Exodus - Leon Uris [51]
A sudden roar brought her awake with a start. She looked up the ladder and it was daylight. Karen pushed her way up. Everyone was pointing to the sky where a huge four-engined bomber hovered over them.
“British! Lancaster Bomber!”
“Everyone return to your places and be calm,” the loud-speaker boomed.
Karen rushed back to the hold where the children were frightened and crying. She began singing at the top of her voice urging the children to follow:
Onward! Onward to Palestine
In happiness we throng,
Onward! Onward to Palestine
Come join our happy song!
“Everyone keep calm,” the loud-speaker said, “there is no danger.”
By noontime a British cruiser, HMS Defiance, appeared on the horizon and bore down on the Star of David, blinker lights flashing. A sleek little destroyer, HMS Blakely, joined the Defiance. The two warships hovered about the old tramp as she chugged along.
“We have picked up our royal escort,” Bill Fry said over the loudspeaker.
By the rules of the game the contest was over. Mossad Aliyah Bet had gotten another ship out of Europe and onto the high seas. The British had sighted the vessel and were following it. The instant the Star of David entered the three-mile limit off Palestine she would be boarded by a British landing party and towed off to Haifa.
On the deck of the Star of David the refugees hooted at the warships and cursed Bevin. A large sign went up which read: HITLER MURDERED US AND THE BRITISH WON’T LET US LIVE! The Defiance and the Blakely paid no attention and did not, as hoped, miraculously disappear.
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 fantail 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