He waited for his cousin to wave agreement, then undid a leather sack of barley and piled grain onto half a dozen plates, one of which he set in front of each cage. The slats in the doors were wide enough to let the birds stick their heads out and eat. That made anyone who walked by step lively, but it meant he didn't have to open the cages to feed the peafowl. 'Are they eating all right?' Menedemos asked. On land, he did as he pleased, indulging his passions far more than Sostratos chose to do. Aboard ship, nothing escaped his notice. The peacock had Argos' eyes in its tail; Sostratos' cousin seemed to have them in his head. Sostratos watched the birds pecking away like so many outsized chickens, then dipped his head. Menedemos waved again to show he'd seen the answer. No, nothing got past him. A couple of the missing rowers returned by themselves, one hung over and the other so drunk he almost fell off the pier before he got to the Aphrodite. 'Are you going to dock his pay?' Sostratos asked. His cousin tossed his head. 'No, he's here on time - and he's here all by himself, too.' An evil smile spread over Menedemos' face. 'I'll do something worse - I'll wait till he's really starting to hurt, and then I'll put him on the oars. If that doesn't cure him, gods only know what will.' 'Not a bad notion,' Sostratos said, admiring the rough justice of it. He paused thoughtfully. 'The exercise may help ease the confusion in his humors and cure him quicker than sitting idle would.' 'Maybe.' Menedemos chuckled. 'Even if it does, though, he won't be happy while it's going on.' Sostratos could hardly disagree with that. One of the rowers came running up the pier toward the Aphrodite. 'Diokles says to tell you we've got three of them, captain,' he called. 'No sign of the other two.' 'They came back on their own,' Menedemos answered. 'Diokles can bring in the rest of the lost sheep, and then we'll be off.' The sailors had to carry one of their comrades, who'd guzzled himself into a stupor. By the glint in Menedemos' eye, Sostratos knew what his cousin had in mind for that fellow once he revived. Fair enough, Sostratos thought. Drinking yourself blind is excessive. Diokles giving the beat, the Aphrodite left the harbor of Knidos and headed for Kos. 3 'Rhyppapai! Rhyppapai!' Diokeles used the oarmaster's chant along with the rhythm of mallet on bronze. As Menedemos had thought it would, the wind blew straight out of the north, straight into his face, as the merchant galley he commanded made for Kos. A sailing ship bound for Kos from Knidos would have had to stay in port; it could have made no headway against the contrary breeze. He just left the sail brailed up tight, so that the akatos proceeded on oars alone. Waves driven by the headwind splashed against the Aphrodite's ram and pointed cutwater. Striking the ship head-on, they gave her an unpleasant pitching motion. Menedemos, who stood on the raised poop deck handling the steering oars, didn't mind it so much, but he'd spent the night aboard ship. Some of the rowers who were rather the worse for wear leaned out over the gunwales and fed the fish of the Aegean. 'Keep an eye peeled,' Menedemos called to the lookout at the bow. 'The mainland of Asia belongs to Antigonos.' He took his right hand off the steering-oar tiller to wave toward the misty mainland. 'Kos, though, Kos is under Ptolemaios' thumb. And if the treaty the generals signed last summer is just a
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