Sleeping under the stars
At the far end of the town of Papeete, three beggars “were seated on the beach under a purao tree.” It was “late.” “A motley troop of men and women, merchant clerks and navy officers” marched home. “Long ago darkness and silence” had gone from house to house “about the tiny pagan city.” Only the street laps shone on, “making a glow-worn halo” in “the umbrageous alleys” or “drawing a tremulous image on the waters of the port.” “A sound of snoring” ran among the piles of lumber “by the Government pier.” This imagery evokes a feeling of serenity.
A failure
Herrick’s career was one of “unbroken shame.” He did not drink, he was “exactly honest,” he was “never rude to his employers,” yet was “everywhere discharged.” “Bringing no interest in his duties, he brought no attention.” His day was “a tissue of things neglected and things done amiss.” “From place to place and from town to town,” he carried a character of one “thoroughly incompetent.” No man can “bear the word applied to him without some flush of colour.” He was so ashamed of himself that he even ceased “writing home”. This imagery is rather depressing and is supposed to show Herrick’s gradual fall.
Cold and hopeless
“As time went on, good nature became weary, and after a repulse or two,” Herrick became “shy.” There were women enough who “would have supported a far worse and a far uglier man,” however Herrick “never met or knew them.” Even if he did both, “some manlier feeling would revolt,” and he “preferred starvation.” “Drenched with rains, boiling by day, shivering by night,” his diet begged out of “rubbish heaps.” He had known what it was to be “resigned,” what it was “to break forth in childish fury of rebellion against fate, and what it was to sink into the coma of despair.” This imagery evokes a feeling of doom and gloom.
