Ignoring the pleas of the physician and the shooting pains in his body, Libo struggled upright, pulling on the shoulder of the nearby attendant until he was on his feet.
“Where are we?” he demanded almost incoherently. “Where is Postumus? Where is Naevius?”
As the deck hands passed the word for the captain, Libo found his way to the rail to survey the situation. The Argonaut and her sisters were flying before the wind, under all sail, their bows plunging in and out of the white-capped waves. They drove north, the southerly wind at their backs, the white-trimmed shoals of the rocky coast to starboard, the open sea to larboard. Just ahead, the rocky promontory stretched to a point that it nearly lay in their path. His own ships were perilously close and would only just narrowly avoid the shoals on this course. Libo could see that, with the southerly wind at their backs, his fleet had overtaken several more transports and was near to pouncing upon the crowded center of the fleeing convoy, which had only just rounded the point and was now heading into the bay. It had not been the distended sails alone that had allowed Argonaut and her consorts to close the distance so quickly. The rapid beat of the drums rang out in Libo’s throbbing head, and he could discern from the accelerated slap of the oars that they rose and fell at ramming speed – an exertion usually saved for the moments before impact. The intermittent white feathers alongside the other ships in the fleet told Libo that they, too, were pushing their rowers to keep station with the flagship. How long the oarsmen had been under such exertion he could not guess, but it had placed the fleet in a position to overtake Antony. Now, try as they might, the fifty-odd lumbering ships ahead would never reach the landing beaches before the onrushing rams of the Argonaut and her sisters caught up with them.
It was perfect, but for one flaw. Libo’s ships had been put at much risk to get to this point, and were still in a most hazardous position. The victory would not be sealed until they successfully rounded the cape, as the enemy had already done. The rocks were so close that Libo could hear the waves crashing against them.
“Admiral!” Naevius appeared beside him wearing a smile of relief. “Bless Neptune, you’re alive, sir! We thought -”
“I commanded you to take in all sails, captain!” Libo snapped, his head screaming from pain and anger.
“But, sir, the senator ordered – ”
“Get the courses in now, damn you! Are you blind? Do you not see the shoals to starboard?”
“But, you see, sir, the wind has held steady.” Naevius sounded somewhat apologetic. He pointed at the tell-tale streamers up in the rigging. “It hasn’t shifted so much as a point in the last hour. And the enemy fleet is within our grasp, sir.”
Libo suddenly felt off-balance. He put a hand to his temples, uncertain whether his throbbing head had him hallucinating or if the captain truly did not comprehend the danger.
“The transports now lie within reach of our oars,” Libo managed to say once his head cleared again. “There is no need for so much canvas aloft! Why have you not shortened sail?”
“The senator gave orders, sir. He was very explicit. He told me that I was not to – ”
“To hell with the senator!” Libo interrupted, the reason for the captain’s foolhardiness suddenly clear to him. “Is the fleet entrusted to him or to me? You should know better, captain! Where in Hades is the bastard!”
The captain’s eyes flashed to the aft hatch. “Below, with the lady Calpurnia, Admiral.”
It was coming back to Libo now. He could distinctly remember being pushed from the tower. Postumus had tried to murder him. In his feverish desire to get his hands on the treasury, the old bastard had taken command, and had now put the whole fleet at risk.
“Get the sails in.” Libo commanded. “Do it swiftly. And signal the fleet to do the same.”
“Aye, sir!” Naevius saluted promptly and hurried off.
Libo was about to order a file of marines to go below and arrest the senator, when a shrill sound filled the air. It came from below and above, and seemingly everywhere at once, sharp and distinct above the wind and sea. It was a cry like none he had ever heard before, and unlike that of any creature known to man – a bottomless cry of lamentation, of immeasurable vexation, of uncontrollable rage, that penetrated the very soul.
“’Twas the phantom of the lower decks!” he heard a sailor mutter to another beside him. “The spirit of the augury! He’s come back to summon us all to our graves!”
Many of the sailors seemed to take this explanation to heart, and this sparked more murmurs of dread spreading throughout their ranks. Libo was about to strike the man for being a superstitious fool, but paused when the wind suddenly and inexplicably stopped. The sails luffed above their heads and then lost all shape, falling useless like drapes. As the buffeting wind lost its fervor, the cry of the beast remained, solitary and full of anguish, like the far-off song of a whale.
No man on deck spoke. They stared at one another in apprehensive uncertainty. The bestial howl eventually faded into nothingness, but no sooner had it diminished than another far off chorus of alarmed voices filled their ears. The cry came from one of the quinqueremes keeping station off the Argonaut’s larboard beam. Every eye on the flagship’s deck looked to see that the quinquereme’s sails had suddenly filled, whipping around and jerking her masts to starboard. The wind had returned, and this unfortunate ship was the first to feel its full force – only, the wind did not come from the south this time.
This time, it came from the west.
Libo’s heart sank as the ultimate horror of all sea captains materialized before his eyes. The shift in the wind now put his entire fleet on a lee shore. He heard Naevius’s voice behind him cursing, yelling, desperately imploring the mesmerized sailors to take in the Argonaut’s canvas before the gale reached her, but Libo knew that his efforts were too late.
As a large wave placidly draws the sea away from the beach only to unleash it again with magnified ferocity, the wind hit now with twice its former strength. It struck with a fury, blasting over the larboard rail, filling the sails and thrashing them to starboard, the masts straining as they felt the new force. The broad side of the hull also acted like a sail, catching the wind and adding to the pull of the groaning masts, slowly tipping the Argonaut’s bowsprit to starboard, steering the ship’s momentum towards the rocky shoals. The same chain of events played out across the entire fleet, in every ship, as each was taken by surprise and pushed in the direction of the coast. The oarsmen, having spent themselves maintaining such high speed in the final leg of the pursuit, had not the strength to fight the elemental forces that now so abruptly commandeered their vessels. As the ships were driven towards their destruction all efforts seemed to be in vain. Some tried employing the oars on only one side in an attempt to turn away from the coast, but every exposure of their broad beams to the face of the wind only succeeded in pressing them faster toward the foaming rocks. Anticipating the order to shorten sail, the captains throughout the fleet kept their eyes on the flagship, waiting dutifully for the signals that were too late in coming. Only a scant few chose not to wait and ordered their top men to hack away the sails, releasing the shredded canvas to whip violently in long streams from the masts. These were the fortunate ships, for some were able to regain control and point their bows back to the open sea. But they were few in number, and consisted mostly of the more agile triremes. The vast majority of the fleet, including all of the capital ships, drove headlong into the shoals as if obeying the summons of the sirens. A cacophony of thunderclaps rumbled above the howling wind as, one by one, the warships ran onto the rocks. The shifting seas lifted the majestic prows high into the air, only to recede beneath them and dash them to pieces on the jagged outcroppings, staving in keels, toppling masts, and snapping great oaken spines like twigs. Men screamed as they were crushed to death by the great disintegrating hulls, or thrown into the raging froth to drown. The same fate was shared by dozens of ships along miles of foaming coastline, where deceres, hexaremes, quinqueremes and several dozen more vessels, each finely crafted and taking months and vast sums of money to construct, were reduced to splinters in a matter of moments.