Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from In Spacious Times
He had crammed so much of the pith of existence into the formal numeration of his calendar; he had voyaged so much and warred so much; had wrestled with the ele ments so much and run down and up so many rungs Of the ladder Of fortune that the multitude of his experiences had marked themselves upon his face. It was as if the incessant pounding and battering of the fists of adventure upon his countenance had bruised it into a kind Of Odd smoothness, like the visage Of a figure-head that stares at spray or sun with the same composure. Any one would take the man at the first glance for a sailor, just one sailor with another, one unit of the hundreds Of English sailors that used the sea and were heroes and pirates unawares, as it were. It would need a second glance, or perhaps a third, and each a keen one, to discern that the man shielded no workaday character with that seeming calmness and uniformity Of cheeks and chin and forehead.
His companion made him a curious contrast and foil, for he was short even to squatness, yet was so largely shaped as to seem almost as broad as he was long. He was plainly a Celt and his Welsh blood showed itself in his darkness Of favour. Ink-black hair and beard emphasised the swarthiness of his skin and the angry darkness Of his eyes. His great neck and throat, tanned to the blackness Of a jack, seemed as massive as a bull's and ?agrantly proclaimed the force and vigour Of their owner, a force and vigour again asserted by the huge hands, as hairy as a bear's paws, which now rested on the rail and held his elbows. Even a shrewd judge of humanity, surveying the two men, would have declared that this dusky fellow was the mightier man of the pair. Yet such a shrewd Observer would have erred.
You seem, said the small man to the large man, glad to be coming into port.
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