While convalescing at a camp somewhere below the Indus-Chenab confluence, he redisposed his forces. Despite his wound, despite—no doubt because of—warnings about a dangerous route, he was still resolved on leading the coastal march in support of Nearchus’ fleet. It offered an irresistible mix of usefulness, challenge and romance. Cyrus the Great, and Semiramis the warrior Queen of Assyria, were both said to have come to grief there, barely getting through alive. His own plans elaborately laid, he looked forward to the triumph of bringing his expedition through safe and sound. It must, however, be light and mobile; it was to be provisioned by supply columns sent after it from the base.
There could be no question of bringing the main army with its elephants, masses of heavy transport, time-expired veterans, walking wounded, and noncombatants of every kind. Apart from the gruelling conditions, it could not be fed. It was now entrusted to Craterus, to be returned to Persia with the minimum of hardship. Once more Roxane was someone else’s charge; only the much-enduring women of the common soldiers would follow their men along the coast.
Arrian says the whole force was rafted over to the left bank of the river—an operation which must have taken weeks—because the going that side was easier and the tribes more peaceful. This clearly points to a riverside march into Taxila, where the needed stores could be picked up before tackling the Khyber, the main road Alexander had been at such pains to make secure. Yet it has been supposed that he launched this huge, slow-moving and highly vulnerable force directly northward (away from the river) into country never traversed by his troops, uncharted, mountainous and partly desert: the trail over the Mulla and Bolan passes to Kandahar, on which, as recently as the eighteenth century, a Persian army was in desperate straits. The “land of the Arachotians,” which Arrian says Craterus traversed, is very vaguely defined and probably reached the Indus. He and his force reached their Persian rendezvous late, but in excellent fettle, testifying to a roundabout and less inhospitable route. After their departure along the river, Hephaestion remained as Alexander’s undisputed second-in-command; a rank he would hold for what was left of his life.
The last obstacle between Alexander and the sea was the land of the lower Indus and its ancient, now shifted delta. One of the rajahs there, Musicanus, had withheld submission, but gave it when Alexander came; the next made but brief resistance; the third, Sambus of Sind, had sent homage beforehand, hoping for the destruction of Musicanus, his hated enemy. Angry and alarmed to find him spared, and incited by the local Brahmins, Sambus revolted, then took fright and fled. His family surrendered, blaming the Brahmins, whom Alexander hanged. During these operations Musicanus, breaking his treaty, rose in arms; probably his own Brahmins had proclaimed a holy war. As always after breach of faith, Alexander attacked à l’outrance; the towns were stormed, the men killed, the women enslaved. The Indians’ use of poisoned weapons embittered the war. These lands were vital to his communications for the coastal march, and he was determined to secure them. (In this he was unsuccessful.) No personal exploit of his is here recorded, though he took the field. For the first time he must have felt the loss of that inexhaustible energy he had taken for granted all his life. He was to need all that remained, in the months ahead. Of the disabled men shepherded home by Craterus, not a few must have been fitter than the King.
The country once subdued, Hephaestion took charge of turning the chief city of Pattala into a fortified port; but no doubt he joined Alexander for his long-awaited visit to the Ocean. So, probably, did the young Bagoas, whom Alexander had not dispatched with Craterus’ convoy. A dancer who kept up his practice, he had a resilience which would stand him in good stead.
The royal flotilla sailed down the north arm of the delta; but the monsoon had come round again, and it was met by a storm of wind. The ships were driven aground, and several wrecked; the natives had fled, and no local guides could at first be found. While they waited, a more dreadful portent than the storm occurred: the water sank away. Acquainted till then only with the landlocked seas, they were unaware that for the first time in their lives they were seeing the ebb tide. Greece being the seismic area that it is, some must have heard about the sinister withdrawal which precedes the tsunami. But after some anxious hours, the waters returned, and stayed at their former bounds. The gods had been kind, but no one had known enough to secure the stranded ships, which were badly knocked about. At length, pilots found and repairs done, Alexander put out to an offshore island, where he sacrificed to the gods whom, he said, Amnion had instructed him to honour. Then at last he emerged into open sea. Here two bulls were slaughtered and thrown in for Poseidon; and along with his libations Alexander offered the golden bowls he poured them from.
But it was only half the event he had hoped to celebrate. This should have been the eastern ocean, and its shore the end of the world; better recompense for short breath and a chronic catch in his side. It was about the time of his birthday; he was thirty-one.
Since it was for the sake of the seaway that Alexander had planned his march, the interests of the fleet were paramount. Greek ships avoided moving at night, even in known waters; in these, where the very stars were strange, it was unthinkable. Their inability to carry more than a few days’ stores has already been noted; hence the necessity of victualling them from land, and protecting them when they had to beach. Thus the march had to follow the coast, not seek the easiest route inland. As long as the monsoon blew, the wind would be adverse for the ships; the march must therefore start in early autumn. Though Alexander had been warned about desert conditions, his Indian experience probably caused him to expect much more relief from autumn than he would get: cooler weather, and water from mountain snow torrents, such as were still swelling the Punjab streams. He filled in the end of summer with operations against the tribes to the north of the ancient Indus mouth and on the site of its present one, in order to secure his new harbours. Over these people, the Oreitians, he left a Macedonian satrap, who had charge of a supply train for the expedition. After it had set out, there was a revolt and this man was killed. The supplies were no doubt looted; none reached Alexander, nor, till afterwards, did the explanation.
The men of the fleet, setting out into unknown waters, were heartened to know that Nearchus, one of the King’s best friends, was being hazarded in command of them—at his own eager insistence, as he himself recorded. In the event, the fleet had by far the best of it. Their hardships were dreadful, their perils great; they got from Alexander neither the provisions he had meant to leave for them, nor the wells he had meant to dig; to survive they turned pirate, raiding the sparse hovels of palaeolithic aborigines for their wretched food; they ended the voyage sun-blackened, gaunt, salt-crusted, unrecognizable ragamuffins; but almost all survived. Nearchus had twelve healthy years ahead of him.
Arrian writes that of all his sources, only Nearchus said that the full difficulties of the route were not known to Alexander. But Nearchus would have known best: Alexander’s co-leader, with whom he had plotted the expedition, the arrangements for food depots, watering stations, seamarks and rendezvous. And Nearchus must be right; for had Alexander foreseen the horrors awaiting him, he would not have let camp followers join the march, still less the women and families of the soldiers. Nearer and further Asia must have been scattered already with the unmarked graves of these poor victims, not all of whom had even chosen their lot; many women had been carried off from fallen towns by men of alien races without a word of their native speech, whose children they had borne behind the nearest bush, dying or trudging on. But neither Bactrian frosts nor Indian fevers had taken the toll of them which was now to come.