e greater than ourselves; and now they are so terribly wicked that
we are in worse danger than before. There is only one thing to be done
with them, and that is to destroy them every one."

So he sent a great rain-storm upon the earth, and it rained day and
night for a long time; and the sea was filled to the brim, and the water
ran over the land and covered first the plains and then the forests and
then the hills. But men kept on fighting and robbing, even while the
rain was pouring down and the sea was coming up over the land.

No one but Deucalion, the son of Prometheus, was ready for such a storm.
He had never joined in any of the wrong doings of those around him, and
had often told them that unless they left off their evil ways there
would be a day of reckoning in the end. Once every year he had gone to
the land of the Caucasus to talk with his father, who was hanging
chained to the mountain peak.

"The day is coming," said Prometheus, "when Jupiter will send a flood to
destroy mankind from the earth. Be sure that you are ready for it, my
son."

And so when the rain began to fall, Deucalion drew from its shelter a
boat which he had built for just such a time. He called fair Pyrrha,
his wife, and the two sat in the boat and were floated safely on the
rising waters. Day and night, day and night, I cannot tell how long, the
boat drifted hither and thither. The tops of the trees were hidden by
the flood, and then the hills and then the mountains; and Deucalion and
Pyrrha could see nothing anywhere but water, water, water--and they knew
that all the people in the land had been drowned.

After a while the rain stopped falling, and the clouds cleared away, and
the blue sky and the golden sun came out overhead. Then the water began
to sink very fast and to run off the land towards the sea; and early the
very next day the boat was drifted high upon a mountain called
Parnassus, and Deucalion and Pyrrha stepped out upon the dry land. After
that, it was only a short time until the whole country was laid bare,
and the trees shook their leafy branches in the wind, and the fields
were carpeted with grass and flowers more beautiful than in the days
before the flood.

But Deucalion and Pyrrha were very sad, for they knew that they were the
only persons who were left alive in all the land. At last they started
to walk down the mountain side towards the plain, wondering what would
become of them now, all alone as they were in t