From his station at the stern, Menedemos called, “If you’re going to be a lookout, my dear, kindly look ahead, not toward me.”
“Sorry,” Sostratos said, reddening. He gave his attention back to the sea.
He wondered whether, a moment later, he would have to scream out, Rock! and give his cousin just enough time to steer the merchant galley out of harm’s way. If he were telling the story in a tavern-and especially if Menedemos were telling it in a tavern-it would go that way. But he saw no rocks. He saw little of anything: only gray sky above and gray sea below. He wished he could see farther out to sea, but, unless Menedemos’ navigation was far worse than he feared, it mattered much less on this broad reach of the Aegean than it would, say, down in the Kyklades. In those crowded waters, you could spit over the side and hit an island no matter where you were.
Darkness fell with no special drama. Light oozed out of the sky. At Diokles’ command, the rowers shipped their oars. Men who weren’t rowing brailed up the sail. Anchors splashed into the sea. Menedemos ordered lamps lit and hung from the stempost and sternpost. He said, “If some idiot’s sailing on through the night, we ought to give him at least a chance to see us.”
“Did I argue?” Sostratos replied.
“Not about that.” Menedemos paused to dip up a cup of the rough red wine the crew drank aboard ship. “But Moskhion’s been going on about how you tried to tell him dolphins aren’t fish.”
“By Poseidon’s prick, they aren’t!” Sostratos yelped. “Ask any man who’s studied the issue, and he’ll tell you the same thing.”
“Maybe so, O best one, but any sailor, it seems, will tell you you’re out of your mind,” Menedemos replied.
“It’s the Apology of Sokrates all over again: men who know one thing well think they know all things well because of their little piece of knowledge.”
“More than a few of our sailors have been fishermen, too,” Menedemos said. “If they don’t know fish, what do they know?”
“Not much, in my opinion.” But Sostratos spoke in a voice not much above a whisper. He did remember he wouldn’t be wise to anger the men. With an odd mix of amusement and annoyance, he watched his cousin’s relief that he remembered.
He too drank wine, and ate an uninspiring shipboard supper. He almost thought of it as a Spartan supper. Then he remembered the horrid black broth served in the Lakedaimonians’ messes. Contemplating that nasty stuff made an opson of olives and cheese and an onion seem far more palatable.
The clouds and mist remained after full night came. “Too bad,” Sostratos said, wrapping himself in his himation. “I always like looking at the stars before I go to sleep.”
“Not tonight.” Menedemos was also making himself as comfortable as he could on the poop deck.
“I wonder what they really are, and why a few of them wander while the rest stand still,” Sostratos said.
“Those are questions for gods, not men,” his cousin replied.
“Why shouldn’t I ask them?” Sostratos said. “Men should ask questions, and look for answers to them.”
“Go ahead and ask all you like,” Menedemos said. “Getting answers to those questions is a different story, though.”
Sostratos wished he could have quarreled with that. Instead, he sighed and dipped his head, saying, “I’m afraid you’re right. Until we find some way to reach out and touch the stars, we’ll never be able to find out what they are or why they shine.”
“Well, my dear, you don’t think small-I will say that,” Menedemos replied with a laugh. “How do you propose to touch the stars?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. I wish I did.” Sostratos yawned. “I haven’t the faintest idea how I’m going to stay awake any more, either.” The next thing he knew, he wasn’t.
When he woke, the sky was getting light. It wasn’t the rosy-fingered dawn of which the poets wrote, though: no pink and gold eastern sky, no sunbeams darting up from the sea. Only a sullen gray like that of the day before made night withdraw.
Menedemos was already up. “Good day, my dear,” he said. “Here you’ve gone and taken away the fun of giving you a good kick, the way I was about to.”
“So sorry to deprive you of your simple pleasures.” Sostratos got to his feet and stretched to work the kinks out of his back. Rubbing his eyes, he added, “I’m feeling pretty simple myself right now.”
Up and down the length of the Aphrodite, sailors were rousing. Diokles had already got up from the rower’s bench where he’d spent the night. He seemed as well rested as if he’d slept in the bedchamber of the Great King of Persia. “Good day, young sirs,” he called to Sostratos and Menedemos.
“Good day,” Sostratos said. “We should pass through the strait between Euboia and Andros before sunset, shouldn’t we?”
“I hope so,” the oarmaster said. “If we’re anywhere near where we ought to be, and if our navigation today’s halfway decent, we ought to manage that.”
“And if we don’t, everyone will blame me.” Menedemos made a joke of it, where a lot of captains would have been deadly serious. Pointing up toward the clue-obscuring sky, he said, “I do have an excuse for not guiding us to within a digit’s breadth of our perfect path.”
“No arguments, skipper,” Diokles said. “I expect you’ll get us where we’re going. If I didn’t think so, I’d be a right idiot to sail with you, wouldn’t I?”
After barley rolls dipped in oil and washed down with watered wine, sailors slowly spun the capstans and brought up the anchors. As soon as they were stowed, the sail came down from the yard. It billowed and flapped and then filled with wind. Menedemos steered the ship west-southwest.
“I hope it’s west-southwest, anyhow,” he said with a wry grin, “It’s my best guess.”
“Warmer than yesterday, I think,” Sostratos said. “Maybe the clouds and mist will burn off as the sun gets higher.”
Little by little, they did. The sun came out, first through clouds still thick enough to let a man look without pain at its disk and then more strongly. The sky went from gray to a hazy blue: still not quite the weather for which Sostratos would have hoped, but definitely better. The horizon stretched as the mist faded.
“Land ho!” a rower called. “Land to port and astern.”
“That’s Psyra, I think,” Sostratos said, shading his eyes to peer east.
Menedemos laughed. “It had better be. Otherwise we’re really lost.”
Not too much later, Sostratos spotted Skyros off the starboard bow. He felt proud of himself. His eyes were no better than anyone else’s- indeed, he knew they were worse than those of several sailors. But knowing where Psyra was let him do a geometry problem in his head and figure out about where Skyros ought to be.
And then, as the day continued to clear and the horizon to extend, several sailors pointed dead ahead at almost exactly the same time. “There’s Euboia!” they called.
“Good,” Menedemos said. “We’re about where we’re supposed to be. If anything, we’re a little farther west than I thought we were. We will get through the strait between Euboia and Andros today, and then it’s on to Athens.”
“On to Athens!” Sostratos couldn’t have been happier if his cousin had said… He thought about that, then grinned. He couldn’t have been happier if Menedemos had said anything else.
As the strait neared, Menedemos ordered weapons and helmets served out to the crew. The men set bronze helms, most of them un-crested, on their heads. The sailors not at the oars hefted spears and swords and belaying pins. The rowers stashed their weapons under their benches where they could grab them in a hurry.
“I hope this is all a waste of time,” Menedemos said. “But a lot of you men were along a couple of years ago, when that pirate tried to board us. We fought off the polluted son of a whore. If we have to, we can do it again.”