Free Refiner's Fire by Mark Helprin Page B

how on that thin dark line Jews were arising to the normal tasks of farming, factory, and fight. They imagined the cows being milked, the chickens scattering like idiots in the face of golden feed, the soft earth beneath barn doors, the dawn shadows, and the cry of the birds. The distant strip had so much import that they stood on deck mute and still. What moved them was not so much the legend and that they were at last coming home, but rather a simple vision of the sun coming up there on the beginnings of another days work, morning light coming through windows in a warm and beautiful land.
    At first light, Levy saw two British destroyers heading for him in perfect symmetry. He calculated their distance and speed, went to the microphone, and called general quarters. From his flying bridge he saw that the response could not have been better. In the time it took him to take off his leather jacket, tuck his shirt into his pants, adjust his pistol belt and ammunition clips, and put his jacket on again, they were completely at the ready. But completely at the ready meant that lines of laundry suddenly were strung across the decks, babies began to receive very long and luxurious open-air baths, and everyone ate with great ceremony and deliberation. They waited as the two destroyers, then in bright sunlight, approached and veered out to the north and south so that they could execute wide turns and come about parallel to the
Lindos Transit
and its course.
    This they did, looking fast and beautiful. Avigdor was at the helm; Levy studied his adversaries through the ship’s glass. They were twin ships (always a pleasure) of the S-class. Despite their efficiency and impressiveness they were no mystery to him. He knew them well and had been aboard. Completed at the end of the war, they were modern and extravagantly equipped. They had six boilers which collectively could bring up 40,000 shaft-horsepower. This in turn could propel the ship at 30 knots or more. There were four 115 mm. guns and (more to the point) half a dozen 40 mm.’s and numerous mounted machine guns. These ships had a complement of 250 men, and Levy assumed that they were outfitted with ingenious boarding equipment. An appropriate scan revealed about a hundred marines on the decks of each ship; gangways; hoses; and nets ready to swing. The marines were fully regaled in tropical battledress. Pan helmets, pistols, rifles, submachine guns, clubs, shields, boarding pikes, and battering rams cluttered the decks. The soldiers were smoking, talking, drinking from white mugs. They were calm, and must have subdued some tough ships to get that way.
    Levy was happy at the sight of two trim new British ships. He tried not to be, but instinctively he felt reassured. How often had American and British ships ridden the ocean together in preparation for a fight. For a second or two he thought of surrendering to the nearby English-speaking, young, war-bred officers like himself. But when he remembered why he was in the Mediterranean, and that he could easily die at the hands of the Royal Navy, its blue beauty disappeared from his eyes and he returned to the boat of Jews.
    By the time
Shackleton
and
Stanford
closed, running about 200 feet off both sides of the
Lindos Transit,
the group was nine miles from the coast. Timing was most important. Levy was hoping that they would not attempt to board before the three-mile limit. This would prevent many casualties. But he had heard that the British began their actions on the high seas, according to the premise that illegal blockade runners were outside the law and deserved to be treated in like fashion. The British were lords of that part of the Mediterranean anyway and could do what they wished, and they had had some outstanding failures when, like gentlemen, they had waited for the three-mile limit. Suddenly the dilapidated immigration ships could seem like speedboats and the docile Jews like polecats.
    At eight and a half miles, Levy