and, finding none, they fell from weariness and died with human folk,
that had no wings.

Then for the first time the sea-creatures--nymphs and
dolphins--ventured far from their homes, up, up through the swollen
waters, among places that they had never seen before,--forests whose
like they had not dreamed, towns and deluged farmsteads. They went in
and out of drowned palaces, and wondered at the strange ways of men.
And in and out the bright fish darted, too, without a fear. Wonderful
man was no more. His hearth was empty; and fire, his servant, was dead
on earth.

One mountain alone stood high above this ruin. It was Parnassus, sacred
to the gods; and here one man and woman had found refuge. Strangely
enough, this husband and wife were of the race of the Titans,--Deucalion,
a son of Prometheus, and Pyrrha, a child of Epimetheus, his brother; and
these alone had lived pure and true of heart.

Warned by Prometheus of the fate in store for the Earth, they had put
off from their home in a little boat, and had made the crest of
Parnassus their safe harbor.

The gods looked down on these two lonely creatures, and, beholding all
their past lives clear and just, suffered them to live on. Zeus bade
the rain cease and the floods withdraw.

Once more the rivers sought their wonted channels, and the sea-gods and
the nymphs wandered home reluctantly with the sinking seas. The sun
came out; and they hastened more eagerly to find cool depths. Little by
little the forest trees rose from the shallows as if they were growing