He set his camp face to face with his enemy's, and sent back for the boats with which he had crossed the Indus. A veritable burning of the bridge behind him in a way; but Alexander never considered defeat. The easiest plan would no doubt have been to wait comfortably encamped till October chill should have checked the melting of summer snow; but, once again, Alexander considered no delay. So there ensued what Arrian terms "the stealing of a passage." Day and night long the sentinels of Porus were given no rest. Flotillas of boats went up and down the river, reconnaissance parties were here, there, everywhere, menacing a ford; and all the while it was being spread about that Alexander, baffled, disappointed, was fast making up his mind to wait till winter. Yet 16 miles upwards, almost among the mountains, behind a wooded island which shut out the view southward, galleys, rafts, skins stuffed with hay, everything needful for a forced passage was secretly being prepared. Night after night brought a feint of attack. As Arrian writes:-- "The cavalry was led along the bank in various directions, making a clamour and raising the battle cry ... as if they were making all preparations for crossing the river.... When this had occurred frequently ... Porus no longer continued to move about also; but, perceiving his fear had been groundless, he kept his position." It was not, however, as Arrian calls it, by "marvellous audacity" only, that Alexander finally succeeded in his object. As one reads the minute precautions, the stringent orders, the foresight displayed for every possible complication, one is forced to acknowledge the master mind of the commander. Small wonder if the very heavens fought for him. It was now July, month of torrential rains, fierce storms; and one of these fell suddenly like a pall over Alexander's forced night march of 16 miles--"The noise of the thunder," Arrian writes, "drowned with its din the clatter of the weapons." Thus, noisily yet secretly, the position was gained by the 11,000 picked troops led by Alexander in person. The storm passed; the dawn rose, calm and bright, to find the Western soldiers across the stream, crashing through the low undergrowth of what their general deemed was the mainland. For it was July now, and the rains had brought that marvellous luxuriance of sudden life which springs ever from the union of sun and water. So we can imagine the well-greaved Greeks brushing aside the low daphne bushes, and crushing under foot the trailing arches of the ground maidenhair fern. To find disappointment await them, as, standing on a further shore, they realised that they were on an island, that before them lay another formidable channel, swollen by the night's rain. For a while the cavalry could find no ford; when found, it was but a swimming one. Yet even so, dripping, half-drowned, the legions were over and deployed in the open, before any attempt at opposition could be made.