"Shall we give it another try, then?" the keleustes asked.
"Unless you feel like swimming home," Menedemos answered. Diokles tossed his head. Menedemos raised his voice to a shout: "Come on! Put your backs into it this time! One more good heave and we'll be off!"
He was anything but sure he was telling the truth, but it was what the sailors needed to hear. He heaved with them, his bare feet digging into the golden sand. At first, he thought this try would prove as fruitless as the last. But then the false keel grated as the ship lurched forward: not much, only a digit's worth or not even that, but some.
Everyone felt the tiny motion. "We can do it!" Menedemos cried. "At my count . . . one, two, three!"
Another scrape of timber on sand. The men grunted and cursed as they shoved. Out in the little bay, the rowers in the boat pulled as if they had a five full of Carthaginians on their tail. The Aphrodite moved a little more, and then a little more - and then, more than a little to Menedemos surprise, slid into the Aegean. The sailors raised a cheer.
"We'll spend the night tied up to a pier in Knidos," Sostratos said, "but the next time we have to go aground on a sandy shore, let's not beach ourselves so hard."
"Well, that isn't the worst idea I've ever heard," Menedemos answered. "Still and all, though, we do want to let the timbers dry whenever we get the chance. Rowing's harder work when you have to shove along the extra weight that goes into a waterlogged ship."
He waded out into the cool water of the bay and, agile as a monkey, swarmed up a rope and over the side of the Aphrodite. Rather less gracefully, Sostratos followed. Before long, all the men were in the Aphrodite and the akatos' boat tied to the sternpost once more for towing.
"Out of the inlet," Menedemos said, "then around the southern coast of Syme, and then west and a little north to Knidos." Still dripping, his hair wet and slick, he took his place at the steering oars and dipped his head to Diokles. "If you'd be so kind, keleustes."
"Right you are, skipper." The oarmaster clanged his mallet against the bronze square. "Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!"
"Rhyppapai!" the rowers echoed, taking their beat from him. Menedemos had only ten men a side at the oars. He would work the men in shifts, the way any captain not in a desperate hurry did.
Sostratos asked, "May I let a couple of peahens out now?"
"Wait till we're well away from Syme and in more open water," Menedemos answered. "We don't want the miserable birds trying to fly to land and going into the sea instead."
"You're right. I hadn't thought of that," Sostratos said. Menedemos couldn't imagine himself making an admission like that, even if it was true. If he hadn't thought of something, he didn't want anybody but himself knowing it. His cousin went on, "Tell me when the time is right, then."
"I will," Menedemos said, somewhat abstractedly: the bulk of the island was shielding him from some of the wind he wanted to use. He ordered the big square mainsail lowered from the yard, but it flapped and fluttered and didn't want to fill. Even after the sailors used the brails to haul up most of the canvas on the leeward side, he wondered if he should have bothered using it at all; it hardly seemed to add anything to the Aphrodite's turn of speed. Then he shrugged. The men would think it helped, even if it didn't really do much. Keeping them happy counted for something, too.
After an hour or so, the Aphrodite glided between the narrow spit of land at Syme's southwestern corner and the closest of the three tiny islets that straggled out from the spit. Once the ship got free of Syme's wind shadow, the sail bellied out and went taut. "That's more like it," Menedemos exclaimed, and ordered more of the sail lowered to take advantage of the breeze.
"Now?" Sostratos asked: so much for waiting for Menedemos to give him the word.
Menedemos considered. Now that Syme no longer blocked his view, he could see the long, narrow Karian peninsula at whose end Knidos sat. But the peninsula lay perhaps forty stadia to the north: far enough away for it to seem a little misty, a little indistinct. He didn't suppose the peafowl would try to fly to it. "Go ahead," he said. "Let's see what happens. Pick your sailors first, though, and tell them what they're going to have to do."
His cousin dipped his head. Menedemos gave him no more specific instructions; he wanted to see how Sostratos would handle the business. Most of the sailors Sostratos chose were men Menedemos would have picked, too, men he reckoned sensible and reliable. But his cousin also pointed to the two rowers Diokles had plucked off the wharf as the Aphrodite was about to sail. Maybe he wanted to work them in with the rest of the crew. Maybe he just reckoned them expendable. Either way, Menedemos didn't think he would have wanted them for this work.
"Just keep the birds away from people who are doing things that need doing," Sostratos said. "Except for that, let them run around and eat whatever they can catch. We'll have fewer lizards and mice and cockroaches aboard the Aphrodite after a while."
He was probably right. Menedemos hadn't looked at that side of things. No man born of woman could keep down the vermin that inevitably traveled with men and cargo. Vermin were part of life; Menedemos suspected mice and roaches ate scraps of ambrosia on Olympos. Some ship captains took along Egyptian cats to try to keep down the mice, though he'd never been convinced the nasty little yowlers caught enough to be worthwhile.
His cousin stooped on the little foredeck to unlatch a peahen's cage. A moment later, Sostratos hopped back with a yelp of "Oimoi!" He wrung his hand.
"Still have all your fingers?" Menedemos called from the steering oars at the poop.
By the way Sostratos looked down, Menedemos guessed he was checking to make sure of that himself. His cousin dipped his head. "I do," he said, "though no thanks to this monstrous fowl." He shook one of the fingers he still had at the peahen. "You hateful bird, don't you know I'm doing you a favor?"
Maybe the peahen heeded him. At any rate, it didn't try to peck him again. He swung the cage door open. The bird emerged. A heartbeat later, so did another one. Menedemos and Sostratos called that second peahen Helen, because the peacock mated with her more enthusiastically than with the other peahens. When she walked past his cage now, he started screeching loud enough to make Menedemos wince even though he stood at the Aphrodite's stern.
With a flutter of wings, the two peahens went down the wooden stairway and into the undecked bottom of the akatos. One of them pecked at something. "That was a centipede!" a sailor said. "Good riddance to the horrible thing."
The bird called Helen pecked at something else. A rower let out a howclass="underline" "That was my leg! You lefthanded idiot, you're supposed to keep the miserable creature away from me."
"I'm sorry, I'm sure," said the fellow called an idiot: one of Diokles' new men, a chap named Teleutas. He flapped the little net he was holding at the peahen, which didn't peck the rower twice. All the same, Menedemos didn't judge this the best way to blend the newcomers with the rest of the crew.
Another rower yelped. The sailor who hadn't kept the peahen from nipping at him had been rowing for Menedemos and Sostratos' families since they were both little boys. Maybe nobody could stop the peafowl from making nuisances of themselves. In that case, maybe Sostratos hadn't made such a bad choice with Teleutas and the other new sailor - whose name Menedemos kept forgetting - after all.
Helen the peahen hopped up onto an empty rower's bench and stretched her neck so she could peer over the gunwale at the Karian coastline in the distance. Would she know it lay in the distance? Or would she forget she had clipped wings and try to strike out for the land she saw?
Before anyone could find out, Sostratos threw a net over her. He didn't want fifty drakhmai of silver splashing into the Aegean. It was a fit home for dolphins - Menedemos saw three or four leaping out of the water off to port - but not for expensive birds.