"Don't talk the city into electing you president before I get back! You're too young for the office."
"And don't you get so absorbed in counting the waves that you fall overboard," retorted Archytas. "You might ask in Messana if there is a Pythagorean Society there. It would be nice if our little club had another with whom we could correspond now and then, besides that gang of oligarchs in Rhegion."
"I'll do that. Farewell, Archon; Hermes attend you both on the homecoming!"
A shout of "Hurry up, you!" came from the ship. Zopyros slung the bag containing his shield and spare clothing over his back and, using his spear as a stick, strode up the plank. As he hopped down to the deck, Captain Ethbaal said: "Zopyros the Tarentine, eh?"
"That's my name." Zopyros laid down his burdens to get out his fare.
"Handsome young fellow, eh?" said Ethbaal.
"I'm glad somebody thinks so."
"Well, keep away from my cabin!"
Zopyros did not like the man's tone, nor yet the gleam in his eye. Somehow Ethbaal gave the impression, even when standing perfectly still, of being as tense as a bow drawn to the release point. Hoping to get on a friendlier basis with the captain, Zopyros said in Punic:
"Why, Captain, what holds the cabin that were too deadly to approach? A gorgon's head, that would turn us to stone?"
"The cabin holds my wife, that is all," snapped Ethbaal in the same language. "The most beautiful woman of Egypt, and I will have no lecherous Hellene sniffing on her trail!"
Zopyros managed a smile. "Fear nought, gallant Captain. Pythagoreans keep their hands off other men's wives." He turned away to claim a section of deck near where Korinna and her two attendants had spread their gear.
"Asto!" yelled Ethbaal. "Cast off the plank; hoist the anchors. Put four on the oars and tell the others to stand by to hoist sail!"
The mate jumped to the task, shooting nervous glances at his captain. The captain himself grasped the tiller bars, forward of the cabin, which controlled the two side rudders. A murmur arose as I he passengers and their friends ashore prayed to their various gods. A lapping of waves mingled with a groaning of oars in their locks and ropes in their blocks, as the Muttumalein swung slowly away from the jetty. The yellow sail rose by jerks, fluttering and filling. The ship heeled and headed out from shore at an angle, blue and white water boiling away from her blunt black stem. The sailors shipped and stacked their oars. Gulls wheeled and squealed overhead; while, farther out in the sapphire sea, a school of slate-gray porpoises lolled and leaped.
Once clear of the coast, the Muttumalein fell into a steady pitch as the south-marching swells thrown up by Boreas overtook her. Wave after green wave raced up astern, slapped at the ship's rounded counter, boosted the hull upward, and rolled by underneath, foaming away on both sides. The sailors donned their shirts and kilts.
Segovax gripped the rail, staring towards the porpoises. His ruddy coloring had turned a greenish gray. He said:
"Master Zopyros, was there not one of you Greek fellows who invented a pair of wings that a man could fly with? A gigantic idea! Only the poor loon flew too near the sun, and the heat melted the glue, and the man fell into the sea and drowned, and him so clever and all. I do remember hearing somebody tell of it when I was soldiering for the General Hermokrates."
"That's Ikaros," said Zopyros. "At least, Ikaros was killed using the wings, while his father Daidalos is said to have made them."
"Whatever the man's name, it would be a more comfortable way to cross the sea than these ships, I'm thinking."
"It's just a legend," said Zopyros. "Remember to use the lee rail if your stomach gets out of hand."
"But this is good weather!" said Asto, the timid-looking mate. "With the wind like this, we shall make Messana in less than a ten-day. Walk about the deck a bit and you will feel better. You should see how we suffer when the wind blows foul for a month at a time, or we are caught by a sudden storm at sea! Or when sea monsters rise out of the deep to seize us ..."
"You'd better not say too much about monsters if you want to build up a good passenger trade," said Zopyros. "How is trade along this coast?"
"The Sibyl helps," said the Phoenician. "People come from near and far to consult her, thus rendering profitable some voyages that would otherwise not pay. The Campanians love imported luxuries, but their own products are mostly bulk staples for which there's not much market in Great Hellas. So, without the pilgrims, we should often have to return in ballast—"
"Asto!" came the yell of Captain Ethbaal. "Take the helm, Milkarth smite you! I go below to inspect."
"Coming!" shouted Asto, then to Zopyros: "Ethbaal is counted the most daring skipper of the Inner Sea, putting out the first in spring and laying up the last in autumn. Not even ill omens stop him. But he's also the most vigilant; nothing is ever shipshape enough to suit him. Coming!"
The little mate bowed low to Zopyros and ran off, his bare feet slapping the damp deck planks. The old Etruscan was sitting on the deck with his lame leg stretched out in the sun before him, shading his eyes with his hands as he watched the wheeling flight of the gulls. He said in bad Greek:
"What was all this talk in Punic?"
Zopyros answered: "He was telling me our captain is a veritable Odysseus for craft and courage, who lets nothing—not even a bad omen—delay him."
"The more fool he and more unlucky we," said the Etruscan. "Everything that happens is presaged by omens. That is why I watch I he birds. I am zilath of Tarquinii, wise man and important official. I know what I talk about."
"What do the birds tell you about this voyage?"
"Nothing good. Somebody will have disaster."
"Who?"
"Do not yet know. Tell you later." The Etruscan resumed his bird watching.
Segovax held his head and moaned. Korinna leaned against the rail and gazed shoreward. Zopyros came to stand beside her. As the ship passed through the channel between Cape Misenum and the island of Prochyta, the vast Bay of Neapolis opened out eastward. It formed an irregular semicircle from the island of Aenaria on the left, behind them, to that of Capreae on the right, before them. Towns and villages lined the shore of the bay like white beads on a green string. Amidst them, the pendant on the necklace, rose the walls and temples of great Neapolis itself, while to the right loomed I he dark, towering cone of Vesuvius.
"It looks like mighty Aetna, in my own land," said Korinna. "But Aetna smokes and sputters, while this mountain seems still."
"There's a tradition that Vesuvius, too, was once a fiery mountain," said Zopyros. "But its fire seems to have gone out for good."
She glanced at the wretched Segovax and made a grimace. "Somehow I don't feel well, either. My head aches. I think I'll lie down."
The singer also looked unhappy. The middle-aged couple, sitting side by side on the deck beneath a little tentlike awning they had rigged, stared off across the waters with expressions of such blank stolidity that one could not tell whether they were suffering or not. That left the twelve-year-old boy, the servants, and the sailors.
However, Zopyros' shyness kept him from striking up a conversation with any of them. Unlike his friend Archytas, he tended to become tongue-tied in the presence of strangers. He had little small talk. Faced by a stranger, he was inclined either to monopolize the conversation by a lecture on his professional experiences and beliefs, or to subside into glum silence and leave the whole burden of the talk to the other.
Now, having nobody with whom he could easily converse, Zopyros contented himself with trying to count the waves, trying to estimate the speed of the ship from the time it took bubbles and flotsam to slide the length of the hull, and trying to calculate the volume of the little cabin aft. Thinking of the cabin brought his mind around to the strange behavior of Captain Ethbaal.