It was a marvel, the steamer, frilled with intricate woodwork railings and littered with little fleur de lis and smiling daemon masks, festooned with copper piping and valves that intermittently erupted steam, and covered with doohickeys whose function I couldn’t guess. From the lower deck Cimbri waved to us with his bragging stick and motioned to a soldier, who pulled a lever on a cluster of pipes near the outer rail – causing a mechanical ladder to extend from the boat and allowing us to come abeam and climb aboard. Fisk disembarked the johnboat stiffly, and had some trouble mounting the clever mechanical ladder even with the lascar’s help. He hadn’t let me change his dressing before coming over. Only let me roughly sew his trouser leg shut so as not to offend the patricians with the sight of his manhood. Though they might have enjoyed it. Who knows what pleases the patricians? Maybe forty legionaries were billeted on the bottom deck barracks.
