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the gunboat. No time unless he left the young woman to die alone. “God!” he called again.
    “Let me die!” screamed the woman. “Please. Save yourself!”
    “Shut up!” he demanded, treading water as death approached.
    “Swim away,” she pleaded. “This was my choice, not yours.”
    Her dark, wet hair floated around him like seaweed and clung to his face. He did not want to die. Not like this. “Hear, O Israel …” He began to recite the Shema: “The Lord our God is one …”
    “Save yourself!” she cried again.
    “ The Lord our God …” He struggled to swim, but his burden weighed him down. He held tight to the young woman as the bow of the gunboat loomed only a hundred yards from where they waited in its path. So this was what it meant to die.
    “ Hear, O Israel … ,” Moshe shouted louder. “Say it with me,” he demanded. “Say it!”
    “ Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one,” they gasped together.
    Then, as they gazed in disbelief, the gunboat began a slow turn away from them, away from the path of the Ave Maria . Shafts of light skated across the swells like water spiders, passing within a few feet of where Moshe and the young woman bobbed helplessly. If they were trapped in the light, they would be dragged from the water to the relative safety of a British prison.
    The lights moved nearer, sweeping inches from them.
    “Let me go.” The young woman struggled feebly. “I cannot be taken.”
    In an instant Moshe knew that, for this woman at least, death would be more merciful than the detention cages.
    “Be still!” he shouted as the drumming engines covered his voice.
    “When I say now , hold your breath.”
    She nodded desperately, eyeing a bright circle sliding directly toward them.
    “NOW!” shouted Moshe, filling his lungs and pulling her under with him. The spot passed over them, illuminating the water in an eerie green wash, then sweeping back again over the place where the young woman’s hair fanned out on the water’s surface. “It’s nothin,’
    sir,” Moshe imagined a sailor saying. “Nothin’ but a bit o’kelp.”
    The gunboat slid by, a mere fifty yards from where they surfaced, filling their lungs with precious air. The dim outlines of sailors moved across her deck, little suspecting that they were passing only seconds from a catch. The strong wake of the gunboat swept toward them, pushing them hard through the three-foot swells toward shore.
    “Ride with it!” Moshe yelled, holding tight to his charge. “Kick your feet! Kick them, I say, and we both might live!”
    The gunboat continued her wide sweep, shutting down the searchlights one by one as Moshe watched. He began a slow crawl toward the lights of the harbor.
    What was it that had made the British ship turn away when she was so close to her quarry? Moshe glanced back at the gunboat’s retreating hulk as she cut a broad semicircle back to Tel Aviv. She had simply not known what lay a few yards beyond her probing lights.
    Moshe thought of the Ave Maria . With the gunboat safely away, Ehud might try to look for the two of them. The “crew” had no doubt witnessed her dramatic leap into the sea. God, don’t let him turn back to search. Tell him it is hopeless, prayed Moshe.
    The weight of the young woman’s skirt pulled him down and wrapped itself around his rapidly tiring legs. He stopped his slow crawl toward shore to tread water as she lay back against him in misery.
    “You’ll have to take your skirt off,” he instructed. “I cannot fight the sea and that, too.” He felt her stiffen in a protest of fear.
    “I’ll drown,” she choked.
    “Oh, so now she wants to live!” he mocked. “Take your skirt off or we both drown.”
    As Moshe supported her, she awkwardly unbuttoned the heavy wool skirt and kicked it away. Choking on saltwater, she struggled to pull her arms free. Her lightweight slip floated about her body, and she immediately felt more buoyant.
    Finally she relaxed in Moshe’s