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I said, "I suppose the crews of all three ships are making fun of me."
"Oh, no. We've got too much to do for that. Anyway, we're mostly laughing at Hypereides, not at you. And we wouldn't laugh at him if we didn't like him."
"Is he a good commander?"
"He worries too much," Lyson said. "But yes, he is. He knows a lot about winds and currents, and it's good to have somebody on a ship who worries too much. He's an able merchant too-that's why we were sent here-and so he gets good food for us cheap and doesn't stint as much as most of them."
"It seems strange to have a merchant commanding warships," I said. "I'd think a horseman would do it."
"Is that how it would be in your own country?"
"I don't know. Perhaps."
"In Thought we keep the horsemen on their horses where they belong. But listen here, if you weren't lying to Hypereides and you really don't know where you're from, you've only to look for a city where a horseman would be put in charge of warships. It's someplace in the Empire, I suppose."
I asked where that lay.
"To the east. Who'd you think we were fighting in the Strait of Peace, anyway?"
"The Great King, so Hypereides said."
"And the Great King rules the Empire. You were in his army. We've got your sword and pot-lids now. How'd you think you got that wound?"
I shook my head and somewhere found the memory that had once been painful to do so, though it was no longer. "In a battle. Other than that, I don't know."
"Of course not, poor stick. Somebody ought to look at it for you, though. Those bandages are dirty enough to beach on."
The black man had been listening to us, and though he did not speak, he seemed to understand what he heard. Now he said by signs that if he were allowed to, he would take off my bandages, wash them (vividly pantomiming how he would scrub them on a stone and beat them with another), dry them in the sun, and replace them.
"Ah," Lyson said, "but if I go with you, this one'll wander off."
The black man denied it, clasping my hand and saying by signs that he would not leave me, nor I him.
"He'll forget."
The black man cocked his head to show he did not understand the word.
Lyson pointed to his own head and traced the ground with his finger as though writing or drawing, then smoothed the imaginary scratches away.
The black man nodded and pretended to draw too, then with his finger indicated the course of the sun across the vault of heaven, and when it had set rubbed the drawing out. "Ah, it takes all day."
The black man nodded again and unwound my bandages, and the two of them went off together, fast becoming friends.
As for me, I finished the reading of this scroll I had earlier begun. Now they have returned, and I write but feel I know less than ever. So many strange things-events I ca
CHAPTER VIII-At Sea
Our ship rolls in a way that makes it hard to write, but I am learning to allow for it. The sailors say it is often much worse and I must walk and write and drink on board, and do everything else, before the sea grows rougher. "When we round Cape Malea, forget your home," they say; but I remember it, though I have forgotten every other place.
Our ship is the Europa, the largest of the three, with triple-banked oars. The men who sit highest have the longest oars, and they think themselves the best because they can spit on the rest; but all get the same pay. Now we are under sail, and they have no work, save for one or two who are bailing and the like. Soon there will be work enough, they say. Some are sleeping on the rowing benches, though all slept, I think, last night.
I am writing in the bow, leaning comfortably back against the high, straight post that marks the front of our ship. Below it (I remember, though I ca
A big rope runs from my bow post to the very top of the mast, and there are more such ropes there, going to both sides of the ship and to the stern, all to brace the mast against the pull of the sail. The one above my head bends a trifle, but the rest are stretched as straight as spears; the wind is behind us now, and our rowers are idling on their benches while the wide sail labors for them.
This sail hangs from a long, tapered yard raised almost to the top of the mast. There is a bull painted on it, not just a head like the carved bull's head on the sternpost, but every part; and I think I like him best of all our decorations. He is black, his nose is gold, and his blue eye rolls to see the woman sitting on his back. He has a brave tail, and it seems to me that if I were on one of the other ships it would appear that his golden hoofs ran upon the sea.
The woman who rides him has red hair and blue eyes, and two chins. She smiles as she rides; her hands stroke the bull's horns.
The long, narrow deck runs from the place where I sit to the stern, where two sailors hold the steering oars and the kybernetes watches them and the sail. The prisoners are chained to the mast where it goes through the deck.
Our captain's name is Hypereides. He is a man of middle years, bald and thick at the waist but erect and energetic. Not as tall as I. He came to talk with me, and I asked him the name of the country to our left. He said, "That's Redface Island, my boy."
It surprised me and I laughed.
"Not much of a name, is it? But that's all the name it has. Named for old Pelops, who was king there hundreds and hundreds of years ago."
"Did he have a red face?"
"That's what they say. The satirists make jokes about him, saying it was red from drinking, or that he was always angry, stamping up and down and sneezing. If you ask me, neither can be right. How could his mother know he was going to drink too much? Maybe he was angry all the time as a baby-the gods know a lot of them are-but who ever heard of one's being named for it? If you ask me, my boy, he was born with one of those red patches on his face that some children have. Anyway, that's where Tower Hill is, and the Rope Makers' city."
Then he told me about the Battle of Peace and how his ships had been hidden in a bay on the isle of Peace. Very early in the morning, when there was still fog on the water, the barbarians' ships had come into the strait. A lookout had seen them through the fog and heard the chants of their rowers, and he sent a signal. Hypereides and his ships, and all the other ships of the city came out then, and the Rope Makers' ships too. "You should have seen us, my boy-every man shouting out the Victory Hymn, and every oar bent like a bow!"
They met the barbarians ram to ram, and the ships from Peace came out of the bay behind the Dog's Tail and caught the barbarians in the flank; but there were so many barbarian ships that even when they fled they were a great fleet. No one knows where they are now, and most of the ships from Thought and Rope, and all the ships from Tower Hill, are hunting them among the islands.
Hypereides said that I must have fought for the Great King, and I asked him if I were a barbarian. "Not a real barbarian," he said. "Because you talk like a civilized man. Besides, there were a lot of us fighting for the Great King-almost as many as were on our side. See those people I've got chained up? They're from Hill-you can tell by the way they talk. Their city fought for him, and we mean to burn it around their ears, just as he burned ours."