In Spacious Times Author:Justin McCarthy General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1916 Original Publisher: John Lane Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can selec... more »t from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III PHILEMON WHEN Hercules skipped from his pinnace to the quay and looked about him he found it hard to realise that he had been so long away from home. It was many a good year since he had last sailed from Plymouth, and yet the place did not seem changed in any way. So far as he could judge from a general glance there was not a new building in the town. He might be just about to set forth upon sonic feat of navigation instead of returning from the ends of the earth. Almost immediately after he landed he met a man whom he knew well, a fellow mariner, who greeted him with a cheery nod and a flick of the fingers, as if he had parted from him but yesterday in the parlour of the "Dolphin" instead of having never clapped eyes upon him for a long term of time. Flood knew well enough that it was usual for Englishmen like himself to range on the surface of the great deep, to explore undreamed-of countries and to come home as carelessly as if they had lounged into the next street. Therefore he felt almost angry with himself for experiencing any surprise at the matter of fact in his reception by his old acquaintance. Yet he had to admit that he did feel some surprise and that he wished it was a little more wonderful for a man to return, as he had returned, from the further rims of ocean to his own land. After Hercules, thus thinking, had walked a certain way along the sea front he turned to the right into a sloping side street and halted before a house a little way up. It was an ancient house with a handsomely carved doorway in an Italianate design of flowers and fruit; ...« less