"We'll find out. At least they aren't falling-down drunk in the morning: a little something, anyhow," Menedemos said. "Get their names, tell 'em it's a drakhma a day, and it'll go up to a drakhma and a half when they show they're worth it. And then . . ." He clapped again, hard this time. "Then we're off."
He hurried past the mast and back to the raised poop deck at the stern of the Aphrodite, slapping rowers on the back as he went and also making sure the jars and sacks that held the cargo were securely stowed under their benches. He'd watched Sostratos attend to that, but he checked it anyhow. The Aphrodite was his ship; if anything went wrong, it was his fault.
He took the tiller bars to the new steering oars in his hands and tugged experimentally. He'd done the same thing every time he came aboard after the Aphrodite went into the sea: the steering oars pleased him that much. Khremes the carpenter had been right - a little old man could handle them all day and never get tired. He'd never felt a pair that pivoted so smoothly.
Diokles came up onto the poop beside Menedemos. Sostratos joined them a moment later, tying his tablet closed with a thin strip of leather. "Let's have a lookout forward," Menedemos called. He pointed to a sailor naked but for a knifebelt round his middle. "Aristeidas, take the first turn there. You've sailed with me before - I know you've got sharp eyes. Mind the peafowl, now."
"Right, captain." Aristeidas hurried up onto the foredeck. The peacock tried to peck him, but he darted past and took hold of the forepost. He waved back to Menedemos.
"Bring in the gangplank," Menedemos commanded. At his shouted order, a couple of longshoremen undid the lines that held the Aphrodite to the quay and tossed the coarse flax ropes into the akatos. With what was almost a bow to Diokles, Menedemos asked, "You have your mallet and your bronze square?"
"I'm not likely to be without 'em," the keleustes answered. "My voice'd give out if I had to call the stroke all day." He stooped and picked up the little mallet and the bronze square, which dangled from a chain so as to give the best tone when he struck it. The stern-facing rowers poised themselves at their oars. Diokles dipped his head to Menedemos. "When you're ready."
"I've been ready for months," Menedemos said. "Now the ship is, too. Let's go."
The keleustes smote the bronze with the mallet. The rowers took their first stroke. To leave the harbor, Menedemos had every oar manned - as much for show as for any other reason. The quay shifted. No: the Aphrodite began to move. Diokles used the mallet again. Another stroke. Again. "Rhyppapai!" the oarmaster called, using his voice to help give the men their rhythm.
"Rhyppapai!" the rowers echoed: the old chant of the Athenian navy, used these days by Hellenes in galleys all over the Inner Sea. "Rhyppapai!! Rhyppapai!"
"You can tell they haven't had oars in their hands for a while," Sostratos remarked.
"They're pretty ragged, aren't they?" Menedemos agreed. Even as he spoke, two rowers on the port side almost fouled each other, and one on the starboard dug the blade of his oar into the water as he brought it back for a new stroke. Menedemos shouted at him. "Nikasion, if you're going to catch a crab, make it the kind you can cook next time!"
"Sorry, skipper," the rower called back, dropping the chant for a moment.
Clang! Clang! After a while, Menedemos knew, he would hardly hear the keleustes' mallet striking the bronze square. At the beginning of every voyage, though, he had to get used to it all over again. A tern plunged into the water of Rhodes' Great Harbor less than a bowshot from the Aphrodite and came out with a fish in its beak. A screeching gull chased it, but the smaller bird got away with the prize.
A sailing ship was coming into the harbor as the akatos neared the narrow outlet between the two moles that protected it from bad weather. Menedemos tugged on the tillers to steer the Aphrodite a little to starboard and give the clumsy, beamy round ship a wider berth. Under the forward-pointing, goose-headed sternpost, the fellow at the sailing ship's steering oars lifted a hand to wave and thank him for the courtesy.
"Where are you from?" Menedemos called across a plethron of blue water.
"Paphos, in Cyprus," the other ship's officer answered. "I've got copper and olive oil and some shaped cedar boards. Where are you away to?"
"I'm bound for Italy, with papyrus and ink and perfume and crimson dye - and peafowl," Menedemos added with no small pride.
"Peafowl?" the fellow on the sailing ship said. "Good luck to you, friend. The peacocks are pretty, sure enough, but I've seen 'em - they're mean. I wouldn't have 'em on my ship, and that's the truth."
"Well, to the crows with you," Menedemos said, but not loud enough for the fellow on the beamy merchantman to hear. He turned to Sostratos. "Fat lot he knows about it."
