Little by little, the Aphrodite slid away from the pier, picking up speed with each stroke as she backed out into the harbor. Menedemos glanced over to the quay again to make sure an irate Protomakhos wasn’t rushing up to scream, “Adulterer!” at the last moment. Some women couldn’t keep a secret (neither could some men, but Menedemos chose not to dwell on that). Xenokleia, though, seemed to have stayed quiet long enough.
Harborside loungers and sailors aboard round ships, fishing boats, and some of Demetrios’ war galleys watched the akatos pull away from the quay. Menedemos caught Diokles’ eye. “Let’s give them a little show, shall we?” he said.
“Right you are, skipper.” The keleustes knew what Menedemos had in mind. He raised his voice to carry all the way up to the bow: “At my order, portside rowers keep backing oars, starboard switch to normal stroke. Ready?… Now!”
Menedemos helped the turn with the steering oars. The Aphrodite spun through half a circle almost in her own length, so that her bow faced out to sea and her stern the quays she was leaving. Diokles ordered both sets of rowers to switch to normal stroke as the turn neared completion; Menedemos finished it with the steering oars alone, and guided the merchant galley out into the Saronic Gulf.
A couple of men aboard one of Demetrios’ sixes patrolling the harbor waved to the Aphrodite, complimenting her on a smart maneuver. As soon as his course suited him, Menedemos took his right hand off the starboard steering-oar tiller and waved back. One of those men wore an officer’s cloak. Praise from someone who didn’t have to give it was doubly welcome.
“We’ll do better next time,” Diokles promised, and glowered at the rowers. “Won’t we?” He turned it into a threat.
“I’m sure we will,” Menedemos said. The oarmaster played the villain’s role. Menedemos, by contrast, could be the easygoing one, the one who sometimes took the edge off Dioldes’ strictness. He enjoyed that role more than he would have liked playing the harsh taskmaster himself.
The breeze came from off the land. “Unbrail the sail and let it down from the yard,” Menedemos said. The sailors leaped to obey. Down came the big square sail, brails and bracing lines cutting it into squares. It flapped two or three times before filling with wind. Once it did fill, Menedemos took more than half the men off the oars. Even the ones who stayed at their benches didn’t row; they only waited to make sure the breeze didn’t suddenly slacken. The Aphrodite wasn’t in such a hurry that she needed to speed along under wind and oars both.
“You’re too cursed soft on them, skipper,” Diokles growled as he lowered his bronze square and mallet. He looked back toward Menedemos so the sailors couldn’t see his face; as he did so, he winked. Menedemos couldn’t smile back, not without giving the game away to the men. Instead, he glared at Diokles, much more severely than the remark really warranted. The keleustes winked again, to show he understood what Menedemos was doing.
Salamis and the crowded waters where Great King Xerxes’ fleet had come to grief more than a hundred seventy years before lay to starboard. Only a few fishing boats bobbed in the channel between the island and the mainland of Attica today. Menedemos had no trouble filling it with triremes in his mind’s eye, though. Neither Xerxes’ sailors nor the Hellenes they faced knew how to build anything bigger and stronger back in those distant days. What a few fives and sixes might have done! Menedemos thought.
Had he wanted to know more about Salamis than he did, he could have asked Sostratos, who was doing lookout duty up on the tiny fore-deck. His cousin would have quoted from Herodotos, and probably from Aiskhylos’ Persians as well. Not feeling like being overwhelmed, Menedemos didn’t ask.
Aigina, a larger island, rose from the water almost dead ahead. The Aphrodite had stopped at the polis there a couple of years before. Having seen it, and having seen what sort of business merchants did there, Menedemos didn’t care to pay a second visit. Beyond Aigina, blued and blurred by haze and distance, lay the northeastern corner of the Peloponnesos. Menedemos was content-more than content-to let it stay in the distance.
He pulled the steering-oar tiller in his left hand toward him and pushed the one in his right hand away. The Aphrodite swung gently to port, heading along parallel to the coast of Attica, which ran generally south and east toward Cape Sounion.
Mild chop in the Saronic Gulf made the merchant galley roll a bit. Menedemos wondered if his cousin would lose his breakfast after a long spell ashore, but Sostratos seemed fine. A handful of sailors did lean over the rail to feed the fish, including one of the newly hired Athenians. The rest of the rowers ribbed the men with touchy stomachs. There were always some in every crew.
Menedemos enjoyed the motion. He’d had enough of steady ground under his feet. He wanted to be reminded he was aboard a ship. Going out to sea again felt good. He drew in a great lungful of fine salt air. “Wonderful to get the city stink out of my nose,” he said,
“That’s the truth,” Diokles agreed. “I’m sick of smelling shit.”
The breeze freshened. The sail thrummed, taut with wind. The Aphrodite skimmed over the sea; a long creamy wake trailed out behind her and behind the boat she towed. Menedemos took the last rowers off the oars. When the wind pushed her along like this, he didn’t have to worry about anything more. With a wind like this at her back, even a round ship performed… respectably.
Of course, a round ship trying to make her way up to Athens had to tack against the wind, and had a sorry time of it. The long, sleek merchant galley arrowed past a couple of those unfortunates, who had to make reach after sideways reach to go a little distance forward.
“Even if we were heading the other way, we could fight through the wind,” Menedemos said.
“For a while, anyhow,” Diokles said. “You go straight into the teeth of a stiff breeze for too long, though, and you’ll break your rowers’ hearts.”
Menedemos dipped his head. The keleustes was right. An akatos could do things a round ship couldn’t hope to. All the same, a captain who thought the men at the oars were made of bronze like the legendary Talos, and so would never tire, was doomed to disappointment if not to danger.
The sun slid across the sky. The wind never slackened. Glancing now and then toward the coast of Attica to port, Menedemos marveled at how fast it slid by. Ahead, the Saronic Gulf opened out into the broader waters of the Aegean. The three westernmost islands of the Kyklades lay to the east: Keos, Kythnos south of it, and Seriphos farther south still.
A sailor took Sostratos’ place on the foredeck. Menedemos’ cousin came back toward the stern. He climbed the steps up to the poop and stood a couple of cubits away from Diokles. “Where do you aim to stop tonight?” he asked Menedemos.
“Normally, I’d say Keos or Kythnos,” Menedemos answered. “With this wind… With this wind, I’m tempted to see if I can’t make Seriphos. That wouldn’t be a bad day’s run, would it?”
“No.” But Sostratos sounded less than happy.
“What’s the matter?” Menedemos asked.
“If we put in at Kythnos, we might pick up some cheese there,” Sostratos said. “We could sell it for a profit in Rhodes-Kythnian cheese is famous all over Hellas.”
“Hmm.” Menedemos considered. “Well, all right, my dear, we’ll do that, then,” he said. “We’re not in any enormous rush to get home. And Seriphos isn’t anything much. It’s so rocky, people say the Gorgon looked at it.”
“That’s because it’s connected with Perseus,” Sostratos replied. “It’s supposed to be where he and his mother Danae washed up after Akrisios, her father, put them in a big chest and set them afloat. And he’s supposed to have shown the Gorgon’s head there, too, and turned the people to stone.”