As I prowled the camp one evening, I saw, in the dying light, two pairs of bare feet protruding from the door of a tent: a male pair together with toes pointing downwards, and a female pair flanking these and pointing upwards. Enraged at this flouting of my orders, I had a mind for an instant to drag the guilty pair forth by their telltale feet and give them a good drubbing with my fists. But then I thought: relax, Eudoxos. You will not reach India on this try anyway, so why not let them have their fun?
I planned to call the new ship the Mikrotyria ("Little Tyria"). She could not be started until the Tyria was almost completely broken up, since we needed the keel timbers of the old ship to build the keel of the new. The curved members of the new ship required adzing to make them fit the smaller plan; but then the Mikrotyria, being smaller, did not need such massive timbering.
When the Mikrotyria was under way, with keel and gar-board strakes in place, I took one of the longboats to explore. We rowed up the Lixus a few leagues and then drifted down again. Whereas most of the country was near-desert, with occasional patches of dry grass of thorny shrubs, the vale of the Lixus was well wooded, with hundreds of date palms and acacias.
At the mouth of the river, as we descended, another party of Lixites called out to us. "They say," said the Moorish-speaking sailor, "that if we will come ashore, they will give us a feast."
"They outnumber us," I said. "We'd better stay where we are. Ask them ..."
With the help of the sailor, I conversed with the leader of this band. Among other things, he told me that there was a large island out of sight in the ocean. By sailing due west for a day and a night, I should come within sight of it. Then he renewed his importunities to get us ashore, holding out a handful of dates as bait. When they saw that, despite their solicitations, we were heading out to sea, they gave a yell of disappointment and hurled a volley of javelins at us. These missiles fell into the water all around us, and one struck the side of the boat and stuck quivering in the wood.
"You guessed right that time, Captain," said a sailor.
"Let's have a look at that island," I said. "If we don't find it, well cut across the wind back to the African shore."
We put up our little sail and followed the setting sun westward, while the African coast sank out of sight on our port. Sure enough, by the middle of the following morning, the top of a mountain appeared out of the waves ahead of us, and soon after noon we reached the island. It was mountainous and looked at least thirty leagues in length.
We coasted along the southeastern shore for a few leagues, noting landing places and streams that entered the ocean. At one small, sheltered beach, we rowed in, beached our boat, and ate our lunch on the sand. We saw no signs of men or of large beasts, although the scrub was full of small, bright-yellow birds, singing melodiously. Then we reembarked, pointed our bow southeast, and sailed with the wind abeam back to the African coast.
It was the beginning of Anthesterion, five months after our grounding, that the Mikrotyria was completed. The weather was comfortably cool, with occasional showers. To the east, the barren mainland turned green. The northeaster blew day and night We had never been in danger of starvation, for several times during the five-month stay, parties of Lixites had come past and sold us food. Now our wheat was harvested, so that we did not lack for bread. The six girls took turns at the querns.
Looking at the Mikrotyria, anyone could see that she was a rough job, without the finish that a real shipyard gives its craft. We cared nothing for that, however, so long as she floated, sailed, took us whither we would go, and did not leak faster than we could pump her out.
At high tide one day, therefore, we launched her, with my entire company, including the girls, hauling on the ropes to make sure that she did not bound out to sea and blow away for good. We anchored her just beyond the grounding line at low tide, rigged her, and loaded her with the gear we had taken out of the Tyria. We had to abandon some of our bulkier pieces of cargo.
I should like to have made a couple of practice cruises before taking the company on board. Such a proposal would have caused trouble, however, because those left ashore would fear that I was about to sail off and abandon them. So, a ten-day after the launch, we hoisted the anchors and stood out to sea.
Now began our troubles. For we wanted to sail directly into the teeth of the prevailing northeaster, and the Mikrotyria had other ideas. Some ships can sail a fair angle to windward; others cannot. The Mikrotyria proved one of the latter, besides responding erratically to the steering oars. We spent the day sailing out from shore and back again, trying to beat to windward. Between the ship's bad steering and the current— which flowed the same way as the wind—we ended each shoreward reach exactly where we had started, offshore from our abandoned camp.
At the end of the day, much cast down, we anchored and came ashore again. The next day we tried towing into the wind, without any sail. The sailors sweated and strained at the oars of the longboats and gained a few score furlongs. Then, when they tired, wind and current swept us right back to our island again.
Ashore that night, I told Spurius Kalba: "I have long wished there were some kind of sail whereby one could sail closer to the wind."
"What other kind of sail could there be, Captain? Sure, the oblong sail is the only kind of sail there is or ever has been, and it's used the world over."
"Well, you've seen for yourself that it is not good enough. Why won't an oblong sail permit one to sail closer to the wind?"
"Because that's the nature of things, sir, and the nature of things can't be changed."
"Oh, rubbish! You're like most people: you think because you were brought up on one way of doing things, it's the only method possible."
"Well, you clever Greeks do make some wonderful inventions; but I'd rather stick to what I know works."
"To get back: what interferes with the use of the oblong sail against the wind?"
"How should I know, Captain?"
"Use your eyes, man! The wind catches the weather edge of the sail and flutters it. That spills the air out of the sail, so that it no longer presses against its yard."
"I suppose so," mumbled Kalba.
"So the big weakness of this sail is that it has a loose weather edge, not stiffened by any yard. What we must do is to devise a sail with some sort of stiffening on its weather edge."
"But, Captain, the weather edge on one tack becomes the lee edge on the other! Are you going to stiffen both?"
"I might. What I need is a model; it's easier than experimenting with a full-sized ship. Let you and the boys make me a model of the Mikrotyria, about so long." I held my hands a cubit apart. "The cabin and such need not be accurate, but the mast and the rigging must be carefully made to scale."
Three days later, my company sat watching me and trying not to laugh as I waded the channel between the island and the mainland, sailing my model boat. After each day's experiments, I gave the shipwrights orders for another model sail, and they had it ready for me the next day.
I tried all sorts of weird rigs, such as a rectangular sail with yards that ran completely around the rectangle. I had to knock down one sailor whom I caught describing circles with his forefinger next to his head to show what he thought of my ideas.
At last some god—if gods there be—whispered in my ear: why must a sail be rectangular? Why not three-sided? With a yard carried at a slant, so that one edge of the triangle skimmed the deck ...