"I am a man of noble birth and parentage," Marinus began, drawing up his knees and shaking the sand off his loose chiton. "From Aeolia, initially. My father was the fifth son of a great family come upon hard times, so there was little left for him to inherit when his father passed away. Nonetheless he made the most of what he had, tending his share of the land as a farmer, with enough profits to hire men to help him. He even oversaw my education, until the time came when his teaching no longer sufficed to bring me up as a proper gentleman. Yet he was determined I should not end up a simple farmer like himself.

"Family quarrels had estranged him from several of his other brothers, but one of my uncles spared the money to have me shipped off to Athens and educated at the Lyceum. That is where I met Pelleus."

He smiled at the dark-haired youth, a look of deep affection on his face.

"Schoolfellows, just as I supposed!" Anneus burst out, unable to help himself. The young men laughed.

"That is right," Marinus said, "we shared a dormitory. I daresay we were inseparable in those days, once we had overcome any antipathy on account of our differences in class and homeland."

Pelleus sniffed, casting his eyes down at this, and started scratching at the sand with a splinter of wood.

"Pelleus, you see, was the son of a great lord, of a province here in Arcadia, no less," Marinus explained, with a significant look to Anneus. The fisherman nearly fell over backwards in his surprise.

"What! You didn't say you had been here before!" he gasped, while the youths chortled at his reaction.

"No," said Pelleus softly, "but it has been many years since I left this place. I do not remember it at all, in fact. Even my own father is but a distant memory to me now..."

"Perhaps you know of him, good sir," Marinus said, with a hopeful look at Anneus. "Eustathios of Kithera, by name."

The fisherman's face fell, and he looked down at this hairy knees.

"Say he is not dead!" Marinus cried, fearing the worst.

"No, no," Anneus muttered, "not that I know, at least. I am afraid I know of no such man. You see, I am a foreigner to the Island myself, and have dwelt here just seven years. It is Agon now who is top dog in Kithera, though I have heard tell that in previous days the land was governed more equally, between different noble houses."

"We are getting ahead of ourselves," Marinus said, seeing Pelleus's face fall at this news. "I was telling you of our school days, when our friendship began."

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"Quite right, forgive my interruptions, my noble friends," Anneus stammered, shaking his head like a flea-bitten dog. In truth there was something bestial about the fisherman, when one considered his jerky movements, subservient demeanour, and the great profusion of reddish hair that covered his body. He was curiously caprine – goat-like – and noticing this almost simultaneously, Pelleus and Marinus stole a glance at his feet to see if they were not cloven in hoofs. But his freely wiggling toes, hairy as they were, at once disabused them of this fanciful notion.

"As I say, we were at school together; a period of life which was not without incident, but which for the sake of brevity I shall pass over in my retelling," Marinus went on. "The money ran out – perhaps my hot-tempered father quarrelled with his last link in the family, I do not know – and I had one last opportunity left open to me. My father had scraped together enough funds to apprentice me to a tin-trader and craftsman of some merit. I was to take up the craft of metalworking, but there was a problem: Pelleus could not come along with me. He was determined to stick by me, and I by him, and who was to say I would ever see him again if I took up the very gracious offer of this tin-man my father had met?"

"What loyalty!" Anneus breathed, misty-eyed with admiration.

"I am ashamed to say it now – though I by no means regret it – but Pelleus and I took the money my father had set aside for this opportunity and split it between us, turning our backs on the Lyceum. We had made up our minds to join the Achaean fleet, little knowing when we approached them that this ragtag outfit had no respect for the ties of friendship and loyalty between raw recruits. They split us up," Marinus said.

"No!" Anneus said, totally absorbed in the tale. The tide had passed a long way out by now, and had almost reached its lowest point. The raging seas had settled into a state of calm, though they were no less fickle and deceptive, as inhabitants of Arcadia well knew.

"When I last saw Pelleus we must both have been about 14, and what are we now? Five years have passed, at least," Marinus said, looking at his friend with fresh eyes. "For my own part, I have been caught up in mere drudgery – the uneventful life of a seaman sworn under the authority of his elders and betters... life on the seas was not the great adventure my youthful self envisioned.

"Then, perhaps by some intervention of the gods, I was wrecked off the coast some miles from here. I think I am the only survivor from that wreck."

He hung his head and was silent for a minute, mourning the loss of his fellow sailors.

"But what of you, Pelleus? How on earth did you come to the same watery fate in just the same waters, at the very same time? What, indeed, have you been doing these past five years of our separation?" he asked, his eyes now dry and narrowed with determination as he fixed his gaze on his friend.