g another army, and going to the very shores
of the Eastern Ocean.

He would not, however, return by the way he had gone, through the
mountains, but he built ships on the river Jhelum, a tributary of the
Indus, with which to coast along the shores to the mouth of the
Euphrates. There were forests of fir and pine to supply the wood, but
their inhabitants, the apes and monkeys, collected in such force on the
top of a hill near at hand, that the Greeks thought they were human
enemies, and were about to attack them, till a native explained the
mistake.

They met more dangerous enemies when they came to Mooltan, the city of a
tribe called the Malli. This was a fort shut in by a strong outer wall,
within which trees were growing. Alexander planted a ladder against the
wall, and mounted it first, but while his men were climbing up after him,
it broke, and he stood alone on the wall, a mark for all the darts of the
enemy. His guards stretched up their arms, begging him to leap back to
them, but he scorned to do this, and jumped down within, among the enemy.
They gave back for a moment, but, on finding that he was quite alone,
closed in upon him. He set his back against the wall, under a fig-tree,
and slew with his sword all who approached. Then they formed into a
half-circle, and shot at him with barbed arrows, six feet long. By this
time a few of his guards had climbed up the wall, and were coming down to
his help, at the moment when an arrow pierced his breast, and he sank
down in a kneeling posture, with his brow on the rim of his shield, while
his men held their shields over him till the rest could come to their
aid, and he was taken up as one dead, and carried out on his shield,
while all within the fort were slaughtered in the rage of the
Macedonians. When the king had been carried to his tent, the point of
the arrow was found to be firmly fixed in his breast-bone, and he bade
Perdiccas, his friend, cut a gash wide enough to allow the barbs to pass
before drawing it out. He refused to be held while this was done, but
kept himself perfectly still, until he fainted, and lay for many hours
between life and death; nor was it for a week that he could even bear to
be placed on board a galley, and lie on the deck under an awning as it
went down the river, whilst his men were in raptures to see him restored
to them.

He had to halt for some weeks, and then proceed along the Indus, until he
reached the Indian Ocean, wh