Menedemos stared at his cousin as if he'd never seen him before. Calm, rational, mild-mannered Sostratos, ripping loose with a curse that would have chilled a Thessalian witch? All the sailors were staring at him, too. Several of the men closest to him edged away. They'd thought Sostratos mild-mannered, too, mild-mannered and ineffectual. But if he could call a curse like that down on a merchant's head, who was to say he couldn't also call its like down on one of them? Rather nervously, Diokles said, 'That was quite . . . something.' He fingered his ring. Sostratos blinked. The flush of fury faded from his cheeks. He looked like a man whose fierce fever had just broken. And when he laughed, he sounded like himself, not the savage stranger who seemed to have seized him for a moment. 'It was, wasn't it?' he said. 'Are you . . . all right now?' Menedemos asked, and heard the caution in his own voice. Sostratos considered that with his usual gravity. At last, he tossed his head. 'All right? No. I won't be all right till Khios goes down under the horizon - and if it went down under the waves, I wouldn't shed a tear. But I'm . . . not mad any more, I don't think.' He plucked at his beard, the picture of bemusement. 'That was very strange. If he'd stayed here even another moment, I would have killed him.' 'I noticed,' Menedemos said dryly. 'I have to think about that,' Sostratos said. Diokles nudged Menedemos. Lost in thought, Sostratos didn't notice. The oarmaster said, 'What we have to do is get out of here, skipper. I don't think anybody but us heard him, but I could be wrong.' 'That's . . . probably not the worst idea I ever heard,' Menedemos agreed. He raised his voice: 'Bring in the lines. Bring in the gangplank. Man the oars. We've got what we came for, and we don't need to hang around any more.' None of the sailors argued with him. By the way they leaped to obey, they might have been thinking along with Diokles and wanted to get out of Khios while they still had the chance. The Aphrodite left the harbor in a hurry, almost as if several of Antigonos' war galleys were in hot pursuit. But the war galleys stayed snug and dry in their sheds, as they usually did when not on patrol. Once out in the channel between Khios and the mainland, Menedemos swung the akatos south. 'Lower the sail,' he said. Again, the sailors hurried to follow his order. This time, escape wasn't on their minds. They'd rowed every digit of the way from Knidos up to Khios. Now the wind would do the work for them. The northerly breeze filled the sail. Running before it, the Aphrodite scudded over the waves. Her motion was different, smoother, now that she no longer fought them. But that motion wasn't quite what it might have been. 'Sostratos!' Menedemos called. His cousin was making sure one of the peahens didn't do anything more than usually birdbrained. Not taking his eyes off the peafowl for a moment, he answered, 'Yes? What is it?' 'Get the bird back in its cage,' Menedemos said. 'Then I'm going to ask you to shift those amphorai we got from Aristagoras farther toward the stern. I don't like her trim - she's down by the bow just a bit.' He held his thumb and forefinger together to show he didn't mean much.
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