Once upon a time there was a great flood, which swept every living thing away and covered all the land.
Now when the flood had subsided, there came a great drought, which baked the mud left behind by the flood-waters until it was as hard as rock. The whole land became a desert, bleak and empty: nothing whatever grew in it.
It happened that when the waters of the Great Flood were at their highest, they covered everything but a tall mountain which stood in the middle of the land. The peak of the mountain showed above the waters, and one stormy night there came to the mountain a man, floating on a log, the only creature alive on the surface of the waters. When he reached the great rock he clung to it and dragged himself on to it, pulling himself a few feet above the level of the water. Then he fainted from weariness.
He lay sleeping on the ledge of the rock for many hours, and when he awoke it was night once more. The Moon was shining brightly, however, looking at his reflection in the water, and by his light the man noticed an opening higher up the rock face. He climbed up to it, and found that it led into a large round cavern whose walls were smooth and whose floor was flat: it was as if it had been carved out by giants’ hands.
The Moon, who shone his beams full into the cave, lit up a strange plant that grew from the rocky floor. The man had never seen such a plant; it was shaped like a small tree, and had thin branches from each of which hung a single round fruit of the size of an apple. There was nothing else. The man was very hungry, and went to the tree, picked a fruit, and ate it. It had almost no taste, but satisfied his hunger entirely. He needed to eat only one.
The fruit had a core, inside which, he could hear, by shaking it, a quantity of seeds. He threw the core into a corner of the cave and lay down on the floor to sleep, for he was still most weary.
He was awoken by the warm rays of the Sun on his face. They were coming, not from the mouth of the cave, but from a small opening like a window in the far wall of the cave, which he had not seen in the night. He looked at the tree in the centre of the cave. It was not green or brown, but a bright, silver-grey, while the fruits were gold.
Every branch bore a fruit at its end, except for that from which he had taken a fruit the previous night.
Then the man caught his breath. There was another tree in the cave. The second one was growing on the far side of the cave, just where the core which he had thrown away must have fallen.
It seemed beyond belief that a plant could spring out of solid rock within a few hours, and flourish without soil or water. He walked over to the new tree. It was identical in colour and form to the first one. He reached out his hand to take another fruit, but knew, suddenly, that he was not yet hungry, or, indeed, thirsty. He looked through the opening in the cave wall. There was nothing to be seen but green water to the horizon and blue sky. It did not seem that there was anywhere to go to, even if he could contrive to escape from the rock. Yet on the rock there was enough to keep him alive: a single fruit would sustain him for a long time, and its core would provide a new tree. He noticed that the trees each had twelve fruits and twelve branches.
That evening he ate another fruit. He still did not feel hungry, but thought it prudent to eat once more. He at once felt sleepy. He left the core of the fruit outside the cave, on a level patch of rock, since he did not want the cave to fill with trees.
The next morning a tree was growing outside the cave, as he had expected, with twelve fruits on it. He thought that it would be wise to throw some of the cores into the sea, as it seemed that every spent tree would engender twelve new ones, and thus the rock would become crowded with trees.
The man wondered how he was to occupy the empty days. Nothing ever appeared on the horizon, and there was no reason to suppose that there was any other person or beast floating alive on the water. But somehow he did not become lonely or bored. He had a feeling of calmness without any particular happiness, joy, or satisfaction attending it. He felt no anxiety about the future. Time itself seemed suspended.
That day he climbed about on the rock. It was not great in size and in shape like a cone. The height of the peak above the water was hardly fifty feet. The man stood on the peak and looked all around. As usual, nothing at all was visible, though the sight of the sunlight sparkling on the very gentle ripples of the flood was quite pleasant.
When the Sun sank down beyond the waters, casting a red glow upon them, he found once again that he had no desire to eat, and resolved to try what would befall if he should eat nothing for the space of two days. Sleep came swiftly upon him.
The following day the man bethought himself to bathe in the waters; this thought had not come to him before. He stood on a flat stone by the water’s edge and looked down.
The water was very still and clear, and his reflection was visible. He knelt down to examine his face. It looked wonderfully healthy. His beard had not grown at all. The silence and stillness were so absolute that he did not like to break them by plunging into the water or kicking with his legs, so he lowered himself gently into the water and floated.
That evening he still felt no hunger. He ate his third fruit from the first tree and flung it far out into the flood. With a splash it fell and sank. It was a geat wonder that so little food could sustain him for so long. He resolved to discover how long he might be sustained by a single fruit, by eating at increasing intervals: three days before the next fruit, four before the fifth, and so on. He marked the passage of the days with a chalky stone on the wall of the cave. Between the eleventh and the last fruits of the first tree there passed eleven days: still he felt no hunger.
The man was enchanted by the three trees and their strange fruit, and felt an affection for them, as his only living companions on the rock. On the sixty-sixth day after his coming to the cave, the man ate the last fruit from the first tree. But he did not throw its core into the water as he had done with the other nine. He planted it outside the cave, over against the other tree, so that (he hoped) they would make a pair of living silver gate-posts. The first tree was now quite bare of fruit.
That night he lay down and slept as usual. In the morning the bare tree was no longer there. It had not merely withered and died, it had vanished without a trace; once its usefulness was ended, it seemed. But going to the cave mouth he found, as he had expected, another silver tree, over against the first one that he had planted. By now the man had seen so many marvels that he scarcely wondered any more.
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