"We're on the sea," Sostratos repeated. "And we're on the sea with peafowl. If that doesn't make things different, I don't know what would." He plucked at his beard. Since he'd got what he wanted from his cousin, changing the subject looked like a good idea. And so he did, asking, "Do you plan on putting in at Knidos tomorrow?"
"I planned to, yes," Menedemos answered. "It's a good harbor, and a good day's journey from here, too. A couple of hundred stadia - we'll be able to use the sail some, I expect, as long as the breeze holds, but the boys will do some rowing, too. We can put some fresh water aboard, buy some food . . .. Why? Did you have some different scheme in mind?"
"No." Sostratos tossed his head. "I was just wondering if you intended to lay over for a day and do some business there."
"Not unless you find something that drives you wild," Menedemos said. "My thinking is, it's too close to home. What's the point to taking all our expensive goods for a short haul when we're bound to get a lot more for them farther west?"
"Good. We're sailing in the same direction," Sostratos said.
One of the sailors by the fire, a skinny bald man named Alexion, nudged Menedemos and said, "Once we're in the harbor at Knidos, skipper, you ought to charge folks a khalkos apiece, say, to watch master Sostratos here go chasing after all those peafowl." He laughed. So did the other sailors in earshot. So did Menedemos.
And so did Sostratos: if he found the joke funny, they weren't laughing at him . . . were they? But then he grew thoughtful. "Himilkon got half a drakhma from you for just a tail feather, cousin. If we charged people a khalkos or two to come to the edge of the quay and look down into the Aphrodite while the peacock was out of his cage - well, we wouldn't get rich doing it, but I bet we'd make a drakhma, maybe a couple of drakhmai, whenever we did it."
Menedemos looked thoughtful, too. "You're right. We probably would." He turned and slapped Alexion on the back. "Whatever we bring in the first day we try it, it's yours, for having the idea."
The rower's grin showed a broken front tooth. "Thanks, skipper. You treat a fellow right, no two ways about it."
"Fair's fair," Menedemos said. Sostratos dipped his head, wondering if he would have thought of the same thing himself. He hoped so, but he wasn't altogether sure.
The fires died down to embers. Sostratos wrapped himself in his mantle and lay down on the beach with his cloak under his head for a pillow. A nightjar's froglike call came from not far away. The sky was clear, a blue almost black. Only a faint gleam from the Milky Way lightened it near the southern horizon. Zeus' wandering star blazed brilliant, high in the southern sky; that of Ares, duller and redder, hung farther west. Sostratos stared up at them for a little while, then yawned, rolled over on his side, and fell asleep.
"Rosy-fingered dawn!" Menedemos shouted to wake the Aphrodite's crew. The tag from Homer had never seemed more apt. He wondered how the blind poet had been able to describe things so exactly. Beams of pinkish light in the east foretold the arrival of the sun, which couldn't be more than a quarter of an hour away. Even as he watched, the pink began to turn gold.
Sailors groaned and grunted and sat up, rubbing their eyes. Some of them kept right on snoring. Sostratos often did that. To Menedemos' disappointment, his cousin's eyes were open. Sostratos got to his feet and went off behind a bush to piss.
"Get some bread. Get some oil. Get some wine," Menedemos called as the men woke their sleepy comrades. "No slaves here - we've all got to work once we eat."
"What other cheery news have you got for us?" Sostratos asked around a yawn as he came back from behind that bush.
"Once we get the Aphrodite in the water, you can let the peafowl out - one or two at a time, mind, and the peacock by himself - to get whatever exercise they can," Menedemos answered. "Tell off as many sailors as you need to keep them from fouling the men who stay at the oars and mind the sail."
His cousin dipped his head. "Thanks again," he said. "I really do think the birds will be better for it."
"I hope so," Menedemos said, which was true; he didn't want to have to explain to his father that he hadn't been able to sell the peafowl because they'd all died before he got to Italy. "But there's one thing even more important," he added, and watched Sostratos raise a dubious eyebrow. But that was also true: "I hope the ship will be better for it."
"It will be all right," Sostratos said confidently. Menedemos clicked his tongue between his teeth and didn't answer. His cousin was a clever fellow - cleverer than I am, Menedemos thought, without rancor or envy - and a first-rate toikharkhos. But Sostratos had never had to give orders to a crew; he'd never been responsible for a whole ship and everybody in it. He could say things would turn out all right, but Menedemos was the one who had to make them turn out all right.
