'Yes, Grandfather,' Menedemos said. 'No wonder I command the Aphrodite and you keep track of what goes aboard her.' Sostratos shrugged. 'The gods give one man one thing, another man another. You're always ready to seize the moment. You always have been, as long as I can remember. As for me . . .' He shrugged again. Even though slightly the older and much the larger of the two of them, he'd had to get used to living in Menedemos' shadow. 'As you said, I keep track of things. I'm good at it.' 'Well, nobody can quarrel with you there,' Menedemos said generously. He raised his voice to a shout and hailed the akatos ahead: 'Ahoy, the Aphrodite!' Carpenters in chitons and naked sailors aboard the merchant galley waved to Menedemos and Sostratos. 'When do we go out, skipper?' one of the sailors called. 'We've been stuck in port so long, my hands have got soft.' 'We'll fix that, don't you worry,' Menedemos said with a laugh. 'It won't be long now, I promise.' His sharp, dark-eyed gaze swung to a carpenter at the poop of the forty-cubit vessel. 'Hail, Khremes. How are those new steering oars coming?' 'They're just about ready, captain,' the carpenter answered. 'I think they'll be even smoother than the pair you had before. A little old bald man sitting in a chair with a cushion under his backside could swing your ship any way you wanted her to go.' He waved in invitation. 'Come on up and get the feel of 'em for yourself.' Menedemos tossed his head to show he declined. 'Can't really do that till she's in the water, not hauled out to keep her timbers dry.' Sostratos following him, he walked toward the bow of the ship. The Aphrodite had twenty oars on either side, giving her almost as many rowers as a pentekonter, but she was beamier than the fifty-oared galleys so beloved by pirates: unlike them, she had to carry cargo. Sostratos tapped the lead sheathing the Aphrodite below the waterline with a fingernail. 'Still good and sound.' 'It had better be,' Menedemos said. 'We just replaced it year before last.' He tapped, too, at one of the copper nails holding the lead and the tarred wool fabric below it to the oak planking of the hull. Up at the bow, another carpenter was replacing a lost nail that helped hold the three-finned bronze ram to the bow timbers inside it. He must have heard Menedemos' remark, for he looked up and said, 'And I'll bet you were glad you finally could do it year before last, too.' 'He's got you there,' Sostratos said. 'No, we finally got him and his pals back,' Menedemos answered. 'For a while there, ordinary Rhodians had a cursed hard time getting carpenters to work for them - everybody was building ships for Antigonos to use against Ptolemaios.' 'That was a mistake - helping Antigonos, I mean,' Sostratos said. 'Rhodes does too much business with Egypt for us to get on Ptolemaios' wrong side.' 'You can say that - you were studying up in Athens. You don't know what things were like here.' Menedemos scowled at the memory. 'Nobody had the nerve to try crossing One-Eyed Antigonos, believe you me.'
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