Dolphin Shadows

He sat in the prow as it sliced aside the waves, watching the blue horizon rock up and down with the creaking of the oars, hearing the crudely thudding drum behind him. Each solid cracking thump of the drum went right through his body, so if he shut his eyes he felt the drumbeat in his breastbone, even in his thumbs and fingertips.

The drummer who gave the rhythm to the oarsmen sat crosslegged on a platform in the middle of the ship. He was shirtless, his wiry brown torso sweating profusely as he thumped the drum with his oak stick. Sweat flew from his hair when he shook his head, as he did sometimes to free his frowning face of sweat. He wore a linen headband but it was soaked through and sweat ran into his eyes in the fiery sun-dazzle.

The Captain in his blue cloak paced up and down along the rows of oarsmen seated on their benches and straining so that their shoulder and back and stomach and chest muscles stood out taut as ropes with each pull. Sometimes he spoke a few soft words. Behind him, bare feet slapping on the planks, dashed the boy who carried the leather bag full of wine diluted with cold water, and when an oarsman nodded at him he would stand on the tips of his toes and squirt a long, arcing, brilliant stream of wine-water into the oarsman's open mouth.

There were no shadows on the ship but for the shadows that the oars made on its sides and on the dark blue water. Under those shadows flowed the smoothly undulating deeper shadows made by dolphins swimming alongside the ship under the rippling gleam and scattered foam of the waves pouring from the prow.