It was all jungle and
desolation, and then suddenly they came upon a little white Temple.
It doesn't matter what happened afterwards. I've myself forgotten
most of it, but I remember that the sailors used the Temple in
different ways to keep their hopes and expectations alive. Their
expectations that one day a ship would come and save them . . . and
so far as I remember they became imaginative about the Temple, and
fancied that the Unknown God of it would help them to regain their
private affairs: one of them wanted to get back to his girl, another
to his favourite pub, another to his money-making, another to his
collection of miniatures. And they used to sit and look at the
Temple day after day and expect something to happen. When the ship
came at last they wouldn't go into it because they couldn't bear to
think that something should happen at last and they not be there to
see it. Oh yes, one of them went back, I remember. But his actual
meeting with his girl was so disappointing in comparison with his
long expectation of it in front of the Temple that he took the next
boat back to the island .
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