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comfort,” he said, snuggling in the chair. “You Yankee-Doodles know how to live.”
    “Any second thoughts at this point, Herb?”
    “About what?”
    “About sailing in this wretched scow.”
    “I don’t think it’s a wretched scow.”
    “It’s not the
Queen Mary.”
    “The
Queen Mary
isn’t running Jews to Palestine. Tough! It could run twenty thousand at a crack, and clear a million bucks on every run.”
    “Why have we been idle for a week?”
    “It took two days to install the armature. Then came this three-day gale. We’ll leave, don’t worry.”
    A cold gust flapped the blanket off Louis. Rose tucked it back in.
    “Herb, didn’t we simply panic in Rome, the three of us? That mob around the American embassy was just a lot of loafers, I’m sure, hoping for a little excitement after the declaration of war.”
    “Look, the police were arresting people who tried to go in, right and left. We both saw that. God knows what happened to them. And at that, they probably weren’t Jews.”
    “I’ll bet,” said Jastrow, “that if their passports were in order, Jews or not, they’re now quartered in some pleasant hotel, awaiting exchange for Italians caught in the States.”
    Rose snapped, “I wouldn’t go back to Rome if I could. I’m happy.”
    Jastrow said in perfect Hebrew, “And how are you progressing with your new language?”
    “Jesus Christ!” Rose stared at him. “You could teach it, couldn’t you?”
    “There’s no substitute,” Jastrow smiled, stroking his beard and resuming his Bostonian English, “for a Polish yeshiva education.”
    “Why the devil did you ever drop it? I wasn’t even bar mitzvahed. I can’t forgive my parents.”
    “Ah, the greener grass,” said Jastrow. “I couldn’t wait to escape from the yeshiva. It was like a jail.”
    Natalie meantime made her way to Rabinovitz’s cabin under the bridge. She had not visited it before. He offered her his chair at a desk piled with papers, dirty clothes, and oily tools, and sat on an unmade bunk, hunching against the bulkhead adorned with sepia nudes torn from magazines. The single electric bulb was so dim, and the tobacco smoke so thick, that Natalie could just make these out. At her embarrassed grin, Rabinovitz shrugged. He wore bulky grease-streaked coveralls, and his round face was mud-gray with fatigue.
    “It’s the chief engineer’s art collection. I took his room. Mrs. Henry, I need three hundred American dollars. Can you and your uncle help out?” Taken aback, she said nothing. He went on, “Herb Rose offered the whole amount, but he’s already shelled out too much. We wouldn’t have gotten this far if not for him. I’m hoping you and your uncle will give a hundred each. That would be fairer. Old men tend to be pikers, so I thought I’d put it to you.” Rabinovitz’s English was clear but heavily accented, and his slang was dated, as though it came from reading old novels.
    “What’s the money for?”
    “Fetchi-metchi.
“ He slid a thick thumb back and forth over two fingers, and wearily smiled. “Bribery. The harbor master won’t clear us to depart. I don’t know why. He started out friendly, but he changed.”
    “You think you can bribe him?”
    “Oh, not him. Our captain. You’ve seen him, that drunken bearded oldscalawag in the blue jacket. If we leave illegally, he forfeits his ship’s papers. The harbor master’s office is holding them. I’m sure he’s done it often, he’s a smuggler by trade. But it’s an extra.”
    “Won’t that be very dangerous?”
    “I don’t think so. If the coast guard stops us, we’ll say we’re test-running our repaired engine, and head back. We’ll be no worse off than we are.”
    “If we’re stopped, will he return the money?”
    “Good question, and the answer is that he gets paid when we pass the three-mile limit.”
    All week long, with too much time to think, Natalie had been imagining calamitous reasons for the failure to depart, and