Toward dawn, she said,
"I hear the River calling. Do you hear it, too?"
"Yes," he said, "I hear it."
He tried to fight the call, and so did she. But it wasn't any use.
They left the ghosts of themselves dancing in the dawn-light and went down to the pier and boarded the raft and cast off.
The current seized them greedily and the roar of the falls took on a triumphant tone.
Ahead, in the wan rays of the rising sun, mist was rising high above the gorge.
They sat close together on the raft, in each other's arms.
The roar was a part of the air they breathed now, and the mist was all around them.
Through the mist, a vague shape showed.
Another raft? Farrell wondered.
He peered into the ghostly vapor, saw the little trees, the sandy shore.
An island ...
Suddenly he understood what the islands in the River represented.
Neither he nor Jill had truly wanted to die, and as a result the allegory which they had jointly brought to life and entered into contained loopholes.
There might be a way back after all.
Springing to his feet, he seized the pole and began poling.
"Help me, Jill!" he cried.
"It's our last chance."
She, too, had seen the island and divined its significance.
She joined him, and they poled together.
The current was omnipotent now, the rapids furious.
The raft lurched, heaved, wallowed.
The island loomed larger through the mist.
"Harder, Jill, harder!" he gasped.
"We've got to get back—we've got to!"
He saw then that they weren't going to make it, that despite their combined efforts the current was going to carry them past their last link with life.
There was one chance, and only one.
He kicked off his shoes.
"Keep poling, Jill!" he shouted, and, after placing the end of the mooring line between his teeth and biting into it, he leaped into the rapids and struck out for the island for all he was worth.
Behind him, the raft lurched wildly, tearing the pole from Jill's grasp and sending her sprawling on the deck.
He did not know this, however, till he reached the island and looked over his shoulder.
By then, there was just enough slack remaining in the line for him to belay it around a small tree and secure it in place.
The tree shuddered when the line went taut, and the raft came to an abrupt stop several feet from the brink of the falls.
Jill was on her hands and knees now, trying desperately to keep herself from being thrown from the deck.
Gripping the line with both hands, he tried to pull the raft in to the island, but so strong was the current that he would have been equally as successful if he had tried to pull the island in to the raft.
The little tree was being gradually uprooted.
Sooner or later it would be torn out of the ground and the raft would plunge over the falls.
There was only one thing to do.
"Your apartment, Jill!" he shouted across the whiteness of the rapids. "Where is it?"
Her voice was barely audible.
"229 Locust Avenue. Number 301."
He was stunned.
229 Locust Avenue was the apartment building next to the one where he lived.
Probably they had almost run into each other a dozen times.
Maybe they had run into each other, and forgotten.
In the city, things like that happened every day.
But not on the River.
"Hold on, Jill!" he called.
"I'm going the long way around!"