Over the Wine Dark Sea

'This: if Xenodokos is wrong, if there is no fleet of merchantmen gathering at Rhegion, you won't load the Aphrodite up with grain and try to sneak into Syracuse all by your lonesome.'   'We might have a better chance that way,' Menedemos said. Then he saw just how furious Sostratos looked. He threw his hands in the air. 'Oh, very well. If there is no grain fleet, we'll head for home. There! Are you satisfied now?'   'Satisfied? No,' Sostratos said. 'I won't be satisfied till we do sail for home. But that is a little better -  a very little better -  than nothing.'   Menedemos didn't think it was anything of the sort. The more he thought of tiptoeing into Syracuse past the Carthaginian fleet, the better he liked it. A man could dine out on such stories for the rest of his life. But he'd gone and given his word, and he felt obliged to keep it.   I hope there's a fleet at Rhegion, he thought. There'd better be a fleet at Rhegion, because I want to do this. Sostratos was right, and Menedemos was honest enough with himself to admit it: he did lust after going to Syracuse the same way he lusted after some frisky young wife he'd chanced to see.   'Remember,' Sostratos said, 'whatever else you do, you're not supposed to risk the ship.'   'I don't intend to risk the ship,' Menedemos snapped, wishing Sostratos hadn't put it quite that way, 'and I'm the one who judges when the ship's being risked and when it isn't. You aren't. Have you got that, O cousin of mine?'   'Yes, I have it.' Sostratos looked as if he liked it about as much as a big mouthful of bad fish. He stormed down off the poop deck and up toward the bow. Daft, Menedemos thought. Daft as Aias after he didn't get Akhilleus' armor. Anybody who'd rather deal with peafowl chicks than stand around and talk has to be daft.   The peafowl chicks! Menedemos brightened. 'Oe! Sostratos!' he called.   Reluctantly, Sostratos turned back toward him. 'What is it?'   'How much do you think young peafowl will bring in Syracuse?'   'I don't know,' Sostratos answered. 'How much do you think they would bring in Carthage?' Having got the last word, he went on up to the little foredeck.   When Menedemos steered the Aphrodite into the harbor at Rhegion, he anxiously scanned the quays. If things looked no busier than usual, he would have to sail on toward Rhodes. He let out a whoop on seeing a couple of dozen large round ships all tied up together. If that wasn't a fleet in the making, he didn't know what was.   His cousin saw the ships, too, and also knew them for what they were. The look he gave Menedemos was baleful. Menedemos grinned back, which, by Sostratos' expression, only annoyed him more.   With a handful of men at the oars to put the merchant galley exactly where he wanted her, Menedemos guided her toward the quays alongside which the round ships floated. 'Go somewhere else!' a man called from the stern of the nearest big, tubby merchantman. 'We're all together here, loading up on grain for