The past is going to show me some of its secrets, to tell me how men of long ago lived and died and how far they had advanced to that point on the road of civilisation at which I stand in my little hour of existence.
That of Bastin was mildly interested, no more.

Obviously, with half his mind he was thinking of something else, probably of his converts on the main island and of the school class fixed for this hour which circumstances prevented him from attending.

Indeed, like Lot's wife he was casting glances behind him towards the wicked place from which he had been forced to flee.
Neither the past nor the future had much real interest for Bastin; any more than they had for Bickley, though for different reasons.

The former was done with; the latter he was quite content to leave in other hands.
If he had any clear idea thereof, probably that undiscovered land appeared to him as a big, pleasant place where are no unbelievers or erroneous doctrines, and all sinners will be sternly repressed, in which, clad in a white surplice with all proper ecclesiastical trappings, he would argue eternally with the Early Fathers and in due course utterly annihilate Bickley, that is in a moral sense.

Personally and as a man he was extremely attached to Bickley as a necessary and wrong-headed nuisance to which he had become accustomed.
And I! What did I feel?
I do not know; I cannot describe.