I had never seen dromons before. They were long and lean, some with one bank of oars, some with two. The bronze rams they carried at the bow were green and pitted from the sea; some had gray or purple-red patches of barnacles growing on them. The dromons carried wooden towers amidships, from which archers could shoot down at the decks of enemy vessels. Each had sockets for masts before and behind the tower, but the masts were not in place now.

I had never seen or heard such men as those who worked on the dromons and would presently sail them either. The sun had burnt them near as black as Ethiopians are said to be, and sun and wind and spray carved harsh lines in their faces. Some of them wore wool or linen tunics that did not reach their knees, others just a cloth wrapped around their loins, commonly with a sheathed knife on the right side.

When they saw me, they smiled and pointed and called to me. I remember how white their teeth were against beards and dark faces. I also remember how much trouble I had understanding their Greek. Compared to what I heard in the palaces, it was clipped and quick, hardly seeming the same language at all.

My father and uncles had no trouble with it. In fact, when they talked with the sailors, they dropped into it themselves. I had never heard them speak like that before. Now, of course, I too talk like an educated man among clerics and accountants, and like a sailor among sailors.

A party of workmen came up the docks, past me, my father, and my uncles. Some of them were carrying bronze tubes, not sea-green like the dromons' rams but bright and shiny, the color of a freshly minted forty-follis coin. Others bore contraptions of hide and wood. After a moment, I recognized them as bellows, oversized cousins to the ones the cooks in the kitchens used to make their fires burn hotter. I pointed to them. "What are those for? Will the sailors blow on the sails with them to make the ships go faster?"