Chapter Thirteen

Lost on the Ark
© Jeannie St. John Taylor

“And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate, and seven pairs of the birds of the heavens also, male and female, to keep their offspring alive on the face of all the earth.”  Gen. 6:19; 7:2,3

Sprinting ahead of his brothers towards his uncle’s voice, Shem was the first to see Paseah materialize from the depths of the dark hallway, scrawny arms and naked five-hundred-year-old legs pumping furiously. Just as Shem reached him, the hem of the robe Paseah had tucked into his belt worked free and swung down to his feet, tripping him. Shem grabbed his uncle’s shoulders to prevent a fall.

“Where’s Father?” He tried not to hold so tightly to his uncle, but fear wouldn’t permit him to loosen his grip.

Paseah stared in his nephew’s face, eyes wide with terror, spikes of gray hair standing up in all directions, chest heaving. He looked like an entirely different person from the self-assured man Shem had come to know over the past few days. Without a word, Paseah’s eyes slid sideways in the direction he’d just come. An unintelligible sound gurgled from his throat. He broke free of Shem and pushed past Japheth and Ham just as they caught up, breathing hard.

The bears! Shem shot down the corridor with his brothers in close pursuit. He checked every open door, refusing to allow his mind to linger on what he might find.

“Looking for someone?” Father calmly emerged from behind a heavy door and closed it.

Sucking air, Shem doubled over with his hands facing inward on his quads and his elbows out. He fought tears of relief. Arriving seconds later, Ham collapsed onto his back on the floor and Japheth leaned against the wall, gasping for breath.

            Noah studied them curiously. “What’s the matter with you?”

            “Us?” Shem straightened, still breathing hard. “We thought bears mauled you.”

            “Bears?”

            “I expected to find you in a bloody heap on the floor,” Japheth said. He sounded a little angry and Shem was feeling a little angry himself. He supposed the emotion covered fear.

            “What are you talking about?” Genuine surprise elevated Noah’s voice before a look of recognition slowly spread over his face. “Oh. You heard my brother scream.” He raised his eyebrows in amusement. “Did I forget to tell you Paseah gets a little obsessed about some things?”

            “About what things?” Ham stood defiantly in front of his father, arms crossed. Ham was evidentially covering a lot of fright, too. His father kept a long look leveled on him before reopening the door he’d just closed. “See for yourself.” He lifted a lighted torch from the wall, still holding Ham’s eyes, and handed the light to his son. He stood aside while Ham entered the room torch-first.

            Shem was tempted to ask if the bears were in the room, but he knew his father would never put Ham in real danger. Ham knew it, too.

            Grinning, Noah closed the door behind his son. A few moments later, a scream matching Paseah’s sounded from behind the door and Ham burst out looking whiter than a newborn lamb. Father slid down the wall laughing so hard tears ran down his face. “You scream like your uncle.”

            Ham spluttered incoherently and prepared to exit down the corridor.

            “Wait!” Shem’s eyes traveled toward the offensive room. “What’s in there?”

Lips pressed in a tight line, Ham thrust the torch toward him. Shem accepted it and peeked inside, but all he saw was empty room. He entered and walked halfway to the back before he understood. Against the far wall two huge sleeping pythons lay laced together like knee-high sandal straps. The largest snake sported a lump the size of small deer near his middle. The other, probably female, revealed a smaller bulge. Maybe a skunk. Well fed and apparently ready to sleep for a several months, the snakes threatened no one.

Backing out of the room, Shem joined his father’s laugh-fest. Japheth took the torch, checked out the room and did the same. 

“Paseah . . . has a . . . snake . . . paranoia . . .  too.” Noah choked out the words between snorting guffaws. Gales of merriment echoed through the ark.

“Not funny.” Ham balled up fists.

“Sorry.” Shem spread his palms toward his brother. “Really . . . sorry.”

Gradually, Shem, Japheth and Noah managed to subdue their laughter and apologize. “Tell you what.” Shem said. “If you forgive us for making fun of you, I’ll take care of all snakes the entire time we’re in here.”

A lengthy glare preceded Ham’s one-word answer. “Deal.”

            “There’s no deal if you hold a grudge.” Shem held out his hand and Ham shook it, then punched his brother in the gut. “Ooof!”

            “Now we’re even.”

            Japheth and father shook their heads, baffled. Shem knew his relationship with Ham puzzled the two of them because they couldn’t understand the single life. They both had wives. He and Ham had only each other. Until Eudocea arrived.

            “How’d the snakes get in there?” Japheth asked Father.

            The look Father gave without speaking a word answered the question. Events were taking place much as Father had predicted. Just as God promised they would. Shem was lost in his own silent world of “too soon” thoughts when Ham mentioned the bears.

            “What bears?” Noah asked.

            “Two grizzlies. Outside one of the second floor hay storage rooms.”

            “Isn’t that the direction my brother went?” Father asked.

 Sudden fear swept Shem. “Oh no! Paseah!” Where was his uncle?

Noah directed with his torch, barking instructions. “Japheth!” He pointed in the direction they’d last seen Paseah. His youngest son sprinted away. “Ham, first level. Shem, lower level.”

Hurrying to the closest stairway, Shem rode the smooth railing to the bottom the way he’d done as a child. It was one of the few banisters that hadn’t left splinters in his behind and sliding was still faster than the steps. He doubted he’d find Paseah down on the lowest level, but who knew? Paseah hadn’t appeared completely rational the last time Shem saw him. Getting lost on the ark with its maize of rooms and hallways was easy to do and his uncle could have wandered down to the lower level in his confusion. Shem had no idea how many stairways they’d constructed over the years. Too many to count.

Dare he yell his uncle’s name? How would they ever find the man if he didn’t? But any noise might put both his and Paseah’s lives in danger. Shem would have to search every room and every hallway the length of the three-hundred-cubit ark. It could take hours. Literally. He couldn’t rush the job and risk coming upon the bears unexpectedly.

 He cautiously stepped inside one doorway and investigated the room. Empty. He’d have to move faster than this. If his uncle had seen the bears, he could be hiding somewhere, anywhere, hoping for rescue before the bears spotted him. Shem remembered a flock of his own chickens that had been terrified by a coyote. They all flew to the safety of a tree, but the coyote just sat below them, waiting patiently. Eventually terror overwhelmed three, causing them to flap from the safe perch and offer themselves up for lunch. Would Paseah be a chicken if he found the bears?

Shem picked up his pace, disposing of the next three rooms in mere seconds.

            All the doors on this level had been affixed years ago since the family built from the first floor up. Most stood open, waiting, and Shem only had to stick his torch inside and run light around the perimeter of the room. He checked room after room on both sides of one hallway then started up the next, carefully closing and latching each door as he went to keep track of his progress. No use in searching twice.

            All were vacant.

            With every step and each additional place examined, Shem’s concern for his uncle mounted. He continually reminded himself that he’d gotten lost here as a child and made it out safely. Paseah would be fine. Fine.

So why was his mouth dry and his hands shaky?

Maybe because there’d never been bears and dangerous snakes on the ark before.

Or maybe because a good bit of time had already passed and he knew if anyone else had found Paseah they’d have sounded the all clear signal down one of the feed elevators or communication openings.

            Two hallways completed, Shem entered the ark’s large center area. Unable to see to the far end of the room where the waterwheel rested silently behind a wooden fence intended to keep animals out, he lit several of the torches set in the wall near him.         

The immense space spread out before him two stories high, seventy-five cubits wide and as many cubits long. Massive support beams marched in four rows down the length of the room. Trees intended for birds and climbing things were anchored in the floor and rose the entire twenty cubits to the ceiling, branches intact. Dead center of the room, a round pool sloped gently downward. Nothing but a dry hollow now, it would become a pool for large animals when the ark floated and Noah opened the water slot low in the ark.

Fresh water would flow though the slot to fill the pool as well as provide running water for the cleansing room in the family quarters. Using the principles discovered by two of Cain’s descendants, Tubal-cain, who forged instruments in bronze and iron and his brother Jubal, who made musical instruments, Shem and Father had collaborated on a design for tubes that could carry water throughout the ark. One entire room on the top deck held replacement parts carefully packed in sawdust.

The water would rush through a waterwheel turned by some of the larger animals. A series of wooden troughs and tipping buckets would direct it to provide fresh drinking water throughout the ark. Additional tubes would flush animal and human waste from an opening above the water near the top of the ark. The family would actually have a shower and toilet like the washing rooms in the elegant homes in the city near them. Quite an improvement over the current wooden one-seater poised over the running stream behind their house.

Shem walked over to the empty pool trying to remember the number of times he’d water-proofed it with pitch. Hundreds? Standing at the edge he held his torch downward to see into the depression. A large lump of some kind lay on the bottom where there shouldn’t be anything.

His heart thudded. Paseah? The bump was big enough to be his uncle. Shem’s breathing accelerated. How would Father feel if his own brother died on the ark when Father had been trying to spare Paseah’s life by bringing him on? Father would be devastated if, after a life dedicated to the Lord, God allowed this to happen in the very ark God commanded Noah to build.

Shem moved nearer and something flicked away from the bump. He cried out involuntarily and jumped back. Slowly he moved closer again and leaned in aiming the torch directly at the lump. Crocoodiles! A crocodile that shouldn’t be on the ark yet had just whipped its tail out. First bears and then snakes and now crocodiles! Did they need to start locking the ark at night?

“Pssst! Shem.”

Paseah! Shem followed the sound of the whisper with his torch. His uncle stood with his back pressed against the wall, arms out, hands spread, eyes large, obviously afraid to move. “Crocodiles.”

“I saw.” Shem whispered, too. No point in disturbing dangerous animals.

“Bears that direction.” Paseah nodded in the direction of the waterwheel.

“Where? How’d you see anything?” The darkness had been impenetrable when Shem first entered the area. He tiptoed to his uncle and Paseah clutched Shem in a desperate hug.

“Had a torch. Went out. Lost.” Paseah clung to Shem’s arm with two clammy hands. “Get me out of here!”

Shem could feel the man’s frail body trembling. Strange how much more youthful father seemed than his one-hundred-years-younger brother. Shem could see the torch lying at his uncle’s feet. He could also see the bears at the far end of the room. “Move very slowly. We don’t want to call attention to ourselves.”

With one arm encircling his uncle, Shem guided him back to the hall he’d recently cleared. Closing the door behind them, he exhaled with relief. “You’re safe now Uncle.” All danger past, he spoke in a normal tone.

In a flash, Paseah morphed from a delicate elderly gentleman to a tornado of raw fury. “You and my idiot brother nearly got me killed!” He jerked the neck of his robe down to reveal bruised shoulders. “Look what you did when you grabbed me upstairs! Bruised me you oaf!”

He stomped away, but got only three doors down before stopping. He turned on Shem with a murderous expression. “Lead me to the exit!”

Surprised, Shem stared openmouthed. He hadn’t even had time to call up to let Father know his brother was all right. “Let me just . . .”

“Now!” An expletive exploded from Uncle.

“This way.” Shem remained unruffled on the outside though he could feel heat rising to his face. In a way he didn’t blame his uncle. Who wouldn’t get mad under the circumstances? But no one had deliberately tried to harm him. Surely Paseah understood that.

Walking briskly ahead of his uncle, Shem tried not to listen to Paseah rant about the depth of evil and stupidity he’d seen in Noah, how Paseah deserved a more competent older brother and how his own actions in sending a slave to fetch that ridiculous woman for Ham had been brilliant. Just brilliant. He’d been a little worried it might not be fair to Ham before. But not now. Now he was ecstatic he’d tricked his nephew. Let Noah’s son endure her. Better than one of his own boys. As long as he was obligated to find a husband for her who better than one of Noah’s sons?

As they approached the stairway, Shem stepped aside to allow the older man to go first. Against his better judgment, Shem’s mind was already burrowing into the “ridiculous woman” statement. He assumed Paseah meant Ham’s wife. What had his uncle done? What had he deliberately stuck Ham with? His brother had given his word and he couldn’t back out of the agreement. But maybe with the Flood closing in, a bad wife was better than no wife.

At a blood-curdling scream from the stairway, Shem snapped back to the present. Near the top of the stairs, Paseah stood face to face with two lions, a tawny female and larger male with a bushy black mane. They looked like the pair he and Ham had spotted on the hillside earlier.

“Run Uncle!” He yelled.

Paseah didn’t move.

Taking the stairs two at a time while still grasping the torch, Shem grabbed his catatonic uncle. Throwing him over one shoulder, Shem ran down the stairs and darted around a turn. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the lions quietly watching their departure.

As soon they reached the closest feed elevator, Shem dumped his uncle on the thick floor, jumped on beside him and began yanking on the pulley ropes. Paseah huddled in the middle of the floor as far from the open sides as possible. Arrogant Uncle gone. Meek Uncle back.

Shem understood his uncle’s fear. The elevators weren’t really intended for hauling people, but no animals would be on the elevator. He’d keep his uncle away from predators and get him out of the ark as quickly as possible. When they stopped on the third floor they’d be only a few doors from the outside. Hopefully, Shem could spirit Paseah off the ark with little additional trauma. The man looked ready to collapse.

The events of the day had left Shem feeling unsettled, too. Father told them all along that his calculations revealed possibly as many as forty-five-thousand animals would some day troop onto the ark. But it had sounded preposterous to Shem and he’d never completely believed it.

And he had never considered that many of them could offer a threat.

Until now.

“You okay?” Shem asked. When his uncle failed to respond, Shem glanced his direction. Paseah stared straight ahead like a dead man. “Oh. Afraid of heights.” Shem remembered feeling terrified of the elevator as a boy. Falling down the open shaft could easily kill a man.

“No.” Paseah croaked. A scorpion bigger than his hand posed beside him, tail up.