Deucalion's Flood

(…) Soon, heavy black clouds covered the whole earth. On and on they came until the entire sky was one vast expanse of black and all nature was clouded over.
Suddenly, sky and earth alike were lit up by a dazzling flash, and an ominous clap of thunder shook the whole world, echoing and re-echoing like a harbinger of doom. There followed a deadly silence, heavy with fear. Then suddenly disaster struck. Amid a frightful turmoil of lightning and thunderclaps there began a downpour which seemed like a thousand waterfalls tumbling from the heavens. Down teemed the rain the clouds had gathered from the boundless ocean, in an inexhaustible and endless deluge.
Soon water covered the plains and the heights were flooded, yet the cataclysm continued unabated until all nature was one vast sea from horizon to horizon and even the high mountains were inundated. Now only lofty Olympus and the twin peaks of Parnassus still showed above the waters.
Where men had once tilled the fields, fish now swam, and where man’s flocks had once grazed, schools of dolphins now sported. By rights, not a single human being should have survived the catastrophe. And yet it was not so. For once more Prometheus had thwarted Zeus’ plans and saved the human race from total destruction.

DEUCALION KING OF PHTHIOTIS
Prometheus had a son, Deucalion, who was king of Phthiotis, and he had warned him of the impending flood and told him what he must do to save himself and his family.
As soon as he had received his instructions, Deucalion set to work. Hundreds of venerable oaks and straight and lofty cypress trees fell to the blow of his axe. For Deucalion was building an ark, a great vessel which would hold not only his family but a host of animals as well.
With the eager and untiring help of his wife, Pyrrha, and their children, Deucalion’s work went forward briskly. The keel was carved from thick tree-trunks, the ribs slotted into it and the decks nailed on with wooden pegs. The seams were carefully caulked with pitch. Finally the roof was added, and that, too, was given a good coating of tar.

When all was ready, the animals began to go into the ark. They all arrived and went on board of their own accord, one male and one female of every beast and bird in the world, from the proud lion to the crawling snake. They offered one another no harm but went quietly to their appointed places as the wise titan Prometheus had ordained.
With the help of Pyrrha and their children, Deucalion stocked the ark with sufficient food to last them all, man and beast, for many days.

By the time all was ready, the skies were dark with clouds, so Deucalion ordered his wife and children to get on board without delay, and when they had done so, he and his eldest son, Hellen, mounted the gangplank and pulled it up behind them. It was clear that the weather was not going to wait, and hardly had they made the hatches fast than the storm broke.
Soon the rising waters had lifted the ark from the earth. For nine days and nine nights it drifted at the mercy of the tempest while Pyrrha and Deucalion listened anxiously to the drumming of the seemingly endless rain. But on the morning of the tenth day, a sudden bump told them that the ark had found land once more. Deucalion ran to open a window. The rain had stopped, but a sheet of water stretched to the horizon in all directions, save for a little islet crowned by twin peaks where the ark had come to rest. (…)