The hills on this side of the river were heavily wooded, and while half the troops made camp, collected firewood, and threw up defensive palisades and trenching, Xenophon ordered the rest to venture into the forest to cut light trees and lash them together for rafts. He had no illusions that we would be able to build a sufficient number of vessels for all the men and beasts-most of them would have to make do with their soon-to-be-developed swimming and floating skills-yet still, he hoped that with at least a few rafts we would be able to ferry across some of the wounded and most of our supplies, without further endangering our own lives.

For three days we were occupied in this task, under intermittently pouring and freezing rain that caused the river to swell even higher. Those among the soldiers who could not swim, which is to say most, kept to their work with a grim determination, though even tough Spartans, who would not hesitate to leap into pitched battle against a charging Scythian horseman, were as nervous as children at the thought of crossing the raging torrent they now faced. Spartans are land creatures and hate water crossings, though by this point of our journey one might have thought they would be accustomed to them. This roaring, murderous flow, however, carried in its silt the fear and fury of unknown lands hundreds of miles upstream, the ice and mystery of uninhabitable regions, perhaps even fearsome creatures and strange gods lurking beneath its surface. A man at the age I was then, burning with life, can normally no more foresee or contemplate his death than he can the lives of his descendants a thousand or two thousand years in the future. If death were to overtake him, it would be a complete surprise, unanticipated, with hardly a thought or reflection as to its meaning or impact. During those three days of staring at the river, however, I aged fifty years, and devoted as much thought to my death as I do now in my old age, when surrounded by it I can hardly escape reflecting on it. On the appointed day the weather had cleared somewhat, but the skies still glowered. The seers sacrificed the two youngest sheep still remaining to us, in lieu of the lambs that would have been more pleasing to the river gods, slitting their throats so that the blood would flow into the water. Without waiting even for the priests to divine the gods' response, or perhaps purposely ignoring it out of fear, Xenophon ordered Charon to lead the first flotilla of small ferries across, each stacked high with our precious grain, the arms and armor remaining to us, a few bleating sheep and the terrified wounded men. The sides of the rafts were held fast by soldiers, those who could swim grasping the downstream side and shouting encouragement to those who could not swim, who were pressed by the current, panic-stricken, against the upstream sides of the rafts, praying to the gods for strength to be able to maintain their grip in the icy water. I had heard as a child that smearing the body with oil would help a swimmer retain body heat, so after quietly reminding Xenophon of this, he ordered the precious oil casks opened, which we had been carrying for anointing the dead, and every man was given a cup of it with which to coat his body. Each swimmer had small sections of split logs strapped precariously to his chest and back, in an effort to keep him afloat if he became separated from the raft, at least long enough to be washed ashore downstream before he died of cold or drowning.

As was their custom, the soldiers entered the water naked, save only their sandals, and each carried a silver coin or two, what little they had left from their last stipends, held in their cheeks for safekeeping. Chirisophus joked grimly that this measure would also save the survivors the expense of placing an obol in the mouths of the dead to pay their final toll, if the crossing was not successful. As the first rafts and soldiers entered the water, those on shore watched the progress of their comrades with hope, then busied themselves with their own preparations.

About a third of the army had entered the river, with the vanguard three-quarters of the way across, when a frantic clamor arose from the craft just behind Charon's, and we looked up to see the vessel standing almost vertically on its side, the torrent rushing up against it on the upstream side and forming a wall of froth, with the arms and legs of an upstream solder flitting out here and there as he struggled to maintain his grasp. On the downstream side the raft was braced firmly against a huge boulder unseen before in the rapids, but now visible behind the half dozen men standing hip-deep in the frigid water. They clumsily wrenched the raft back and forth, their strapped logs hindering them at every step, frantically trying to force it out of the jam. Another raft was quickly bearing down upon them, with its retinue of bobbing heads along three sides shouting in panic and attempting unsuccessfully to steer away from the boulder. The second raft, caught in the same vicious current, slammed into the first, both of them splintering like children's toys, overturning the provisions, and sending thirty men screaming into free-float in the frigid river, grasping at boulders, raft fragments and each other as they were swept downstream out of sight.

Even at this distance I could see the horrified look on Charon's face as he watched part of the army he claimed he could safely guide across the river disappear downstream without a trace. He frantically signaled to those in the water to stop their wading across the river, and to move directly upstream a hundred yards, to avoid the treacherous boulder that had destroyed the two rafts. We could all see the logic to this solution, yet those already in the water had been there for some time now, their bodies had become numb from the chest down and some were experiencing convulsions. The thought of remaining in the water for the additional time the detour would take was almost too much to bear. Those still on land quickly ran upstream to the newly designated crossing point, dragging the wagons and supplies with them, and then the soldiers slated to cross next strode into the water toward their predecessors, tossing them short ropes, blankets, branches, anything they could find to help their frozen comrades cover the last stretch.

When the entire army had shifted upstream to the new crossing point, we noted that Charon had unloaded his craft on the far side, and with several of the strongest swimmers from the troops had again entered the river and was returning toward the bulk of the army, swearing in his incomprehensible barbarian tongue and pulling into the ferry any soldiers he encountered midstream who were on the verge of going under.

Despite his efforts, a dozen more men were lost, as were two more rafts with their priceless cargo of supplies, while crossing the river.

Men straggled into camp on the other side for the next two days, naked and blue with cold, their feet bleeding from the icy and thorny ground on which they had walked miles from the point they had made landfall, others dragging broken limbs battered from the thrashing they had taken against the river boulders or the rafts themselves. Not a man was without serious bruises, myself included, and we remained in camp for three days nursing our wounds and trying to warm our frozen bodies, while search parties were dispatched downstream on both sides in an effort to find any further survivors who might have lost their way. One of the search parties never returned, and we guessed its fate from the gleeful taunts of the fur-clad tribesmen who mockingly waved their spears at us from across the river on the second night of our stay. In return for Charon's dubious services and inept guidance Chirisophus ordered that his head be removed and sent across by a catapult improvised from a springy young sapling, to his jabbering compatriots on the other side of the river. After they had retrieved the carefully padded bundle from where it had landed on the river bank and examined it, they set up an outraged chorus of lamentations and insults, but in the end, troubled us no more.