His cousin stooped on the little foredeck to unlatch a peahen's cage. A moment later, Sostratos hopped back with a yelp of 'Oimoi!' He wrung his hand. 'Still have all your fingers?' Menedemos called from the steering oars at the poop. By the way Sostratos looked down, Menedemos guessed he was checking to make sure of that himself. His cousin dipped his head. 'I do,' he said, 'though no thanks to this monstrous fowl.' He shook one of the fingers he still had at the peahen. 'You hateful bird, don't you know I'm doing you a favor?' Maybe the peahen heeded him. At any rate, it didn't try to peck him again. He swung the cage door open. The bird emerged. A heartbeat later, so did another one. Menedemos and Sostratos called that second peahen Helen, because the peacock mated with her more enthusiastically than with the other peahens. When she walked past his cage now, he started screeching loud enough to make Menedemos wince even though he stood at the Aphrodite's stern. With a flutter of wings, the two peahens went down the wooden stairway and into the undecked bottom of the akatos. One of them pecked at something. 'That was a centipede!' a sailor said. 'Good riddance to the horrible thing.' The bird called Helen pecked at something else. A rower let out a howl: 'That was my leg! You lefthanded idiot, you're supposed to keep the miserable creature away from me.' 'I'm sorry, I'm sure,' said the fellow called an idiot: one of Diokles' new men, a chap named Teleutas. He flapped the little net he was holding at the peahen, which didn't peck the rower twice. All the same, Menedemos didn't judge this the best way to blend the newcomers with the rest of the crew. Another rower yelped. The sailor who hadn't kept the peahen from nipping at him had been rowing for Menedemos and Sostratos' families since they were both little boys. Maybe nobody could stop the peafowl from making nuisances of themselves. In that case, maybe Sostratos hadn't made such a bad choice with Teleutas and the other new sailor - whose name Menedemos kept forgetting - after all. Helen the peahen hopped up onto an empty rower's bench and stretched her neck so she could peer over the gunwale at the Karian coastline in the distance. Would she know it lay in the distance? Or would she forget she had clipped wings and try to strike out for the land she saw? Before anyone could find out, Sostratos threw a net over her. He didn't want fifty drakhmai of silver splashing into the Aegean. It was a fit home for dolphins - Menedemos saw three or four leaping out of the water off to port - but not for expensive birds. Helen gave a screech the peacock might have envied and lashed out with feet and beak through the mesh of the net. Sostratos cursed, but didn't let her escape till he got her down where she couldn't do herself mischief. 'This is supposed to keep the birds healthy?' Menedemos called. 'Looks like you'll just run them ragged.' Sostratos shot him a harried look. 'I'm doing my best,' he answered. 'If you've got any better ideas - if you've got any ideas at all, Menedemos - suppose you tell me about them.' Menedemos went back to
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