"That's right," Menedemos said. "That's just right."
As Diokles had before, he headed this expedition to the beach. He didn't let the boat go aground. Instead, the three mercenaries who wanted to go to Italy waded out into the sea; the rowers helped them into the boat. They were on the way back to the Aphrodite before Diotimos and his pals came trotting back along the sand toward them.
Up came the rowers, into the merchant galley. Up came Rhoikos and Kallikrates and Philippos. And up came Alexidamos, who'd lain in the bottom of the boat since it used the pirate ship to screen it from Diotimos' men for a moment. He clasped Sostratos' hand. "Very neat. Very clever. You should be an admiral."
Sostratos tossed his head. "I leave that sort of thing to my cousin." He glanced toward Menedemos, about to suggest that sailing on the instant would be a good idea. But Menedemos had already gone to the bow. He was urging the men at the anchor lines to haul the anchors up to the catheads. He was plenty savvy enough to see what wanted doing here without any suggestions from Sostratos. And that suited Sostratos fine.
Three days after leaving Cape Tainaron, the Aphrodite sailed northwest out of Zakynthos. "I could be Odysseus, coming home at last," Menedemos said, pointing out over the akatos' bow. "There's Kephallenia ahead, with Ithake just to the northeast of it."
"But you're not going to stop either place, or go up to Korkyra, either," Sostratos said. "You're going to strike straight across the Ionian Sea for Italy." He sighed. "And you the man who loves Homer so well."
Menedemos laughed and pointed a finger at him. "You can't fool me. You don't care a fig for trade. You just want to see the islands. I had to drag you away from Zakynthos."
"It's an interesting place," his cousin answered. "It's still a woody island, as the poet says. And the people speak an interesting dialect of Greek."
"Interesting?" Menedemos tossed his head. "I couldn't understand what they were saying half the time. It's almost as bad as Macedonian."
"I didn't have too much trouble with it," Sostratos said. "It's just old-fashioned. But are you sure you don't want to go up the coast and cross the sea where it's narrowest? We'd only spend one night - two at the outside - on the water that way, and sailing straight across we'll be out of sight of land for five or six days."
"I know. I have my reasons." That should have been all Menedemos needed to say; he was captain of the Aphrodite, after all. And Sostratos didn't argue, at least not with words. But he did raise an eyebrow, and Menedemos found himself explaining: "For one thing, most merchantmen sail from Korkyra across to Italy just because it's the shortest way."
"Exactly," Sostratos said. "Why are you doing something different, then?"
"Because all the pirates around - Hellenes, Epeirotes, Illyrians, Tyrrhenians - know what the merchantmen do, and they hover around the passage where the Adriatic opens out into the Ionian Sea the way vultures hover over a dead ox. Even if this trip across the open sea is longer, it should be safer."
"Ah." Sostratos spread his hands. "That does make good sense. You said it was one reason. You have more?"
"You've got no business grilling me," Menedemos said.
"No doubt you're right, O best one." Sostratos could be most annoying when he was most ironically polite. And then he struck a shrewder blow yet: "If anything goes wrong, though, our fathers will grill you, and it will be their business. Wouldn't you sooner practice your answers on me?"
The thought of having to explain things to his father made Menedemos spit into the bosom of his tunic. He said, "I'm sure you want me to tell you for my own good, not for yours." Sostratos looked innocent. He looked so innocent, Menedemos burst out laughing. "The other reason I don't want to stop at Korkyra is, it's about the most dismal place in the world."
"Not surprising, after all the wars it's lost," Sostratos said. "And it was the place where the Peloponnesian War began, and that ruined all of Hellas. But Korkyra's free and independent nowadays." He raised that eyebrow again - more irony.
"Yes, Korkyra is free and independent, all right." Menedemos raised an eyebrow, too, and quoted a proverbial verse: " 'Korkyra is free - shit wherever you want.' "
His cousin snorted. "Well, all right. Maybe it's just as well you didn't go up the coast. You would have recited that in a tavern after you'd had some wine, and got yourself knifed."
Since he was probably right, Menedemos didn't argue with him. Instead, he said, "I just wish the wind weren't right in our teeth. We'll have to row all the way. But it always comes out of the northwest hereabouts during sailing season."
With the passengers aboard, and with the peafowl cages taking up much of the foredeck, the poop deck was more crowded than usual. Philippos said, "You'll put right into the harbor at Taras, won't you?"
Menedemos didn't laugh out loud. Neither did Sostratos. But Diokles did, and so did Alexidamos and Rhoikos. They knew what an inexact art navigation was. Turning to his fellow mercenary, Rhoikos spoke in his broad Doric drawclass="underline" "Don't sail a whole lot, you tell me?"
"What's that got to do with anything?" Philippos asked.
At that, Menedemos did laugh. He couldn't help himself. He wasn't the only one, either. He said, "Best one, I'm sailing northwest. I'm keeping my course as true as I know how. And if the weather holds, we'll make the Italian coast within a couple of hundred stadia of Taras either way, and then sail along it to the city. If the weather doesn't hold . . ." He shrugged. He didn't want to talk about that, or even to think about it.
Philippos looked as astonished as a young boy might on first learning where babies come from. In tones that said he had trouble believing what he'd just heard, he asked, "But why can't you get right where you're going?"
Patiently, biting down on new laughter, Menedemos answered, "We'll be out of sight of land pretty soon. Once we are, what have we got to go on? The sun - the stars at night - the wind and the waves. That's all. I haven't got a magic pointer to tell me which way north is. I wish I did, but Hephaistos has never shown anybody how to make such a thing."
"If I'd known that, I'd've stayed at Tainaron till I found a general who'd march me off to his army," the unhappy mercenary said.
"You're welcome to go back," Menedemos said. Philippos brightened, but only till he added, "Provided you can swim that far."
"Perhaps the dolphins would carry him, as they did Arion," Sostratos said helpfully.
"You're making fun of me," Philippos said, which was true. He pushed by Menedemos to the Aphrodite's stern. There he stood, staring out past the sternpost toward Zakynthos, which steadily dwindled in the southeast and finally vanished below the horizon. Philippos kept staring anyhow.
Menedemos fancied himself Prometheus rather than Epimetheus: he looked ahead, not behind. Fluffy white clouds drifted across the sky from north to south. The sea was low; the Aphrodite pitched a little because she headed straight into the swells, but the motion wasn't enough to make even a lubber like Philippos lean out over the rail.
In a low voice, Menedemos asked Diokles, "Do you think the weather will hold for the crossing?"
The oarmaster shrugged. "You'd do better asking the gods than me. We've got a pretty fair chance, I think - couldn't hardly ask for anything better than we've got right now. But it's still early in the sailing season, too."
"Would you head up to Korkyra?" Menedemos asked. "We could still swing back in that direction."
Diokles shrugged again. "If a blow comes, odds are we'd be at sea either which way. And we're a lot less likely to run into pirates cutting across - you're dead right about that, skipper. Six oboloi one way, a drakhma the other. You don't go to sea unless you're ready to take a chance now and then."