Nearer, in the same abyss of waters, is a boat laden with many people, which, both by the excessive weight she has to carry and by the many and tumultuous lashings of the waves, loses her sail, and, deprived of every aid and human control, she is already filling with water and going to the bottom.

It is an admirable thing to see the human race so wretchedly perishing in the waves.
Likewise, nearer to the eye, there still appears above the waters the summit of a mountain, like unto an island, on which, fleeing from the rising waters, collect a multitude of men and women, who exhibit different expressions, but all wretched and all terrified, dragging themselves beneath a curtain stretched over a tree to shelter them from the unusual rains; and above them is represented with great art the anger of God, which overwhelms them with water, with lightnings, and with thunderbolts.
There is also another mountain-top on the right,( 41) much nearer the eye, and a multitude labouring under the same disasters, of which it would be long to write all the details; it shall suffice me to say that they are all very natural and tremendous, just as one would imagine them in such a convulsion.

In the ninth, which is the last, is the story of Noah when he was drunken with wine, lying on the ground, his shame derided by his son Ham and covered by Shem and Japhet.

Under the before-mentioned cornice which finishes the walls, and above the brackets where the lunettes rest, between pilaster and pilaster, sit twelve large figures--prophets and sybils--all truly wonderful, as much for their grace as for the decoration and design of their draperies.

But admirable above all the others is the prophet Jonah, placed at the head of the vault, because contrary to the form of this part of the ceiling, by force of light and shade, the torso, which is foreshortened so that it goes back away into the roof, is on the part of the arch nearest the eye, and the feet and legs which, as it were, project within the walls, are on the part more distant.