While many of the principal Officers held a midnight council of war,--the towers and engines standing tenant-less and unmanned, from their inutility,--Alexander, upon his snowy steed, pacing the wave-washed shore, and ruminating upon his new conception,--Hephæstion and Parmenio upon their war-chargers, and as the attendants for the night, gazing upon the movements of their chief with that military anxiety which the warrior only knows or can feel,--and the soldiers of Macedonia murmuring within the camp at inactivity;--while this picture was presented of the invaders, the inhabitants of the metropolis had almost ceased to think that war and danger were near, and from their walls, as the Moon arose, they expressed every joy to their Goddess,--Astartē,--for the safety that she now witnessed and smiled upon. Alexander arousing himself from his visioned victory,--but more from the derisionary laughter of the foe, who had now discerned him, instantly dashed with his proud Bucephalus into the moonlit waters of the Mediterranean, and so toward the walls,--as if to commence in person the first assault upon the domain of Neptune! Hephæstion and Parmenio--as at the passage of the Granicus--instantly followed their Prince to cover his safe return to the shore; for a clouded shadow passed swift as a meteor over the waters towards the noble group,--a whizzing like a sudden blast was heard,--then a cutting in the waves like the swift fins of the shark,--and a rattling as of hail upon armour;--it was a flight of arrows from the walls, but they failed to reach the unpanoplied body of the chief, guarded as he was by the devotional shields and helms of his companions,--who had seen the action of the besieged, and had watched the speeding of the surcharged deadly cloud! Refreshed from the plunge, and aroused to a sense of his own danger, by that of his friends, Alexander returned to the shore, and with speed to the royal pavilion,--where, springing from his seat, he may be imagined to have thus addressed his noble steed: "Brave companion of my youth! you have commenced the attack upon the Tyrian moat,--we will pass it,--Victory shall be ours!" That night the fate of Tyrus was written!--for Alexander had conceived the idea, and commanded that a Causeway, or military mole, should _be constructed from the Shore to the Island_! The ruins of which extraordinary work are seen even at this day! The Tyrian sentinel at early dawn gave intelligence of a new movement in the army of the invaders,--the rampart walls were instantly crowded with citizens, to watch the motion upon the point, forming the nearest distance between themselves and the shore. They beheld the removing of the several war-engines and towers,--and thereupon gave a wild shout of joy at the supposed _retreat_ of the Macedonians! Fatal error! That loud shout which had aroused even the mangered horses of the foe, at once proclaimed their present triumph, and their future doom!