Exodus - Leon Uris [87]
Mossad Aliyah Bet men made counterbribes to the officials to get the ship on the seas, and the Jackson, now renamed the Promised Land, ran the blue and white Star of David to her mast top in open challenge.
Hasty meetings took place at the Admiralty, Chatham House, and Whitehall. The implications of the situation for British policy were clear, and it was obvious that the Promised Land had to be stopped at all costs. The British issued angry threats to the French. British warships waited outside Toulon. The French answered by granting permission to the Promised Land to sail.
The Promised Land set out from Toulon mid the cheers of the refugees aboard her. The instant she passed the three-mile zone she was escorted by two waiting British cruisers, the Apex and Dunston Hill.
For the next three and a half days Bill Fry steered the Promised Land straight for Palestine. Her long thin smokestack puffed and her engines groaned and her decks bulged, and her watchdog cruisers watched.
The Apex and Dunston Hill kept in constant radio contact with the Admiralty in London. As the Promised Land edged to within fifty miles of the Palestine coast, the British broke the rules of illegal blockade. The Apex came close to the steamer and sent a salvo over her ancient bows. The cruiser’s bull horns blasted and her loud-speaker sent a voice over the water: “Illegal ship! Stand by to be boarded!”
Bill Fry bit his cigar. He grabbed a megaphone and stepped onto the bridge. “We are on the high seas,” he shouted. “If you board us here it will be piracy!”
“Sorry, chaps, just following orders. Are you going to accept a boarding party peacefully?”
Bill turned to his Palmach chief who was standing behind him. “Let’s give these bastards a reception.”
The Promised Land turned on full steam in an attempt to sprint away from the cruisers. The Apex moved alongside her, then cut in sharply and her steel bow rammed the ancient steamer amidships. The blow splintered deep into the steamer’s hull over the water line and she shuddered under the impact. The Apex sent out machine-gun fire to drive the refugees off the deck and make it clear for a landing party.
British marines, wearing gas masks and carrying small arms, poured over the bow of the Promised Land and moved back to the superstructure. Palmachniks unrolled accordions of barbed wire in the path of the British and then loosed a barrage of rocks on them, followed by streams of water from pressure hoses.
The British were swept back to the bow by the attack. They fought off the Palmach with small arms and called for reinforcements. More marines boarded, this time with wire cutters. Another attack mounted toward the superstructure. Again the water hoses pushed them back and again the British returned, under cover of machine-gun fire from the Apex. They reached the barbed wire and cut it in time to receive scalding steam jets from the Palmach. Now the Palmachniks jumped to the attack and drove the British back. They overpowered the marines and threw them into the sea, one by one.
The Apex stopped the attack to fish their men out of the water, and the Promised Land, a huge hole in her side, chugged off once again. The Dunston Hill chased her down and pondered the advisability of another ram. The steamer might well go down with one more blow. It was too dangerous to risk. Instead, the Dunston Hill poured on heavy-caliber machine-gun fire that raked the decks clean of refugees and Palmach. The Dunston Hill’s boarding party came up amidships on ladders. A wild hand-to-hand brawl followed. With flailing clubs and an occasional pistol shot, the British pressed the attack toward the ladder leading up to the captain’s bridge.
Meanwhile, the Apex recovered and raced to the scene again. The two cruisers boxed the steamship in. The Apex party boarded again behind a tear-gas barrage, and with the Dunston Hill marines pressing