“What do you need, skipper?” asked the keleustes, who’d hung back to let Menedemos and Sostratos talk by themselves.
Menedemos grinned at him. “What do I need? I need the whole crew back aboard as fast as we can get ‘em here. Now that Sostratos is back, we’ve got no reason to stay in Sidon anymore.”
“Ah,” Diokles dipped his head. “I thought you were going to say that. I hoped you were going to say that, as a matter of fact. Time for me to go hunting-is that what you’re telling me?”
“That’s just what I’m telling you,” Menedemos said. “The sailors know they can’t hide from you-or if they don’t by now, they’d better.”
Now the oarmaster grinned, too. “That’s right, skipper. I’ll bring ‘em in, never you fear. Shouldn’t even be that hard. It’s not like this was a Hellenic polis-they can’t just disappear in amongst the people.”
He was, as usual, as good as his word. A lot of sailors came back to the Aphrodite of their own accord once they heard the merchant galley would head back to Rhodes. “Be nice to find more than a handful of people who speak Greek,” was a comment Menedemos heard several times.
A few others were less eager to go home. One man they didn’t get back; he’d taken service with Antigonos. “Many goodbyes to him,” Menedemos remarked when he found out about that. “Anyone who wants to eat the food Andronikos’ cooks serve up…” He tossed his head.
Another sailor had taken up with a courtesan. Diokles came back to Menedemos empty-handed. “Philon says he’d sooner stay here, skipper,” the oarmaster reported. “Says he’s in love, and he doesn’t want to leave the woman.”
“Oh, he does, does he?” Menedemos said. “Does the woman speak any Greek?”
“Some. I don’t know how much,” Diokles answered.
“All right. Go back there. Make sure you find ‘em both together,” Menedemos said. “Then tell him his pay’s cut off, as of now. Tell him he gets not another obolos from me. If the woman doesn’t throw him out on his ear after that, maybe they really are in love. In that case, you ask me, they deserve each other.”
Philon came back aboard the Aphrodite the next day. He looked ashamed of himself. No one chaffed him very hard, though. How many sailors kept from falling in love, or imagining they were in love, at some port or another around the Inner Sea? Not many.
The day after that, Menedemos had his crew back again but for the one fool who thought Antigonos a better paymaster. A good many men looked wan, having thrown away their silver on a last carouse, but they were there. Sostratos grumbled about the price he’d got for the two animals he’d taken to Engedi, but the difference between that and what he’d paid was still less than what hiring them for the journey would have cost.
Menedemos, steering-oar tillers in his hands once more, grinned at the sailors and called, “Well, boys, are you about ready to see your home polis again?” They dipped their heads as they looked back at him from the rowers’ benches. “Good,” he told them. “Do you think you still remember what to do with your oars?” They dipped their heads again. Some of them managed smiles of their own. He waved to Diokles. “Then I’ll give you to the keleustes, and he’ll find out if you’re right.”
“First thing is, we’d better cast off,” Diokles said. “We’d look like proper fools if we tried to row away while we’re still tied up.” Lines snaked back aboard the Aphrodite . Sailors came back aboard down the gangplank, then stowed it at the stern. Diokles raised his voice: “At my order… back oars! Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!” The merchant galley slid away from the pier.
“How does she feel?” Sostratos asked quietly.
“Heavy,” Menedemos answered as Diokles smote his little bronze square with his mallet to set the stroke. “It’s to be expected, when she’s been sitting here soaking up seawater for so long.” He pushed one tiller away and pulled the other one in. The Aphrodite spun in the sea till her bow faced west-northwest.
“At my order…,” Diokles said again, and the rowers, knowing what was coming, held their oars out of the water till he called, “Normal stroke!” They reversed the rhythm of what they’d been doing. Now when their oars dug in, they pushed the akatos forward instead of pulling her back.
Little by little, Sidon and the promontory on which the Phoenician city sat began to recede behind her. Menedemos adjusted her course, ever so slightly. He laughed at himself, knowing how inexact navigation was. “Cyprus,” he told Sostratos. He was confident he’d bring the Aphrodite to the island. Whereabouts on its east or south coast? That was a different question, and much harder to answer.
“Cyprus,” his cousin agreed.
Sostratos stood on the foredeck, feeling out of place and all too conscious of his own inadequacies as lookout. Aristeidas should have been here, he of the lynxlike eyes. Sostratos knew his own vision was average at best. But he still lived, while Aristeidas lay forever beneath boulders in Ioudaia. He had to do the best he could.
He peered ahead, looking for land rising up above the infinite smooth horizon of the Inner Sea. He knew Cyprus should come into sight any time, and he wanted to be the first to spy the island. Aristeidas surely would have been. If Sostratos was doing the dead man’s job, he wanted to do it as well as he could. Having some sailor spy Cyprus ahead of him would be a humiliation.
Above and behind him, the sail made strange sighing noises, now bellying full, now falling flat and limp in the fitful breeze from the northeast. The yard stretched back from the starboard bow to take best advantage of what wind there was. To keep the merchant galley going regardless of whether that wind blew hard or failed altogether, Menedemos kept eight men rowing on either side. He changed rowers fairly often so they would stay as fresh as they could if he needed them to flee from or fight pirates.
“Pirates,” Sostratos muttered. He had to keep watch for sails and hulls, too, not just for the jut of land out of the sea. Sailing west toward Cyprus, the Aphrodite had met a couple of ships bound for Sidon or the other Phoenician towns from Salamis. Everyone had been nervous till they passed each other by. Any stranger on the sea was too likely to prove a predator waiting only for his chance to strike.
He peered ahead again, then stiffened. Was that…? If he sang out and it wasn’t, he would feel a fool. If he didn’t sing out and somebody beat him to it, he would feel a worse fool. He took another, longer look.
“Land ho!” he shouted. “Land off the port bow!”
“I see it,” a sailor echoed. “I was going to sing out myself, but the young sir went and beat me to it.” That made Sostratos feel very fine indeed.
From his station at the stern, Menedemos said, “That’s got to be Cyprus. Now the only question is, where along the coast are we? See if you can spy a fishing boat, Sostratos. Fishermen will know.”
But they proved to need no fishermen. As they came closer to the shore, Sostratos said, “To the crows with me if this isn’t the very landscape we saw when we sailed out of Salamis for Sidon. You couldn’t have placed us any better if you’d been able to look across every stadion of sea. Euge, O best one!”
“Euge!” the sailors echoed.
Menedemos shuffled his feet on the poop deck like a shy schoolboy who had to recite. “Thank you, friends. I’d thank you more if we didn’t all know it was just luck that put us here and not two or three hundred stadia up or down the coast.”
“Modesty?” Sostratos asked. “Are you well, my dear?”
“I’ll gladly take credit where credit’s mine-or even when I can get away with claiming it,” his cousin answered. “Not here, though. If I say I can navigate from Sidon to Salamis every time straight as an arrow flies, you’ll expect me to do it again, and you’ll laugh at me when I don’t. I’m not fool enough to say anything of the sort, because I’d likely make myself a liar the next time we had to sail out of sight of land.”