“That's what you think,” Menedemos said. “If you don't get the shape of the blade exactly right, it won't cut the water the way it should. And if the weight isn't distributed the way it should be, it won't pivot properly, and the fellow steering the ship—me, I mean— will have to work a lot harder than he would otherwise.”
“Yes, yes,” Euxenides said impatiently, as to a child that kept pointing out the obvious. “I expect I can take care of all that. Only drawback of doing it right here is that I'll be working with green timber. But. ..” He raised an eyebrow. “I'll work for free, and the shipwrights on Kos surely won't.”
He was right about that. And he sounded so certain he could do what he said he could, he won Menedemos over. “All right,” Menedemos said. “We'll see what you come up with.” If Euxenides proved more wind than work, his crewmen would be able to improvise something that would serve till they got to Kos.
But Euxenides quickly showed he knew what he was doing. After bread and wine for breakfast, he used one of the ship's hatchets to knock down a pine whose trunk was about the right size to shape into a steering oar. Once he'd lopped off the branches that grew from it, sailors dragged it to the beach with ropes. Using the sound steering oar as his model, Euxenides trimmed the trunk to the proper length with the hatchet, then set to work with the adze to give it the shape he wanted. Chips flew in all directions.
Perhaps halfway through the work, he looked up and remarked, “I may not be as resourceful as long-suffering Odysseus was, but by the gods I know what to do with a piece of wood.”
“So you do, best one,” Menedemos admitted. He made a tolerably good woodworker himself, good enough to recognize a master of the craft when he saw one. Euxenides shaped the pine with the same offhand brilliance a sculptor showed with marble. Watching him was an education.
Watching him kept Menedemos too interested to look out to sea. He jumped when somebody shouted, “Sail ho!” A pirate couldn't hope to do better than to descend on a merchant galley beached. How was he supposed to fight back?
“This is what happened to the Athenian fleet at the end of the Peloponnesian War,” Sostratos said. “The Spartans caught them ashore at Aigospotamoi and had their way with them.” Only after he'd finished was Menedemos sure their thoughts had gone in the same direction.
Then the cry of, “Sail ho!” changed to, “Sails ho!” Instead of getting ready to scramble back onto the Aphrodite, belt on his sword, and make what fight he could, Menedemos stared out to sea himself. He couldn't possibly hope to fight off more than one pirate ship.
The sound he made was halfway between a sigh of relief and an exhalation of awe. He wouldn't have to do any fighting. The fleet sailing west past the north coast of Telos cared no more about a beached akatos than Zeus cared about a flea on the skinny rump of a scavenger dog. Those weren't round ships out there, or even pirate pentekonters and hemioliai. They were war galleys, dozens of them: a fleet bigger and stronger all by itself than Rhodes could hope to put to sea. Triremes served as escorts for the bigger, beamier warships that formed the heart of the fleet. Were those monsters fours, fives, sixes? Did they carry even more than six rowers for each bank of oars? They were ten or fifteen stadia out to sea. Menedemos couldn't be sure.
“Whose fleet is that?” somebody asked—another good, relevant question.
Before Menedemos could reply, Euxenides of Phaselis said, “It has to be Ptolemaios'. If Antigonos had that many ships in these waters, they would be sailing toward battle with Ptolemaios over Lykia, not heading away from there.”
Sostratos added, “They look as if they're making for Kos, too, and Kos is Ptolemaios' chief stronghold in the Aegean.”
Menedemos dipped his head. “That all makes sense. For all we know, Ptolemaios is aboard one of those ships. They say he came up from Egypt himself this year, instead of giving the job to one of his admirals.”
“He did,” Euxenides said. Antigonos' officer coughed a couple of times. He turned toward Menedemos. “You've been saying you planned on stopping at Kos. If Ptolemaios' whole naval expedition is there, I don't think I want to visit the place, thank you very much. Can you put me ashore at Knidos instead? You can stop there before going on to Kos.”
“Yes, I'll do that,” Menedemos said at once. With Ptolemaios' whole great fleet and perhaps Ptolemaios himself at Kos city, he didn't want to get there with Antigonos' officer on board.
“I thank you.” Euxenides drummed his fingers on the adze handle. “I shouldn't have to pay twenty drakhmai for the trip, either, not when I'm not going to Miletos.”
Had Euxenides not gone to work on the new steering oar, Menedemos might have argued with him. But Sostratos, who was scrupulously fair, dipped his head in agreement with the officer's words. So Menedemos just said, “Ah, right. I’ll cut the price in half.”
Euxenides looked . . . half pleased. “Ten drakhmai to Knidos is as outrageous as twenty drakhmai to Miletos.” He paused. His nails clicked rhythmically on the axe handle. “It's no more outrageous, I suppose. A bargain, captain. Ten drakhmai.”
He soon finished the steering oar and set to work repairing the pivot on which it would turn. He was as swift and deft there as he had been while turning a tree trunk into something useful. The sun had just swung past noon when he set the new steering oar in its place.
Menedemos went back aboard the Aphrodite to see how the new steering oar felt. The tiller seemed strange under his palm: it was a lopped-off branch from the tree that had made the steering oar, with the bark still on it. The new steering oar was a little heavier than the old one. It would be, he thought, being made of green wood. But the balance was everything it should have been, and the makeshift only had to last to Kos. Menedemos tossed his head. No, to Knidos, if it turns out not to serve.
He dipped his head to Euxenides of Phaselis. “Many thanks. It's plenty good enough.”
Antigonos' officer seemed more embarrassed than pleased. “You're welcome, though I hate to take thanks for anything that simple. The joinery that goes into catapults . . .”
“Never mind,” Menedemos said. “I believe you. You've made me believe you.” He raised his voice and called out to the Aphrodite's crew: “Come on, boys! Let's get her back into the water.”
Half a dozen men shoved the merchant galley's boat back out into the Aegean. They made the boat fast to the Aphrodite's bow with a line. The rest of the sailors, along with Menedemos, Sostratos, and Euxenides, stationed themselves along the length of the akatos' hull and at the stern.
“Ready?” Menedemos waited a heartbeat, then raised his voice to a shout: “Push!” He put his own shoulder against the lead plates that sheathed the ship and shoved with all his might. The men in the boat rowed with all their strength, pulling the Aphrodite while everyone else pushed.
She didn't move at the first try. Menedemos hadn't expected that she would. She was more heavily built than a war galley or a piratical pentekonter, and she still carried her cargo. Had she had more of it, Menedemos would have had the crew do some unloading before trying to refloat her—or he might not have beached her at all, but left her anchored offshore instead.
“Push!” he called again. His shoulder complained as he set it against the ship. His feet dug into the sand. His grunt was one of a chorus that rose from the straining men. Telos was a barren place, nowhere anybody could possibly want to be stranded.
Sand ground under the oak of the akatos' false keel. “She's stirring!” Sostratos gasped from his place a couple of men over from Menedemos.