Tell me if they are living--if living, where are they?
and in what condition?
Oh, I pray thee, tell me!" He drew nearer Arrius, so near that his hands touched the cloak where it dropped from the latter's folded arms.
"The horrible day is three years gone," he continued--"three years, O tribune, and every hour a whole lifetime of misery--a lifetime in a bottomless pit with death, and no relief but in labor--and in all that time not a word from any one, not a whisper.

Oh, if, in being forgotten, we could only forget! If only I could hide from that scene--my sister torn from me, my mother's last look! I have felt the plague's breath, and the shock of ships in battle; I have heard the tempest lashing the sea, and laughed, though others prayed: death would have been a riddance.

Bend the oar--yes, in the strain of mighty effort trying to escape the haunting of what that day occurred.
Think what little will help me.

Tell me they are dead, if no more, for happy they cannot be while I am lost.

I have heard them call me in the night; I have seen them on the water walking.