n sky or huddled in a rude tent
amidst the disorder of merchandise.

But the men under the purao had no thought of sleep. The same
temperature in England would have passed without remark in summer; but
it was bitter cold for the South Seas. Inanimate nature knew it, and the
bottle of cocoanut oil stood frozen in every bird-cage house about
the island; and the men knew it, and shivered. They wore flimsy cotton
clothes, the same they had sweated in by day and run the gauntlet of the
tropic showers; and to complete their evil case, they had no breakfast
to mention, less dinner, and no supper at all.

In the telling South Sea phrase, these three men were ON THE BEACH.
Common calamity had brought them acquainted, as the three most miserable
English-speaking creatures in Tahiti; and beyond their misery, they knew
next to nothing of each other, not even their true names. For each had
made a long apprenticeship in going downward; and each, at some stage of
the descent, had been shamed into the adoption of an alias. And yet not
one of them had figured in a court of justice; two were men of kindly
virtues; and one, as he sat and shivered under the purao, had a tattered
Virgil in his pocket.

Certainly, if money could have been raised upon the book, Robert Herrick
would long ago have sacrificed that last possession; but the demand
for literature, which is so marked a feature in some parts of the South
Seas, extends not so far as the dead tongues; and the Virgil, which he
could not exchange against a meal, had often consoled him in his hunger.
He would study it, as he lay with tightened belt on the floor of the
old calaboose, seeking favourite passages and finding new ones only less
beautiful because they lacked the consecration of remembrance. Or he
would pause on random country walks; sit on the path side, gazing over
the sea on the mountains of Eimeo; and dip into the Aeneid, seeking
sortes. And if the oracle (as is the way of oracles) replied with no
very certain nor encouraging voice, visions of England at least
would throng upon the exile's memory: the busy schoolroom, the green
playing-fields, holidays at home, and the perennial roar of London, and
the fireside, and the white head of his father. For it is the destiny of
those grave, restrained and classic writers, with whom we make enforced
and often painful acquaintanceship at school, to pass into the blood and
become native in the memory; so that a phrase of Virgil speak