Lawrence Durrell - Judith

Isaac had bought the “Zion” for a song in the thirties and harnessed her to the trade of smuggling despite her shape, which suggested that her original designer had intended her for use only in shallow estuaries, on lakes, or perhaps as an auxiliary to a dredger. It was with misgivings that he turned her nose to the open sea for the first time, for he was uncomfortably aware of her duckboard lines. Yet she was steel-built, he told himself, and his confidence was rewarded, for, though she fumed and wallowed and stank, she answered the wheel quite well at ten knots, and her pumps worked in an approximate fashion. What more could one ask?

Deeply relieved, Isaac took out a heavy insurance on her and put her to work, aided by his crew of ruffians of all nationalities, clad in rags and tatters, like gypsies. He had spent many happy years in her, now smuggling currency, now gold bars, specie, forged stamps, hashish, antiquities… everything one could think of. “Zion” was his accessory after the fact.

As for Isaac Jordan himself, he was a stout grey man in his sixties, heavy of build and absolutely wedded to his cutty pipe. People said he slept with it in his mouth. In summer he wore a soiled yachting-cap of ancient cut and an equally soiled suit of pyjamas with a blue stripe. On the breast pocket of these, however, he sported a number of First World War decorations, both English and French, which earned him a certain measure of sympathy and even latitude from the port naval authorities. In winter, this impressive display was transferred to the breast of his coarse blue sweater of the kind issued to submarine artificers and worn under a sheepskin-lined duffle. Isaac was something of a character in the port and did not allow it to be forgotten that he was an ex-Naval Commander, “Retired R.N.”. Moreover, those who might have been forgiven for believing that his medals were from the prop-room, so to speak, soon found to their chagrin that they were real and had been awarded him for services described as “gallant” in the official citations. This, then, was Isaac’s own rather eloquent way of enjoying his retirement and his small pension; it may have been a tiring, if lucrative, profession, but he was suited to no other. The only really maddening thing about him from the point of view of the naval authorities was that they could never catch him in flagrante ; even on the few occasions when “Limpet” had pounced on “Zion” and boarded her, they had found her cargo innocent, indeed, quite unexceptionable. Isaac smiled and spat over the side with a kind of mournful satisfaction. Nor did he spare young Derek Noble of the “Limpet”. “Call yourselves a Royal Navy, eh? It’s gone down since I left it, that’s all I can say.” And if Noble did not choose to bandy words with him on the high seas it was because he knew very well that the banter would be continued at leisure over a glass of buttered rum in the Chatham Bar in Haifa the following evening.

Within the last few years, however, Isaac had somewhat changed the nature of his trade. Stirred by the fate of his fellow-Jews in Germany, he had volunteered to smuggle weapons into Palestine for the Jewish Agency. The journeys were longer and more dangerous, the profit nominal. Nevertheless, the old “Zion” plugged up and down the eastern Mediterranean full of crates demurely labelled “Agricultural Machinery”. His landfalls were many and curious, and seldom the same twice running. He brought all his skill and experience to bear now in blockade breaking, for the British blockade was tight. So far he had been successful — indeed, so successful as to cause a great deal of bad language and impotent signalling between the corvettes and destroyers which maintained the patrol of the northern reaches of the country. Isaac was always either inside or outside some statutory sea-limit, to the intense fury of “Limpet”, “Termagant”, “Havoc” and several others of the iron bloodhounds of the Fleet. They made books on him, they laid bets on him, they dreamed of catching him, but so far he had always managed to slip through the mesh. Derek Noble became so infuriated that he spoke darkly of putting a torpedo through “Zion” in the harbour “just to show that damned old rogue Jordan”. Other commanders developed their own theories about Isaac’s facility for disappearing at sea; these varied between notions of black magic and ideas of dematerialization. Isaac himself suggested mildly that the “Zion” was really a submarine. Once clear of harbour, he had only to submerge… No wonder “Limpet” always made a fool of herself.

On the spring dawn in question, they had been playing this elaborate game of cat and mouse along the shores of Turkey in a light but highly convenient sea-mist — convenient for Isaac, that is. The chase had been full of promise for young Noble, for it was clear that “Zion” was making a secret landfall somewhere along these forbidden headlands; the only question was whether he could intercept her on the homeward leg. In his mind’s eye he saw himself gazing down through her hatches at rows of neatly stacked rifles or grenades while Isaac puffed his pipe, for once completely at a loss for an explanation. That would be a moment to boast about. In fact, he had excited himself so much by the prospect of this encounter that he had stayed up on the bridge to brood upon it, as he stared into the vague darkness ahead with its packets of shifting mist. Somewhere out there the “Zion” plodded along, unconscious of the warship dogging her. On the other hand, they were getting uncomfortably near the forbidden sea-limits, Turkish territorial waters. He must be careful.

At about four-thirty, when the horizon had just begun to etch itself on the darkness, “Zion” slid off the radar screen and evaporated. Noble groaned slightly at the information and put down his night-glasses with a gesture of weariness. He drank some coffee and heard a waggish Signals Officer remark: “Gone to ground — we’ll have to start digging.” Noble turned “Limpet” through a slow arc of ten degrees and sighed. The dark coast ahead, he knew from his charts, was deeply indented and fretted with creeks and harbours; some of them had more than one entrance or exit. With her shallow draught, “Zion” could penetrate anywhere. Moreover, Isaac was not called upon to be law-abiding as “Limpet” was. “Too bad, Sir,” said a sympathetic voice. Noble shrugged off the sympathy with hauteur. “You wait, we’ll catch her on the home leg,” he said, though his voice lacked conviction. He felt suddenly sleepy — the dawn was coming up. “Limpet’s” engine drummed softly and her screw gnawed rhythmically in the still sea. He shook his fist across the intervening sea-miles of mist and darkness. “Ah, you wait!” he said. Well, once more they would have to cruise up and down in desolate fashion, like a cat before a mousehole, waiting for “Zion” to re-emerge on her homeward run. Peevishly, the young commander decided that it was time to turn in.

Surely this time everything would be different and they would catch old Jordan on the hop? One never knew in this game.

But by this time Isaac and his crew were fast asleep, disposed about the deck in inelegant positions, shrouded in sacks and tarpaulins. The young Yemeni boy, alarm pistol in hand, stood on watch, listening to the rhythmic throaty snorting which vibrated on the early morning air. Such arms as they carried were laid within easy reach of the sleepers. Isaac had not forgotten, before turning in, to haul down the tattered Red Ensign his ship bore and to substitute for it a Turkish merchant marine flag, carefully selected from a huge bundle of assorted flags — a veritable library — which he kept stowed in a locker. He had debated for a moment or two whether or not to back it up with a plague signal as well, but had finally discarded the idea — it might savour of over-acting. So they slept peacefully like a litter of cats, while the sun soared out of the sea and threw its cool shadows of cliff and headland upon the still waters in which “Zion” lay.