Exodus - Leon Uris [52]
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).