y tried to
snatch them, but could not. So they continued to rise higher and
higher until the box was carried above the clouds. By looking through
the windows at the top and bottom of the box, Alexander could see how
high he was. For a long time he saw nothing but clouds, which appeared
like a vast sea beneath him, but when these cleared away, he saw the
earth again.

So high was he that the world looked like a ball. Until then he had
not known the earth was round. The seas enveloping the greater part of
the globe looked like writhing serpents.

"Now I can understand," he said, "why the wise rabbis say that the
great fish, the leviathan, surrounds the world with its tail in its
mouth."

Then he looked above. The sun seemed further away than ever.

"Heaven is not so near as I thought," he said, and seeing himself but
a tiny speck miles above the earth and still further away from the
heavens, he grew afraid for the first time in his life. With a stick
he knocked the jewels from the poles outside the box, and the eagles,
seeing them no longer, began to descend. Alexander breathed more
freely when he was safe on the ground again, but he would not tell his
generals what he had seen.

"Wait until I have descended into the sea," he said.

Under his orders, a diving bell of clear thick glass, bound with iron,
had been constructed. Alexander entered the bell, all the joints were
then tightly secured with pitch, and the bell lowered from a ship into
the ocean by means of chains.

Before he entered, Alexander took the precaution to put on a magic
ring, which his wife, Roxana, had sent him. This, she said, would
protect him against the monsters of the deep.

Down, down into the watery deep sank the bell, and for some time
Alexander could see nothing. When his eyes grew accustomed to the
strange, greenish light, he noticed multitudes of queer fish darting
round about the bell. Many were of a shape never conjectured by man,
some were so tiny that he could scarcely see them, and others so large
that one of these monsters actually tried to swallow the bell. But
Alexander showed the magic ring which glowed like a blazing star and
the monster darted away.

So deep down sank the bell that no light could at last penetrate from
the sun. Most of the fish, however, were luminous, and Alexander was
almost dazzled by the changing of the brilliant lights as the denizens
of the deep swam swiftly around the bell. Shells of wondrous beau