soldiers as the boats would receive

getting into them. They went so secretly that they were not observed by

the sentinels posted by Porus, before they had already got beyond the

island and were only a little way from the other bank.