Once her children were calmed, Karen had more to think about. Many of them were becoming quite sick from the lack of air. She went topside and inched her way through the tangle of arms, legs, and knapsacks up to the captain’s bridge. In the wheel room Bill Fry was sipping coffee and looking down at the solid pack of humanity on deck. The Palmach head was arguing with him.
“Jesus Christ!” Bill growled. “One thing we get from Jews is conversation. Orders aren’t made to be discussed. They are made to be obeyed. How in the hell you guys going to win anything if you’ve got to talk everything over? Now I’m the captain here!”
Bill’s outburst hardly fazed the Palmach chief, who finished his argument and walked off.
Bill sat mumbling under his breath. He.lit a cigar butt and then saw Karen standing rather meekly in the doorway.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he said, smiling. “Coffee?”
“I’d love some.”
“You look bad.”
“I can’t get too much sleep with the children.”
“Yeah … how you getting along with them kids?”
“That’s what I came to talk to you about. Some of them are getting quite sick, and we have several pregnant women in the hold.”
“I know, I know.”
“I think we should have a turn on deck.”
He pointed down to the solid cluster of bodies. “Where?”
“You just find a few hundred volunteers to exchange places.”
“Aw, look now, honey, I hate to turn you down, but I’ve got a lot on my mind. It just ain’t that easy. We can’t start moving people around on this can.”
Karen’s face retained a soft sweetness and her voice showed no anger. “I am going back down there and I am taking my
children on deck,” she said. She turned her back and started for the door.
“Come back here. How did a sweet-looking kid like you get so ornery?” Bill scratched his jaw. “All right! All right! We’ll get them brats of yours topside. Jesus Christ, all I get is arguments, arguments, arguments!”
That night Karen led her children to a place on the fan-tail of the ship. In the cool and wonderful air they fell into a deep and peaceful sleep.
The next day the sea was smooth as glass. Dawn brought more British patrol planes, and the now familiar escort, the Defiance and Blakely, were still there.
A tremor of excitement ran through the ship as Bill announced that they were less than twenty-four hours from Eretz Israel-Land of Israel. The mounting tension brought on a strange quiet that lasted far into the day. Toward evening the Blakely moved very close to the Star of David.
A booming British voice cut over the water from the Blakely’s loudspeaker. “Immigrant ship. This is Captain Cunningham of the Blakely here. I want to speak to your captain.”
“Hello, Blakely,” Bill Fry’s voice growled back, “what’s on your mind?”
“We would like to send an emissary aboard to speak to you.”
“You can speak now. We’re all mishpocha here and we got no secrets.”
“Very well. Sometime after midnight you will enter the territorial waters of Palestine. At that time we intend to board you and tow you to Haifa. We want to know if you are going to accept this without resistance?”
“Hello, Cunningham. Here’s the picture. We’ve got some pregnant women and sick people aboard here and we would like you to accept them.”
”We have no instructions. Will you accept our tow or not?”
“Where did you say?”
“Haifa.”
“Well I’ll be damned. We must be off course. This is a Great Lakes pleasure boat.”
“We will be compelled to board you forcibly!”
“Cunningham!”
“Yes?”
“Inform your officers and men … you can all go to hell!”
Night came. No one slept. Everyone strained through the darkness for some sight of shore-the first look at Eretz Israel. Nothing could be seen. The night was misty and there were no stars or moon and the Star of David danced on brisk waves,
Around midnight a Palmach section head tapped Karen on the shoulder. “Karen,” he said, “come up to the wheelhouse with me.”
They threaded their way over the prone bodies to the wheelhouse, which was also packed with twenty of the crew and Palmach section heads. It was pitch black inside except for a bluish light from the compass. Near the wheel she could make out the husky outline of Bill Fry.
“Everyone here?”
“All accounted for.”
“All right, pay attention.” Bill’s voice sounded in the darkness. “I’ve talked it over with the Palmach heads and my crew and we’ve reached a decision. The weather off Palestine is socking in solid … fog all over the coast. We are carrying an auxiliary motor aboard capable of boosting our speed to fifteen knots. In two hours we will be inside territorial waters. If this weather stays bad we’ve decided to make a run for it and beach ourselves south of Caesarea.”
An excited murmur raced around the room.
“Can we get away from those warships?”
“They’ll think this tub’s the Thunderbird before I’m finished,” Fry snapped back.
“How about radar? Won’t they keep us on their screens?”
“Yeah … but they ain’t going to follow us too close to shore. They’re not going to risk beaching a cruiser.”
“How about the British garrison in Palestine?”
“We have established contact with the Palmach ashore. They are expecting us. I’m sure they’ll give the British an interesting evening. Now all of you section leaders have had special instructions at La Ciotat in beaching operations. You know what to expect and what to do. Karen, and you other two chiefs with children … better wait here for special orders. Any questions?”
There were none.
“Any arguments?”
There were none.
“I’ll be damned. Good luck and God bless all of you.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: A wind-driven mist whistled around the ancient and abandoned port of Caesarea, Palestine, and its heaps of rubble, broken walls, and moss-covered harbor which was in use four hundred years before the Christian era.
For five long centuries Caesarea-built by Herod in honor of Caesar-had been the capital of Roman Palestine. All that was left was ruin. The wind howled and churned up the
water into a swirling foam which dashed against rocks jutting far into the sea.
Here the revolution against Roman tyranny ended with the slaughter of twenty thousand Hebrews and their great sage, Rabbi Akiva, who had called his people to fight for freedom with Bar Kochba, met his martyrdom. The Crocodile River still flowed to the sea where Akiva ‘was skinned alive.
A few yards south of the ruins were the first buildings of a collective Jewish fishing village named Sdot Yam (Fields of the Sea). This night no fisherman or his wife slept.
They were all crouched throughout the ruins and they silently, breathlessly strained their eyes to the sea. They numbered two hundred and were joined by two hundred more Palmach soldiers.
A flashlight signal blinked out from the ancient Tower of Drusus which jutted into the surf, and everyone tensed.
Aboard the Star of David, Bill Fry’s teeth tightened on a cigar stub and his hands tightened on the wheel of the old ship. He zigzagged her in slowly, inching past treacherous reefs and shoals. On deck the refugees pressed toward the rail and steeled themselves.
The Star of David shuddered and creaked as her timbers slashed into a craggy boulder! A single flare spiraled into the air! The melee was on!
Everyone scrambled over the sides, diving into shoulder-high water, and began fighting foot by foot through the surf toward the shore line several hundred yards away.
As the flare burst, the fishermen and Palmachniks scrambled from their cover and waded out to meet the refugees. Many slipped and fell into potholes or were overturned by a sudden wave and went down on slimy rocks, but nothing could stop them. The two forces met! The strong hands from the shore grabbed the refugees and began dragging them in.