Just getting that akatos back into the sea was harder work than it would have been with a trireme or even a piratical pentekonter. The Aphrodite had fewer men and, because of the cargo she carried, was heavier in proportion to her size than a vessel meant solely for fighting. Menedemos put half a dozen oarsmen into the ship's boat, and ran a line from its stern to the Aphrodite's stempost. While they rowed with all their might to help pull the beached ship forward, he and the rest of the crew pushed against her stern and sides.
She didn't want to move. Wiping sweat from his forehead with his hand, Diokles said, "We may have to lighten her before she'll get back where she belongs."
"To the crows with that," Menedemos said, though he'd been thinking the same thing. "Taking jars and sacks off, putting them back aboard - we'd never make Knidos by nightfall. The hours aren't so long as they will be come summertime." In the winter, a day's twelve hours were cramped, while a night's twelve stretched. In summer, the reverse held true. At this season of the year, daylight hours and those of the nighttime roughly matched.
"Shall we give it another try, then?" the keleustes asked.
"Unless you feel like swimming home," Menedemos answered. Diokles tossed his head. Menedemos raised his voice to a shout: "Come on! Put your backs into it this time! One more good heave and we'll be off!"
He was anything but sure he was telling the truth, but it was what the sailors needed to hear. He heaved with them, his bare feet digging into the golden sand. At first, he thought this try would prove as fruitless as the last. But then the false keel grated as the ship lurched forward: not much, only a digit's worth or not even that, but some.
Everyone felt the tiny motion. "We can do it!" Menedemos cried. "At my count . . . one, two, three!"
Another scrape of timber on sand. The men grunted and cursed as they shoved. Out in the little bay, the rowers in the boat pulled as if they had a five full of Carthaginians on their tail. The Aphrodite moved a little more, and then a little more - and then, more than a little to Menedemos surprise, slid into the Aegean. The sailors raised a cheer.
"We'll spend the night tied up to a pier in Knidos," Sostratos said, "but the next time we have to go aground on a sandy shore, let's not beach ourselves so hard."
"Well, that isn't the worst idea I've ever heard," Menedemos answered. "Still and all, though, we do want to let the timbers dry whenever we get the chance. Rowing's harder work when you have to shove along the extra weight that goes into a waterlogged ship."
He waded out into the cool water of the bay and, agile as a monkey, swarmed up a rope and over the side of the Aphrodite. Rather less gracefully, Sostratos followed. Before long, all the men were in the Aphrodite and the akatos' boat tied to the sternpost once more for towing.
"Out of the inlet," Menedemos said, "then around the southern coast of Syme, and then west and a little north to Knidos." Still dripping, his hair wet and slick, he took his place at the steering oars and dipped his head to Diokles. "If you'd be so kind, keleustes."
"Right you are, skipper." The oarmaster clanged his mallet against the bronze square. "Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!"
"Rhyppapai!" the rowers echoed, taking their beat from him. Menedemos had only ten men a side at the oars. He would work the men in shifts, the way any captain not in a desperate hurry did.
Sostratos asked, "May I let a couple of peahens out now?"
"Wait till we're well away from Syme and in more open water," Menedemos answered. "We don't want the miserable birds trying to fly to land and going into the sea instead."
"You're right. I hadn't thought of that," Sostratos said. Menedemos couldn't imagine himself making an admission like that, even if it was true. If he hadn't thought of something, he didn't want anybody but himself knowing it. His cousin went on, "Tell me when the time is right, then."
"I will," Menedemos said, somewhat abstractedly: the bulk of the island was shielding him from some of the wind he wanted to use. He ordered the big square mainsail lowered from the yard, but it flapped and fluttered and didn't want to fill. Even after the sailors used the brails to haul up most of the canvas on the leeward side, he wondered if he should have bothered using it at all; it hardly seemed to add anything to the Aphrodite's turn of speed. Then he shrugged. The men would think it helped, even if it didn't really do much. Keeping them happy counted for something, too.
After an hour or so, the Aphrodite glided between the narrow spit of land at Syme's southwestern corner and the closest of the three tiny islets that straggled out from the spit. Once the ship got free of Syme's wind shadow, the sail bellied out and went taut. "That's more like it," Menedemos exclaimed, and ordered more of the sail lowered to take advantage of the breeze.
