Over the Wine-Dark Sea

Menedemos thought about squeezing the proxenos some more. He glanced toward Sostratos. His cousin ignored him -  Sostratos wanted no part of the Syracusan venture. Menedemos sent him a covert dirty look. He wanted to know what Sostratos thought, for his cousin was often better at haggling with these fancy types then he was himself. But Sostratos seemed determined to sulk.

That left it up to Menedemos. Onasimos had a point. Some men, with silver in their hands, would sail away from Syracuse. Not me, of course, Menedemos thought. But Onasimos didn't, couldn't, know that. "All right," Menedemos said. "One and a half times the going rate it is. Sostratos!"

His cousin jumped. "What?"

"You'll keep count of how many sacks of grain Onasimos' men bring aboard the Aphrodite here," Menedemos said. "As soon as we get paid our first installment for hauling them, we're off with the rest of the fleet."

"I'll have a man of my own doing the counting," Onasimos said.

"Good." Menedemos smiled that sweet smile at him. "I'm sure his count and Sostratos' will match very closely, then." The Syracusan proxenos' answering smile looked distinctly forced. He was going to try to cheat me, Menedemos thought. Why am I not surprised?

Muttering under his breath, Onasimos tramped back down the pier. About half an hour later, a line of men carrying leather sacks, each with a talent of grain, came out from the interior of Rhegion. "Where do you want these?" asked the man heading up the line. He carried no sack himself; he was obviously the fellow who would do the counting for Onasimos.

"Sostratos!" Menedemos called, and Sostratos, still seeming just this side of mutinous, went up onto the pier and stood beside Onasimos' man. For that worthy's benefit, Menedemos continued, "Now -  I'll want you to start at the stern, just forward of the poop deck, and work toward the bow, one row of sacks at a time, till she holds as much grain as she can."

"Right," Onasimos' man said, and shouted orders at the men he was in charge of. They came down the gangplank and started loading the grain.

By the time they finished, the Aphrodite rode a great deal lower in the water. That worried Menedemos. Not only the extra weight but also the extra amount of hull now in the sea would slow the merchant galley. She didn't need to be slow, not when she might have to flee from Carthaginian warships. But he couldn't blame Onasimos for wanting to put as much grain into her as he could: the proxenos was doing his best to feed the people of the city he served.

"How many sacks of grain did we take on?" Menedemos asked once the last sweating hauler left the akatos.

"By my count, 797 sacks," Sostratos answered.

Onasimos' man sneered. "I reckoned it as 785." Sostratos bristled. Anyone who accused him of inaccuracy was asking for trouble.

Menedemos had no time for that kind of trouble. He said, "We'll split the difference. What does that come to?"

Sostratos counted on his fingers, his lips moving. "It would be 791," he said. "But I still think this fellow - "

"Never mind," Menedemos broke in. He nodded to Onasimos' man. "Tell your master we've got 791 sacks of grain aboard. As soon as we get paid, we're ready to go. Agreed?"

"Agreed," the other said. "Some of these round ships hold more than ten times as many sacks as that, you know."

"Every bit helps," Menedemos replied. Onasimos' man dipped his head and went back into Rhegion as his master had before him: to get money, Menedemos hoped.

Diokles said, "I hope the wind stays with us. The men'll break their backs and their hearts rowing with us laden like this, and she'll handle like a raft -  if we're lucky, that is."

"If the wind fails, we're not going anywhere, not with all these round ships," Menedemos said. "They have to sail."

"Mm, that's so," the oarmaster agreed. He flashed Menedemos a sassy grin. "In that case, skipper, maybe we ought to hope for south winds for the next three months, so if Syracuse falls, we don't have to come close to all those Carthaginian war galleys, and we pick up a nice pile of silver anyway."

"You sounds like Sostratos," Menedemos said, and Diokles' grin got wider and even more provocative. Menedemos mimed throwing something at him and went on, "I wouldn't mind getting paid for doing nothing, either -  who would? But if we don't get to deliver the grain, they'll just take it off and make us cough up the money again."

"If we were proper pirates, we'd sneak out of the harbor if that looked like happening," the keleustes said. "We're a galley, after all. We could do it."

"We could, sure enough." Menedemos wished Diokles hadn't put the idea in his mind. It was tempting. But he had no trouble finding reasons it wouldn't work. "You said it yourself -  we'll be slow as a cart-ox with all this grain aboard. And my bet is, Rhegion would send her navy after us if we made off with the grain and the money. This Onasimos fellow looks to pull a lot of weight here."