All at once, Hurtali was conscious of a change. Inside the Ark everything was strangely quiet. Not a roar, not a bark, not even a squeal disturbed the stillness. Just in front of him on the roof was a chimney. He put his ear down. There was a sound, but it was faint and different. It rose and fell with contented regularity. It was a low, munching, crunching sound, as if the hundreds of little creatures were moving their jaws up and down all at once.
A sympathetic twinge shot through Hurtali. He remembered suddenly and definitely that he had had no breakfast. He sat up and scanned the water for whales. Just then a noise came up the chimney as if some of the little beings were gathered there shouting and stamping. Hurtali looked. At the bottom stood the men he had seen before at the window. With them was a curious four-legged beast with a long neck that stretched up the chimney to the very top. The men spoke to the creature. Slowly it bent its head, and one of the men clambered up on it. Then with infinite deliberation it stretched its neck out again, carrying the man to the very top of the chimney.
The little man stood on the edge of the chimney.
Hurtali straightened up in surprise. But the little man did not seem in the least alarmed or afraid. He grasped the edge of the chimney and cautiously climbed out on it. Then he turned toward Hurtali and bowed low. He was an old man with a thin white beard that reached nearly to his feet, and he wore a tremendous turban wound and re-wound about his head.
Noah sharply clapped his hands. The giraffe’s nose appeared again in the chimney, stacked up with bowls of food. One by one, Noah removed them and set them down, with a bow, on the roof before Hurtali. Then, with the same slow gravity, he mounted himself again on the giraffe’s head and started to descend as he had come.
Hurtali was dumb with surprise. But he had been brought up to be polite. So, just as Noah disappeared through the chimney, he gasped out a “Thank you,” which was pretty weak for a giant, but which boomed through the Ark, and set all the animals to squealing, nevertheless.