As soon as he said it, I guessed Larius was right.
Without more ado we drained our cups, dragged ourselves upright and started outside. I asked the bosun, 'You with us, Bassus?' But, deeply depressed by the loss of the Isis, Bassus said he would stay in Positanum with the drink.
He came with us to the door though. As we reeled in the sudden sunlight that glanced off the harbour, I heard him let out a chuckle ironically. 'That's fate for you!' Then he pointed southwards out to sea. 'Here they come…'
Bearing slowly towards the Amalfi coast was the most amazing vessel I had ever seen. The Royal Barge of the Ptolemies was supposed to be larger, but I had never been privileged to gawp at the Egyptian fleet. This one was a monster. If her deck was less than two hundred feet in length, the shortfall could not be more than any lad on the Tiber waterfront could spit. When she docked she must tower above everything else like the multistorey apartments in Rome. Across the beam she was forty feet easily. And the depth of her hull, labouring so heavily, was probably even more than that.
To power this immense bulk she had not merely the normal square sail but a fabulous arrangement of red topsails as well. Far behind her I could just make other dark smudges, apparently motionless on the horizon, though they too would be heading towards us, low in the water beneath their huge cargoes, at an inexorable pace.
'Bassus! Whatever in Hades is that?'
He squinted at her thoughtfully as she loomed imperceptibly nearer the rocky coast. 'Parthenope, probably… but could be Venus of Paphos-'
I knew before he said it: the first of the corn ships had arrived.
Now I was thinking fast.
'Bassus, I can appreciate your loyalty to Crispus. As a matter of fact I had a good opinion of him myself. But he's gone. And unless we do something, Atius Pertinax-who is a different kind of leech on the Empire altogether-will be hijacking the grain ships and threatening Rome.'
The bosun was listening in his normal, impervious way. Desperate not to sound overhasty I confessed to him, 'I can't do this alone. I need your help, Bassus, or the game's over. You've lost the man you sailed for, and you've lost your ship. Now I'm offering you a chance to gain a heroic reputation and earn yourself an honorarium…'
Through the drink he thought about it. Drink apparently made Bassus a mellow, amenable type. 'All right. I can live with being a hero. So we need to think up a plan-'
I had no time to waste being diffident. I had been mulling over this problem since I first came to Campania. I already had a plan. Without making a fuss about my forethought and ingenuity, I explained to Bassus what I thought we ought to do.
I left him in Positanum to make contact with the grain ships as they arrived. Once most of the pack had gathered in the Bay of Salernum, still out of sight of the fleet at Misenum, he would let me know.