"You would, would you?" grunted Calvin. But the question was rhetorical. Already his mind was busy searching for some other way out. For the first time in his life, he felt the touch of cold about his heart. Could this be fear, he wondered. But he had never been afraid of death.
Crouching down again to be out of the wind and rain, he told himself that knowledge still remained a tool he could use. The plant must know something that was, perhaps, useless to it, but that could be twisted to a human's advantage.
"What made you come to a place like this to seed?" he asked.
"Twenty nights and days ago, when I first took root here," said the plant, "this land was safe. The signs were good for fair weather. And this place was easy of access from the water. I am not built to travel far on land."
"How would you manage in a storm like this, if you were not rooted down?"
"I would go with the wind until I found shelter," said the plant. "The wind and waves would not harm me then. They hurt only whatever stands firm and opposes them."
"You can't communicate with others of your people from here, can you?" asked Calvin.
"There are none close," said the plant. "Anyway, what could they do?"
"They could get a message to the fisheries station, to get help out here for us."
"What help could help me?" said the plant. "And in any case they could not go against the wind. They would have to be upwind of the station, even to help you."
"We could try it."
"We could try it," agreed the plant. "But first one of my kind must come into speaking range. We still hunt our great improbable chance."
There was a moment's silence between them in the wind and rain. The river was noisy, working against the rock of the island.
"There must be something that would give us a better chance than just sitting here," said Calvin.
The plant did not answer.
"What are you thinking about?" demanded Calvin.
"I am thinking of the irony of our situation," said the plant. "You are free to wander the water, but cannot. I can wander the water, but I am not free to do so. This is death, and it is a strange thing."
"I don't get you."
"I only mean that it makes no difference—that I am what I am, or that you are what you are. We could be any things that would die when the waves finally cover the island."
"Right enough," said Calvin impatiently. "What about it?"
"Nothing about it, man," said the plant. "I was only thinking."
"Don't waste your time on philosophy," said Calvin harshly. "Use some of that brain power on a way to get loose and get off."
"Perhaps that and philosophy are one and the same."
"You're not going to convince me of that," said Calvin, getting up. "I'm going to take another look around the island."
The island, as he walked around its short margin, showed itself to be definitely smaller. He paused again by the black rock. The moss was lost now, under the water, and the crack was all but under as well. He stood shielding his eyes against the wind-driven rain, peering across at the still visible shore. The waves, he noted, were not extreme—some four or five feet in height—which meant that the storm proper was probably paralleling the land some distance out in the gulf.
He clenched his fists in sudden frustration. If only he had hung on to the sailplane—or any decent-sized chunk of it! At least going into the water then would have been a gamble with some faint chance of success.
He had nowhere else to go, after rounding the island. He went back to the plant.
"Man," said the plant, "one of my people has been blown to shelter a little downstream."
Calvin straightened up eagerly, turning to stare into the wind.
"You cannot see him," said the plant. "He is caught below the river bend and cannot break loose against the force of the wind. But he is close enough to talk. And he sends you good news."
"Me?" Calvin hunkered down beside the plant. "Good news?"
"There is a large tree torn loose from the bank and floating this way. It should strike the little bit of land where we are here."
"Strike it? Are you positive?"
"There are the wind and the water and the tree. They can move only to one destination—this island. Go quickly to the windward point of the island. The tree will be coming shortly."
Calvin jerked erect and turned, wild triumph bursting in him.
"Good-by, man," said the plant.
But he was already plunging toward the downstream end of the island. He reached it and, shielding his eyes with a hand, peered desperately out over the water. The waves hammered upon his boots as he stood there, and then he saw it, a mass of branches upon which the wind was blowing as on a sail, green against black, coming toward him.
He crouched, wrung with impatience, as the tree drifted swiftly through the water toward him, too ponderous to rise and fall more than a little with the waves and presenting a galleonlike appearance of mass and invincibility. As it came closer, a fear that it would, in spite of the plant's assurances, miss the island, crept into his heart and chilled it.
It seemed to Calvin that it was veering—that it would pass to windward of the island, between him and the dimly seen shore. The thought of losing it was more than he could bear to consider; and with a sudden burst of panic, he threw himself into the waves, beating clumsily and frantically for it.
The river took him into its massive fury. He had forgotten the strength of it. His first dive took him under an incoming wave, and he emerged, gasping, into the trough behind, with water exploding in his face. He kicked and threw his arms about, but the slow and futile-seeming beatings of his limbs appeared helpless as the fluttering of a butterfly in a collector's net. He choked for air, and, rising on the crest of one wave, found himself turned backward to face the island, and being swept past it.
Fear came home to him then. He lashed out, fighting only for the solid ground of the island and his life. His world became a place of foam and fury. He strained for air. He dug for the island. And then, suddenly, he felt himself flung upon hard rock and gasping, crawling, he emerged onto safety.
 
He hung there on hands and knees, battered and panting. Then the remembrance of the tree cut like a knife to the core of his fear-soaked being. He staggered up, and, looking about, saw that he was almost to the far end of the island. He turned. Above him, at the windward point, the tree itself was just now grounding, branches first, and swinging about as the long trunk, caught by the waves, pulled it around and onward.
With an inarticulate cry, he ran toward it. But the mass of water against the heavy tree trunk was already pulling the branches from their tanglings with the rock. It floated free. Taking the wind once more in its sail of leaves, it moved slowly—and then more swiftly on past the far side of the island.
He scrambled up his side of the island's crest. But when he reached its top and could see the tree again, it was already moving past and out from the island, too swiftly for him to catch it, even if he had been the swimmer he had just proved himself not to be.
He dropped on his knees, there on the island's rocky spine, and watched it fade in the grayness of the rain, until the green of its branches was lost in a grayish blob, and this in the general welter of storm and waves. And suddenly a dark horror of death closed over him, blotting out all the scene.
A voice roused him. "That is too bad," said the plant.
He turned his head numbly. He was kneeling less than half a dozen feet from the ............