This hitherto unpublished piece, recently unearthed, was written in April 1954, shortly after the novel Christopher Homm, which was published in 1965.

NOAH ambulated across the plains of Hyde Park, in a broad avenue delimited by rows of elms. His sparse white hair gambolled around his pink cranium. Downward pointing were the long eyelashes of his half-closed lids, the ropes of his beard, and the folds of his great cloak. A deep voice rumbled in the caverns within him.

'It looks like rain again, Mrs Noah!'

Mrs Noah hung on his arm like an ovoid balloon tethered there, or a vast rugby ball tapering towards her fur-lined boots and the scarf that bound her head.

'I should have brought an umbrella but I was afraid of the wind!'

The two rocked in the great gusts and blew a little further along the avenue. They were like gulls on earth. Their own power was not sufficient for them to do more than to slip from one pocket to another of still breathable air.

'There's been a lot of this weather lately; it bodes no good.'
Mr Noah held out one hand like a prophet declaiming. His eyelids batted revealing oceans of watery blue. He should have brought a trident.

The next gust brought the two of them to the great impluvium or Round Pond. The ring of asphalt was the gyve of a deity towering and invisible. ...