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passes tonight, Moshe thought. Arabs vowed to drive the Jews into the sea. Perhaps it will happen as they prophesied, but never again will Jews die like sheep without a fight. “Never again,” Moshe murmured, watching the running lights of the gunboat charge through the sea like the red eyes of a bull.
    Run, run, run, chanted the gunboat.
    “Never again!” answered Moshe. “We will not run again.” The heat of anger charged through his body. Like David against Goliath, if the little State of Israel was indeed born tonight, it would stand and fight. And the Ave Maria would also fight and die rather than give up her children to the detention camps of Cyprus. There had been enough useless suffering.
    God of Abraham, prayed Moshe, remember us. The gunboat was less than a quarter mile off the stern, and still it had not veered from its straight course toward the rescue vessel. Searchlights now clicked to life and split the dark night with their shafts. Moshe was reminded of the lights that had searched the skies of London for Nazi bombers during the Blitz. Now, with the same earnest determination, the lights searched for the victims of Nazi tyranny. In a flash of disbelief, Moshe said, “To them we’re all the same. All the enemy.”
    Moshe glanced up toward the wheelhouse, where Ehud held the little ship steady. Seconds more and they would be discovered. The Ave Maria chugged bravely ahead. The lights from the gunboat were now a mere four hundred yards behind them.
    “God of Abraham—God of Zion,” Moshe whispered. Then he was hit from behind with the force of someone bursting through the hatch and onto the deck. He stumbled forward, spilling his coffee and falling over a rope coil.
    “I will not be taken!” cried a desperate voice. “I cannot! Let me die!” It was the young woman. She clambered over Moshe’s prostrate form and ran to the railing.
    “Stop!” shouted Moshe, fighting to regain his footing. “Don’t jump!”
    But the young woman didn’t even pause as she threw herself over the side of the boat.
    “Oh, God!” Moshe cried. Then, without thought, he, too, was over the rail and in the water.
    Cold blackness engulfed him, instantly filling his boots and dragging him downward. He knew he could not be more than a few feet from the young woman. Struggling to the surface, he gasped for air. Then, awkwardly treading water, he fought the heaviness of his boots and clothing as he searched for her. Her body would struggle to survive, he knew, even though her mind longed for death.
    Three yards from him he heard her choke as she battled the seas that sought to claim her. He plunged beneath the surface and pulled off his boots. Then, with one more breath, he swam through the foaming wake of the Ave Maria to her side.
    She flailed wildly against the pull of death, striking Moshe hard across the cheek. He went under and grabbed her around the waist.
    Then he burst up for air, pulling her into a hammerlock as he kicked his powerful legs to stay afloat.
    “Stop fighting, you idiot!” he shouted. “You’ll kill us both!” She lay still in his arms. Had she slipped into unconsciousness?
    “Let me die,” she moaned, coughing and spitting out seawater. “Oh, let me!”
    “Shut up, or I’m liable to.” Moshe’s left arm circled under her chin and kept her head above water while his right arm worked to keep them afloat. She struggled briefly as a wave slapped her across the face, filling her mouth with brine.
    “Relax!” he shouted angrily. What in heaven’s name had he done?
    Jumping into the sea after a lunatic two full miles from shore?
    The Ave Maria chugged farther away to his left, the fishing boat’s engine stuttering as she dipped down behind another wave. To his right, the gunboat loomed. Moshe didn’t relish the idea of ending his life beneath a British gunboat as chopped fish food.
    “God of Abraham!” he shouted against death’s whirlpool. There was no time to swim away from the path of