Greek rear, Xenophon again faced the threat of total destruction in battle. Xenophon's scouts quickly found another ford across the river, but the Persians moved and blocked this as well. Xenophon sent a small force back toward the other ford, causing the anxious Persians to detach a major part of their force. Xenophon stormed and completely overwhelmed the force remaining at his ford, while the Greek detachment made a forced march to this bridgehead. This was among the first attacks in depth ever made, 23 years after Delium and 30 years before Epaminondas' more famous use of it at Leuctra. Winter had by now arrived as the Greeks marched through Armenia "absolutely unprovided with clothing suitable for such weather", inflicting more casualties than they suffered through their ambush of a local satrap's force and the flanking of another force. At a stage when the Greeks were in desperate need of food, they decided upon attacking a wooden castle known to have provisions. The castle, however, was located on a hill surrounded by forest. Xenophon ordered small parties of his men to appear on the hill road; and when the defenders flung boulders, a soldier would leap into the trees, and he "did this so often that at last there was quite a heap of stones lying in front of him, but he himself was untouched." Then, "the other men followed his example, and made it a sort of game, enjoying the sensation, pleasant alike to old and young, of courting danger for a moment, and then quickly escaping it. When the stones were almost exhausted, the soldiers raced one another over the exposed part of the road", storming the fortress, where most of the now neutralized garrison barely put up a fight. Xenophon records the joyful moment when the Ten Thousand (by then actually far fewer), from the heights of Mount Theches, saw the sea and friendly Greek colonies on the coast, which signified their escape had been made good, whereupon they shouted Θάλαττα! θάλαττα! : Thalatta! Thalatta! ("The sea! The sea!"). Soon after, Xenophon's men reached Trapezus on the coast of the Black Sea (Anabasis 4.8.22). Before they departed, the Greeks made an alliance with the locals and fought one last battle against the Colchians, vassals of the Persians, in mountainous country. Xenophon ordered his men to deploy their line extremely thin, so as to overlap the enemy, while