Envoy Extraordinary

"If it is an order, Caesar, I will do my best. But first let us move the ship outside the harbour. You can transfer to her from your barge."

"It shall be so."

They crossed the trireme together. Mamillius ran to the tunnel with head averted from the women and disappeared. The Emperor went to where his barge was moored astern of the trireme and arranged himself comfortably under the baldachino. It was only then that he began to realize how ugly and preposterous the new ship was.

He shook his head gently.

"I am a very reluctant innovator."

The crowd of slaves aboard Amphitrite was being absorbed by her hold and the small crew was busily casting off. The crewmen of the trireme were bearing off with the looms of oars and she began to move sideways. Her cables splashed free in the water and were hauled aboard. The Emperor, under his shady purple, could see how the helmsman was heaving at the steering oars to bring her stern in and give her bows a sheer away from the trireme. Steam was jetting constantly from the brass belly over the furnace. Then he saw Phanocles stick his head out of the hold and wave the helmsman into stillness. He shouted something down to the bowels of the machine, the jet of steam increased till the scream of it rasped the air like a file then suddenly disappeared altogether. In answer a snarling roar rose from the ships and houses round the harbour till Amphitrite lay like some impossible lizard at bay in the centre of an arena.

The Emperor fanned himself with one hand.

"I have always considered a mob to be thoroughly predictable."

There came a grunt from the bowels of the ship and an iron clank. Talos moved all four hands, two back, two forward. Both wheels began to revolve slowly, port astern, starboard ahead. The blades of the paddles came down-smack, pause, smack!-so that dirty water shot from under them. They rose out of the water, throwing it high in the air, to fall back on the deck. The whole ship was streaming and steam rose in a cloud again, but this time from the hot surface of the sphere and the funnel. A great wailing came from her hold and Phanocles leapt on deck, to stand there, inspecting the deluge through screwed-up eyes as though he had never seen anything so interesting. Amphitrite was lying in one place, making no way, but turning; and the water sprayed up as from a fountain. Phanocles shouted down the hatch, the steam jetted up, the paddles creaked to a stop, and the water was running off her as though she had just come up from the bottom of the harbour. The noise from the people stormed at her as she lay in the centre of harbour with her steam jet screaming. There was a blink of light in the haze over the hills and almost immediately the thud of thunder.

The Emperor made a furtive sign with two fingers.

The lightning, however, was a divine irrelevance. As the Emperor shielded his eyes in expectation of Amphitrite's destruction at the hands of an outraged Providence he glimpsed that she was not the only portent moving on the waters. Outside the harbour mouth but visible over the quay wall there was a solidity in the moving vapours. Before his mind had time to work he thought of it as the top of a rock or a low cliff. But the rock lengthened.

The Emperor scrambled ashore, crossed the quay and climbed the steps of the harbour wall where the women were sitting. The rock was clear of the mist. It was the prow and fo'castle of a great warship and from her hold came the measured beating of a drum. She was slightly off course for the entrance of the harbour but swinging already to bisect the narrow strip of water. that lay between the two quays. Steadily she came on, sail furled on the yard, a crab suspended at either yard-arm, ejaculatory armament trained forward, her decks glistening with steel and brass, the twentyfoot spear of her ram cutting the surface of the water like a shark. The drum tapped out a change of rhythm. The centipedal oars closed in aft as though they had been folded by a central intelligence. She slid through the entrance and her ram was in the harbour. The drums changed rhythm again. Pair after pair as they were free of the obstructing quays the oars unfolded, reversed, backed water. The Emperor saw a red and gold banner on the quarterdeck surmounted by a vindictivelooking eagle. He dropped down from the harbour wall, ignored the questions of the women and hurried back to his barge and the shelter of the baldachino.