Apres Moi Le Deluge

-- Just a bit of silliness -- "Baissez le rideau, la farce est jouee..." ---- Daumier 39 & 1/2 days had passed; the rain had lessened. Noah, grungy and grumpy, paced the wet deck like a caged Lion of Judah. Reading the Odyssey by blubber-light, Jonah, a free-thinker, cruised in his whale below; he marveled, captainishly, carefully pronouncing the unfamiliar Greek, an uninvented tongue he couldn't speak. Ham, an adherent to all the dietary restrictions, was relieved at the journey's almost-close. Consultation of the Holy Books had proved he wasn't kosher and, therefore, could not be served. Still, Shem and Japhet eyed him oddly. They had a lean and hungry look. The wives, sensible lot, cleaned the kennels, did the chores and tried to keep an even keel in the anachronistic mess. They drifted onward, tired of fishing fruitless waters, doubtful now of being made fishers of men. All things considered, it was a perfectly normal situation: men were mystics and women staid and sturdy workers. And yet, Ararat, still beneath the waters, may not have been the only futuristic structure in this grey, flat seascape.