oo, ups  and downs. I seen a  crocodile bite  the fluke of  an
anchor same as I chew that quid.
     He took out of his mouth  the  pulpy quid  and, lodging  it between his
teeth, bit ferociously.
     -- Khaan! Like that. And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and
the livers of horses. Look here. Here they are. A friend of mine sent me.
     He fumbled out a picture postcard from  his inside pocket, which seemed
to be in its way a species of repository, and pushed it along the table. The
printed matter on it stated: <i>Choza de Indios. Beni, Bolivia</i>.
     All focused  their attention  on the  scene  exhibited, at  a  group of
savage women in  striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning,
sleeping, amid a  swarm of  infants (there must have  been quite a score  of
them) outside some primitive shanties of osier.
     -- Chews coca all day long, the communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs
like breadgraters.  Cuts  off  their  diddies  when they  can't bear no more
children. See them there stark ballocknaked eating a dead horse's liver raw.
     His postcard proved  a centre  of attraction for Messrs  the greenhorns
for several minutes, if not more.
     -- Know how to keep them off? he inquired genially.
     Nobody volunteering a statement, he winked, saying:
     -- Glass. That boggles 'em. Glass.
     Mr Bloom, without  evincing  surprise, unostentatiously turned over the
card  to peruse the  partially  obliterated address  and postmark. It ran as
follows: <i>Tarjeta Postal.  SeÑor A.  Boudin, Galeria Becche, Santiago, Chile</i>.
There was no message evidently, as he took particular  notice. Though not an
implicit believer in the lurid story narrated (or the eggsniping transaction
for  that matter despite William Tell and the Lazarillo-Don  Cesar de  Bazan
incident  depicted in  <i>Maritana</i> on which occasion  the former's  ball passed
through  the  latter's hat), having  detected a discrepancy between his name
(assuming he was the person he  represented himself  to be  and not  sailing
under false  colours  after having  boxed  the compass  on the  strict  q.t.
somewhere) and  the  fictitious addressee  of  the  missive  which made  him
nourish some suspicions of our friend's <i>bona fides</i>, nevertheless it reminded
him  in  a way of  a  longcherished  plan  he meant to  one day realise some
Wednesday or Saturday of  travelling to  London <i>via</i> long sea not to say that
he had ever travelled extensively to any great extent but he  was at heart a
born  adventurer though by a  trick  of fate he had  consistently remained a
landlubber  except you call going to Holyhead  which was his longest. Martin
Cunningham frequently said he would work a pass through Egan but some deuced
hitch or other eternally cropped up with the net result that the scheme fell
through.  But  even suppose  it did  come to planking  down the  needful and
breaking Boyd's heart it was not so dear, purse permitting, a few guineas at
the outside, considering the fare to Mullingar where he figured on going was
five and six there and back. The trip would benefit health on account of the
bracing  ozone and  be in every way thoroughly pleasurable, especially for a
chap  whose  liver  was out of order, seeing the different places along  the
route,  Plymouth,  Falmouth,  Southampton  and  so  on,  culminating  in  an
instructive tour of the sights of the great metropolis, the spectacle of our
modern Babylon where doubtless  he would see the greatest improvement tower,
abbey,  wealth  of Park Lane to  renew acquaintance with. Another thing just
struck him as a by no  means bad notion  was he might have  a gaze around on
the spot to see about trying  to make  arrangements about  a concert tour of
summer  music embracing  the  most prominent pleasure  resorts, Margate with
mixed  bathing  and  firstrate  hydros  and  spas,  Eastbourne, Scarborough,
Margate and  so  on, beautiful  Bournemouth, the Channel islands and similar
bijou spots, which might prove  highly remunerative. Not,  of course, with a
hole and corner  scratch company or local ladies  on the job, witness Mrs C.
P.  M'Coy  type -  lend  me  your  valise  and I'll post you the ticket. No,
something top notch, an  all star Irish cast, the  Tweedy-Flower grand opera
company with its own legal consort as leading lady as a sort of counterblast
to the Elster Grimes and Moody-Manners,  perfectly simple matter  and he was
quite  sanguine of success, providing  puffs  in the local papers  could  be
managed by some fellow with a bit of bounce who could pull the indispensable
wires and thus combine business with pleasure. But who? That was the rub.
     Also, without  being actually positive, it struck him a great field was
to be opened  up in the line of opening up new routes to keep pace  with the
times <i>apropos</i> of the Fishguard-Rosslare route which, it was mooted, was once
more on the  <i>tapis</i> in the Circumlocution departments with the usual quantity
of  red tape and dillydallying of effete fogeydom and dunderheads generally.
A great opportunity there  certainly was for push and enterprise to meet the
travelling  needs  of the public at  large,  the  average man,  i.e.  Brown,
Robinson and Co.
     It was a subject  of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and no
small blame to  our vaunted  society  that the man in  the street, when  the
system really needed toning up, for a  matter of  a couple of paltry pounds,
was debarred  from seeing more of the world they lived in instead  of  being
always  cooped up since my old  stick-in-the-mud  took  me for a wife. After
all, hang  it, they  had their  eleven  and more humdrum months  of  it  and
merited  a radical change  of  <i>venue</i> after the  grind  of  city  life in the
summertime,  for choice,  when Dame  Nature  is  at  her  spectacular  best,
constituting  nothing  short of  a  new  lease of life. There  were  equally
excellent  opportunities  for  vacationists in the home  island,  delightful
sylvan spots for rejuvenation, offering a plethora of attractions as well as
a  bracing tonic  for the system  in and  around Dublin  and its picturesque
environs,  even,  Poulaphouca, to  which  there was a steam  tram,  but also
farther  away from the madding crowd, in Wicklow,  rightly termed the garden
of  Ireland,  an  ideal neighbourhood  for elderly wheelmen,  so long  as it
didn't  come down, and in the wilds of Donegal, where if report spoke  true,
the  <i>coup d'<oe>il</i> was exceedingly grand, though the  lastnamed locality was
not easily getatable  so that the influx of visitors was not as yet all that
it might  be  considering the signal benefits to be  derived from it,  while
Howth with its historic associations  and  otherwise,  Silken  Thomas, Grace
O'Malley, George IV, rhododendrons several hundred feet above sealevel was a
favourite  haunt with all  sorts  and conditions of men,  especially in  the
spring when  young men  s fancy, though it had its own  toll  of  deaths  by
falling off the cliffs  by  design or accidentally, usually, by the way,  on
their left leg, it being only about three quarters of an hour's run from the
pillar. Because of course  uptodate tourist  travelling was as yet merely in
its  infancy,  so to speak, and the accommodation  left much  to be desired.
Interesting to fathom, it seemed to him, from a motive of curiosity pure and
simple, was whether it was the traffic that created the  route or vice-versa
or the two sides in fact. He turned back the  other side of the card picture
and passed it along to Stephen.
     -- I  seen a Chinese  one time, related the doughty narrator, that  had
little  pills like putty and he  put them in the water  and they opened, and
every  pill  was something  different. One  was a ship, another was a house,
another  was a flower. Cooks rats  in your  soup, he appetisingly added, the
Chinese does.
     Possibly  perceiving an  expression  of  dubiosity on  their faces, the
globetrotter went on adhering to his adventures.
     -- And I seen  a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his
back. Knife like that.
     Whilst speaking he  produced a dangerous  looking clasp knife, quite in
keeping with his character, and held it in the striking position.
     --  In a knockingshop it was count of a  tryon  between  two smugglers.
Fellow hid  behind a  door, come up behind him. Like that.  <i>Prepare  to meet
your God</i>, says he. Chuck! It went into his back up to the butt.
     His  heavy glance, drowsily roaming about, kind of defied their further
questions even  should they  by any chance want  to.  That's  a  good bit of
steel, repeated he, examining his formidable <i>stiletto</i>.
     After which  harrowing <i>dÉnouement</i> sufficient to appal  the stoutest  he
snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before in his
chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket.
     -- They're  great  for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently quite
in the dark said  for the benefit of them all. That was why they thought the
park murders of the  invincibles was  done by  foreigners on account of them
using knives.
     At this  remark, passed obviously in  the spirit of  <i>where ignorance is
bliss</i>,  Mr  Bloom  and  Stephen,  each  in  his  own  particular  way,  both
instinctively  exchanged  meaning  glances,  in a  religious silence of  the
strictly <i>entre nous</i> variety however, towards  where Skin-the-Goat, <i>alias</i> the
keeper, was drawing spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His inscrutable
face, which was really a  work of art, a perfect  study in itself, beggaring
description,  conveyed  the impression that  he didn't understand one jot of
what was going on. Funny very.
     There ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was  reading by fits and
starts  a  stained  by coffee evening  journal;  another, the card  with the
natives <i>choza de</i>; another, the  seaman's discharge. Mr Bloom, so  far as  he
was personally  concerned, was just pondering  in  pensive mood. He  vividly
recollected when the occurrence alluded to  took place as well as yesterday,
some  score  of years  previously, in the days of the  land troubles when it
took  the  civilised  world  by  storm,  figuratively speaking, early in the
eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he was just turned fifteen.
     -- Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them papers.
     The request being complied with, he clawed them up with a scrape.
     -- Have you seen the Rock of Gibraltar? Mr Bloom inquired.
     The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that  might  be read as yes, ay,
or no.
     -- Ah, you've touched there  too, Mr Bloom said, Europa point, thinking
he had, in the  hope that the rover might possibly by some reminiscences but
he failed to do so, simply letting spurt a jet of spew into the sawdust, and
shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn.
     -- What year would that be about? Mr Bloom interpolated. Can you recall
the boats?
     Our  <i>soi-disant</i>  sailor  munched  heavily   awhile,   hungrily,  before
answering.
     --  I'm  tired of  all them rocks in  the sea, he said,  and  boats and
ships. Salt junk all the time.
     Tired, seemingly, he ceased. His questioner, perceiving that he was not
likely to get a great deal of  change out  of such a wily old customer, fell
to woolgathering on the enormous  dimensions  of the water  about the globe.
Suffice it to say that,  as a casual  glance at the map revealed, it covered
fully three fourths of it and he  fully realised accordingly what it  meant,
to rule the waves. On more than one occasion -  a dozen at the lowest - near
the  North Bull at Dollymount  he  had  remarked a superannuated  old  salt,
evidently derelict, seated habitually near the not particularly redolent sea
on the  wall,  staring quite obliviously  at it and it at  him, dreaming  of
fresh woods and  pastures new as someone somewhere sings. And  it  left  him
wondering why.  Possibly  he had  tried to find out the  secret for himself,
floundering up and down the antipodes  and  all that  sort of thing and over
and  under - well, not exactly under, tempting the fates.  And the odds were
twenty to  nil there  was really no secret about  it at  all.  Nevertheless,
without going into the <i>minutiae</i> of the business, the eloquent fact  remained
that the sea was there in all its glory  and in the natural course of things
somebody or other had to sail on it and fly in the face of providence though
it  merely went  to show how people usually  contrived to load that sort  of
onus  on  to  the  other  fellow  like  the hell idea  and  the  lottery and
insurance, which  were run on  identically the same  lines so that for  that
very reason, if no other, lifeboat Sunday was a very laudable institution to
which the public at large, no matter where living, inland or seaside,-is the
case might be, having it brought home  to them like that,  should extend its
gratitude also to  the harbourmasters and coastguard service who had  to man
the  rigging and push  off and out  amid the  elements, whatever the season,
when duty called <i>Ireland expects that every man</i> and so on, and sometimes had
a terrible time  of it in  the wintertime  not forgetting the Irish  lights,
Kish and others, liable to capsize at any moment rounding which he once with
his  daughter  had experienced  some remarkably choppy, not to  say  stormy,
weather.
     --  There was  a fellow sailed with me in  the  <i>Rover</i>,  the old seadog,
himself  a  rover,  proceeded.  Went  ashore  and  took  up  a soft  job  as
gentleman's valet at six quid a month. Them are  his trousers I've on me and
he gave me an oilskin and that jackknife. I'm game for that job, shaving and
brushup. I hate roaming about. There's my son now, Danny, run off to sea and
his mother got him took in a draper's in Cork where he could be drawing easy
money.
     -- What age  is he? queried  one hearer who, by the way, seen  from the
side, bore a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk, away from
the carking cares of office, unwashed, of course, and in a seedy getup and a
strong suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage.
     -- Why, the sailor  answered  with  a  slow puzzled  utterance. My  son
Danny? He'd be about eighteen now, way I figure it.
     The  Skibbereen father  hereupon tore open  his grey  or unclean anyhow
shirt with his two hands and scratched away at his chest on which was  to be
seen an image tattooed in blue Chinese ink, intended to represent an anchor.
     --  There was lice  in that bunk  in Bridgwater, he  remarked. Sure  as
nuts. I must get a wash tomorrow or next day. It's them black lads I objects
to. I hate those buggers. Sucks your blood dry, they does.
     Seeing  they  were all looking at his chest, he accommodatingly dragged
his  shirt more open  so that,  on  top of  the time honoured symbol  of the
mariner's hope and  rest,  they had a full view of the figure 16 and a young
man's sideface looking frowningly rather.
     -- Tattoo, the exhibitor explained.  That  was done when we were  lying
becalmed off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton Fellow the name of
Antonio done that. There he is himself, a Greek.
     -- Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.
     That worthy,  however, was  busily  engaged  in  collecting  round  the
someway in his. Squeezing or...
     --  See here, he said,  showing Antonio. There he is, cursing the mate.
And there he is  now, he added. The same  fellow, pulling the skin  with his
fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn.
     And in  point  of  fact  the young man  named Antonio's  livid face did
actually look  like  forced  smiling  and the  curious  effect  excited  the
unreserved admiration  of everybody,  including  Skin-the-Goat who this time
stretched over.
     -- Ay,  ay, sighed  the sailor, looking down on  his manly  chest. He's
gone too. Ate by sharks after. Ay, ay.
     He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expression
of before.
     -- Neat bit of work, longshoreman one said.
     -- And what's the number for? loafer number two queried.
     -- Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor.
     --  Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this time,
with some sort of  a half smile, for a brief duration only, in the direction
of the questioner about the number. A Greek he was.
     And then  he added,  with  rather gallowsbird humour,  considering  his
alleged end:
     -- As bad as old Antonio,
     For he left me on my ownio.
     The face of a streetwalker, glazed and haggard under a black straw hat,
peered askew round the  door of  the  shelter, palpably reconnoitring on her
own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill.  Mr Bloom,  scarcely
knowing  which  way to look,  turned  away on  the  moment,  flusterfied but
outwardly calm,  and picking up from the table the pink sheet of  the  Abbey
street organ which the jarvey, if such he was, had laid aside, he  picked it
up  and looked at the pink of the paper  though why  pink? His reason for so
doing was he recognised  on the moment round  the door the same face  he had
caught  a fleeting glimpse of that afternoon  on Ormond Quay, the  partially
idiotic female, namely, of  the lane, who knew the lady in the brown costume
does be with you (Mrs B.), and begged  the chance  of his washing.  Also why
washing, which seemed rather vague than not?
     Your washing. Still, candour compelled him to admit that he  had washed
his  wife's  undergarments when soiled in Holles Street  and women would and
did too a man's similar garments initialled with Bewley and Draper's marking
ink (hers were, that is) if  they really loved him, that is to say. Love me,
love my dirty  shirt. Still, just then, being on tenterhooks, he desired the
female's  room more than her company so it came as a genuine relief when the
keeper made  her  a  rude sign to take herself off.  Round  the side  of the
<i>Evening  Telegraph</i> he just caught  a fleeting glimpse of her  face round the
side of the  door with a kind of demented glassy  grin showing that  she was
not exactly all  there, viewing  with evident  amusement the group of gazers
round Skipper Murphy's nautical chest and then there was no more of her.
     -- The gunboat, the keeper said.
     -- It beats me, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen,  medically I am speaking,
how  a wretched  creature  like  that  from  the Lock Hospital, reeking with
disease, can  be  barefaced enough to  solicit or how any  man  in his sober
senses, if  he values his  health in  the  least. Unfortunate  creature!  Of
course, I  suppose some  man is  ultimately  responsible for  her condition.
Still no matter what the cause is from...
     Stephen  had  not  noticed  her  and  shrugged  his  shoulders,  merely
remarking:
     -- In  this country people sell  much  more than she  ever had and do a
roaring trade. Fear not  them that  sell the body but have not  power to buy
the soul. She is a bad merchant. She buys dear and sells cheap.
     The  elder man, though not by  any  manner  of means an  old  maid or a
prude, said  that it was nothing short of  a crying scandal that ought to be
put a stop to <i>instanter</i> to say  that women of that  stamp  (quite apart from
any oldmaidish  squeamishness  on the subject), a necessary  evil, were  not
licensed and medically inspected by the proper authorities, a thing he could
truthfully state he, as a <i>paterfamilias</i>, was a stalwart advocate of from the
very first  start. Whoever embarked on  a policy of  that sort, he said, and
ventilated the matter  thoroughly  would  confer a lasting boon on everybody
concerned.
     -- You, as a good  catholic, he  observed,  talking of  body and  soul,
believe in the soul.  Or  do you mean  the  intelligence,  the brainpower as
such, as distinct from any outside object, the  table, let us say, that cup?
I  believe in  that myself because it has been explained by competent men as
the  convolutions of the  grey  matter. Otherwise  we would never  have such
inventions as X rays, for instance. Do you?
     Thus cornered, Stephen had to make a superhuman effort of memory to try
and concentrate and remember before he could say:
     -- They tell me  on the  best authority it  is a  simple  substance and
therefore incorruptible. It would  be immortal, I understand,  but  for  the
possibility  of its  annihilation by its First  Cause, Who,  from all  I can
hear, is  quite capable of adding that to  the number of His other practical
jokes, <i>corruptio  per se</i> and <i>corruptio per  accidens</i> both  being excluded by
court etiquette.
     Mr  Bloom thoroughly acquiesced  in the general gist of this though the
mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth still he felt
bound to enter a demurrer on the head of simple, promptly rejoining:
     -- Simple?  I  shouldn't think  that is the  proper word. Of  course, I
grant you, to concede a point, you  do knock across a  simple soul once in a
blue moon.  But  what  I am anxious to arrive  at  is  it  is one  thing for
instance to invent  those rays RÖntgen did, Or the  telescope  like  Edison,
though  I believe  it was  before his time, Galileo was the man  I mean. The
same applies to  the laws, for example, of a farreaching natural  phenomenon
such  as electricity  but  it's a horse of  quite another  colour to say you
believe in the existence of a supernatural God.
     --  O,  that,  Stephen  expostulated, has  been  proved conclusively by
several  of  the best known passages in Holy Writ, apart from circumstantial
evidence. On this knotty point, however, the views of the pair,  poles apart
as they  were,  both  in schooling and  everything  else,  with  the  marked
difference in their respective ages, clashed.
     -- Has been? the more experienced of  the two objected, sticking to his
original point.  I'm  not so sure about that. That's a matter of every man's
opinion and, without dragging in the  sectarian side  of the business, I beg
to differ  with you  <i>in toto</i> there.  My belief is,  to tell  you the  candid
truth,  that those bits were genuine  forgeries all of them  put in by monks
most probably or it's  the big question of our national poet over again, who
precisely  wrote  them,  like  <i>Hamlet</i>  and  Bacon,  as  you  who  know  your
Shakespeare infinitely better than I, of  course I needn't  tell  you. Can't
you  drink that coffee, by the way? Let me stir it  and take a piece of that
bun. It's like one of our skipper's bricks disguised. Still, no one can give
what he hasn't got. Try a bit.
     -- Couldn't, Stephen contrived  to  get out, his mental  organs for the
moment refusing to dictate further.
     Faultfinding  being a proverbially  bad  hat, Mr  Bloom thought well to
stir,  or  try  to, the  clotted sugar  from  the bottom and reflected  with
something approaching acrimony on the Coffee  Palace and its temperance (and
lucrative) work. To be sure it was a legitimate object and beyond yea or nay
did  a  world of good. Shelters  such as the present one they were in run on
teetotal  lines  for vagrants  at night,  concerts,  dramatic evenings,  and
useful lectures (admittance free) by qualified men for the lower orders.  On
the other  hand, he  had a distinct  and painful recollection they  paid his
wife, Madam Marion Tweedy who had been prominently associated with it at one
time, a very modest remuneration  indeed for her pianoplaying. The idea,  he
was  strongly inclined  to believe, was to do good and net a  profit,  there
being  no  competition  to  speak  of.  Sulphate  of copper poison,  SO4  or
something in some dried peas he remembered reading of in a cheap eatinghouse
somewhere but he couldn't remember when it was or where. Anyhow, inspection,
medical inspection, of all eatables, seemed  to him more than ever necessary
which possibly accounted for the vogue of Dr Tibble's Vi-Cocoa on account of
the medical analysis involved.
     -- Have a shot at it now, he ventured to  say of the coffee after being
stirred.
     Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it, Stephen lifted the heavy mug
from the brown puddle - it clopped out of it  when  taken up - by the handle
and took a sip of the offending beverage.
     -- Still, it's solid food,  his  good genius urged, I'm  a stickler for
solid food, his one and  only reason being not gormandising in the least but
regular  meals as the  <i>sine qua non</i> for any kind  of  proper work, mental or
manual. You ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a different man.
     -- Liquids I can eat, Stephen said. But oblige me by taking  away  that
knife. I can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.
     Mr  Bloom  promptly  did  as  suggested  and removed  the  incriminated
article, a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing particularly  Roman
or  antique about it to the lay eye, observing that the point  was the least
conspicuous point about it.
     -- Our mutual  friend's stories are like himself, Mr Bloom,  <i>apropos</i> of
knives, remarked  to  his  <i>confidente  sotto  voce</i>.  Do you  think  they are
genuine?  He could spin those  yarns for hours on end all night long and lie
like old boots. Look at him.
     Yet still, though his eyes were thick with sleep and sea  air, life was
full of  a host of things and coincidences of a terrible nature and  it  was
quite within the bounds of possibility that it was not an entire fabrication
though at first  blush there was  not much  inherent  probability in all the
spoof he got off his chest being strictly accurate gospel.
     He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and
Sherlockholmesing  him up,  ever since  he  clapped eyes on  him.  Though  a
wellpreserved man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness, there
was something spurious in  the cut of his jib that suggested a jail delivery
and  it  required  no  violent  stretch  of  imagination to associate such a
weirdlooking specimen with the oakum and treadmill fraternity. He might even
have done for his man,  supposing it  was his own case  he  told,  as people
often did about others, namely, that he killed him  himself and  had  served
his four or  five goodlooking years  in durance  vile to say nothing  of the
Antonio personage  (no relation to  the dramatic personage of identical name
who sprang from the pen Of our national poet) who expiated his crimes in the
melodramatic  manner above  described. On  the other hand  he  might be only
bluffing, a  pardonable  weakness, because meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin
residents, like  those  jarvies waiting news  from abroad, would  tempt  any
ancient mariner who  sailed the ocean seas to draw  the long  bow  about the
schooner <i>Hesperus</i> and  etcetera. And when all was  said and done, the lies a
fellow told about  himself couldn't probably hold a proverbial candle to the
wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.
     Mind you, I'm not  saying that it's  all a pure invention, he  resumed.
Analogous  scenes are occasionally, if not often, met with.  Giants, though,
that is rather a far cry  you see once in a way. Marcella, the midget queen.
In those waxworks  in Henry  street  I myself saw some Aztecs, as  they  are
called, sitting  bowlegged. They couldn't straighten their  legs if you paid
them  because  the  muscles  here, you see, he proceeded, indicating  on his
companion the  brief outline, the sinews, or whatever you like to call them,
behind the right knee, were utterly powerless from  sitting that way so long
cramped up, being adored as gods. There's an example again of simple souls.
     However, reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying  adventures (who
reminded him a bit of Ludwig, <i>alias</i> Ledwidge, when he occupied the boards of
the  Gaiety  when  Michael  Gunn was identified with the  management in  the
<i>Flying  Dutchman</i>, a  stupendous success,  and  his host of admirers came  in
large numbers,  everyone  simply  flocking to  hear  him though ships of any
sort, phantom or the  reverse, on the stage usually fell  a bit flat as also
did trains),  there  was  nothing intrinsically  incompatible  about  it, he
conceded. On the contrary, that stab in the back touch was quite in  keeping
with those  Italianos, though  candidly he was none  the less free to  admit
those ice  creamers and friers in the fish  way,  not  to mention  the  chip
potato variety and so forth,  over in little  Italy there, near  the Coombe,
were  sober thrifty  hardworking fellows except  perhaps a bit  too given to
pothunting the harmless necessary animal of  the feline persuasion of others
at night so as to have a  good  old succulent tuck in with garlic <i>de rigueur</i>
off him or her next day on the quiet and, he added, on the cheap.
     -- Spaniards,  for instance, he continued, passionate temperaments like
that,  impetuous  as  Old Nick,  are given  to taking the law into their own
hands and give you your quietus double quick with those poignards they carry
in the abdomen. It comes from the great heat, climate generally. My wife is,
so to speak, Spanish, half, that is. Point of fact  she could actually claim
Spanish nationality if  she wanted, having been born in (technically) Spain,
i.e.  Gibraltar. She has  the  Spanish  type. Quite dark,  regular brunette,
black.  I, for one, certainly believe climate accounts for character. That's
why I asked you if you wrote your poetry in Italian.
     --  The temperaments at the door,  Stephen  interposed with, were  very
passionate about ten shillings. <i>Roberto ruba roba sua</i>.
     -- Quite so, Mr Bloom dittoed.
     --  Then, Stephen said,  staring and  rambling on  to  himself or  some
unknown  listener somewhere,  we  have  the  impetuosity  of  Dante  and the
isosceles  triangle, Miss Portinari, he  fell in love with and Leonardo  and
san Tommaso Mastino.
     -- It's in the blood, Mr Bloom acceded  at once.  All are washed in the
blood of the sun.  Coincidence, I just happened to be in the  Kildare street
Museum today, shortly prior  to our meeting, if  I can so call it, and I was
just  looking at those antique  statues  there. The  splendid proportions of
hips, bosom.  You simply  don't knock  against those kind of  women here. An
exception here and there. Handsome, yes, pretty in a way  you find, but what
I'm talking about is the female form. Besides, they have  so little taste in
dress,  most of  them, which greatly enhances a  woman's natural beauty,  no
matter what you say. Rumpled stockings - it may be, possibly is, a foible of
mine, but still it's a thing I simply hate to see.
     Interest, however,  was starting to  flag  somewhat  all round and  the
others  got on  to  talking about  accidents at sea,  ships lost in  a  fog,
collisions with icebergs, all that sort  of thing. Shipahoy,  of course, had
his own say to say. He had doubled the Cape a  few odd times and weathered a
monsoon, a  kind of wind, in the China seas  and through all those perils of
the  deep there was one thing,  he declared, stood to him, or  words to that
effect, a pious medal he had that saved him.
     So then after that they drifted  on to the wreck of Daunt's rock, wreck
of that  illfated Norwegian barque - nobody could think of her name  for the
moment till  the jarvey  who  had really  quite  a  look of  Henry  Campbell
remembered  it, <i>Palme</i>, on Booterstown Strand, that was the talk of the  town
that year (Albert  William  Quill  wrote  a fine piece of original  verse of
distinctive merit on  the topic  for the Irish <i>Times</i>) breakers running  over
her and crowds and crowds on the shore in  commotion petrified  with horror.
Then  someone  said  something about the case of  the s. s.  <i>Lady  Cairns</i> of
Swansea, run into by the  <i>Mona</i>,  which  was on  an Opposite  tack, in rather
muggyish weather  and lost with all  hands on deck.  No  aid  was given. Her
master, the  <i>Mona's</i>, said he  was afraid  his  collision bulkhead would give
way. She had no water, it appears, in her hold.
     At this stage an incident happened. It  having become necessary for him
to unfurl a reef, the sailor vacated his seat.
     -- Let me cross your bows, mate, he said to his neighbour, who was just
gently dropping off into a peaceful dose.
     He made tracks heavily,  slowly, with  a  dumpy  sort of a gait to  the
door, stepped heavily down the one step there  was  out of the  shelter  and
bore due left.  While he was  in the act  of getting his bearings, Mr Bloom,
who noticed when he stood up that he had two flasks of presumably ship's rum
sticking  one out of each pocket for the private consumption of  his burning
interior, saw  him produce a bottle and uncork it, or unscrew, and, applying
its nozzle to his lips,  take a  good old delectable swig  out  of it with a
gurgling noise.  The irrepressible Bloom,  who  also had  a shrewd suspicion
that the  old  stager went out on a manoeuvre after the counterattraction in
the shape  of  a female,  who, however,  had disappeared to all  intents and
purposes, could, by straining, just perceive him, when duly refreshed by his
rum puncheon exploit, gazing up at the  piers and girders of  the Loop Line,
rather out of his depth, as of course it was all radically altered since his
last visit and greatly improved. Some person  or  persons invisible directed
him to the male urinal erected by the cleansing committee all over the place
for the purpose but,  after  a brief  space of  time  during  which  silence
reigned supreme, the sailor, evidently giving it a wide berth, eased himself
close at hand,  the  noise of his bilge-water some little  time subsequently
splashing on the ground where it apparently woke a horse of the cabrank.
     A hoof scooped anyway for new foothold after sleep and harness jingled.
Slightly disturbed in his sentrybox by the brasier of live coke, the watcher
of  the corporation, who,  though now broken down and fast  breaking up, was
none other  in stern reality than  the  Gumley aforesaid, now practically on
the parish  rates,  given  the  temporary job  by  Pat  Tobin  in all  human
probability, from dictates  of humanity, knowing him before - shifted  about
and shuffled in his box before composing  his  limbs  again  in the  arms of
Morpheus. A truly amazing piece of hard times in its most virulent form on a
fellow most respectably connected and familiarised with decent home comforts
all his life who came in for  a cool #100 a year at one time which of course
the double-barrelled  ass proceeded to make general ducks and drakes of. And
there he  was at the end of  his tether after having often painted  the town
tolerably  pink,  without  a beggarly stiver. He drank, needless to be told,
and it pointed only once  more a moral when  he  might quite easily  be in a
large  way of  business if -  a big if, however - he  had contrived  to cure
himself of his particular partiality.
     All, meantime, were loudly lamenting the falling off in Irish shipping,
coastwise and foreign as well,  which  was  all part and parcel of the  same
thing. A Palgrave Murphy boat  was  put off the ways at Alexandra Basin, the
only launch that year.  Right enough the harbours  were there  only no ships
ever called.
     There were  wrecks and wrecks, the  keeper  said, who was evidently  <i>au
fait</i>.
     What he wanted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang against the only
rock  in Galway Bay  when the  Galway  Harbour  scheme was  mooted  by a  Mr
Worthington or some  name like that, eh? Ask her  captain, he  advised them,
how  much  palmoil  the British  Government  gave him  for that day's  work.
Captain John Lever of the Lever line.
     -- Am  I right, skipper? he  queried of the sailor  now returning after
his private potation and the rest of his exertions.
     That  worthy, picking up the scent  of the fagend of the song or words,
growled in  wouldbe  music, but with great vim, some Kind of chanty or other
in seconds  or thirds. Mr Bloom's  sharp ears heard him then expectorate the
plug probably (which it  was), so that he  must have lodged it for the  time
being in his fist  while he did the drinking and making water jobs and found
it a bit  sour after the liquid  fire in question. Anyhow in he rolled after
his  successful  libation-<i>cum</i>-potation, introducing  an atmosphere of  drink
into the <i>soirÉe</i>, boisterously trolling, like a veritable son of a seacook:
     -- The biscuits was as hard as brass,
     And the beef as salt as Lot's wife's arse.
     O Johnny Lever!
     Johnny Lever, O!
     After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the scene
and,  regaining  his  seat, he  sank  rather  than sat heavily  on the  form
provided.
     Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently  with an axe to grind, was
airing  his  grievances in a  forcible-feeble  philippic  anent  the natural
resources of Ireland, or something of that  sort, which he  described in his
lengthy  dissertation as the richest country  bar none on the face  of God's
earth, far and away  superior to England, with coal in large quantities, six
million  pounds' worth  of pork  exported every year,  ten  millions between
butter  and  eggs, and  all  the riches drained out of it by England levying
taxes on the poor  people that paid through the nose always, and gobbling up
the best meat in  the market, and a lot more surplus steam in the same vein.
Their conversation accordingly became general and all agreed that that was a
fact. You  could grow any mortal thing in  Irish soil, he stated,  and there
was Colonel  Everard down there  in Cavan growing  tobacco.  Where would you
find anywhere the like of Irish bacon?  But a day  of  reckoning,  he stated
<i>crescendo</i>  with  no  uncertain  voice  -  thoroughly  monopolising  all  the
conversation - was in store for mighty England, despite her power of pelf on
account  of  her  crimes. There  would be a fall and the  greatest  fall  in
history. The Germans and the Japs were going to have their little lookin, he
affirmed. The Boers  were the  beginning  of the end. Brummagem England  was
toppling already and her downfall would be Ireland, her Achilles heel, which
he explained to them about the vulnerable point of Achilles,  the Greek hero
-  a point his  auditors  at  once  seized as  he  completely gripped  their
attention by showing the tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every
Irishman was: stay in the land of your birth and work for  Ireland and  live
for  Ireland.  Ireland, Parnell said,  could not spare a single one  of  her
sons.
     Silence all round marked  the termination of his <i>finale</i>. The impervious
navigator heard these lurid tidings undismayed.
     -- Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably  a
bit peeved in response to the foregoing truism.
     To  which cold  douche, referring to downfall and  so  on,  the  keeper
concurred but nevertheless held to his main view.
     -- Who's the best troops in the army?  the grizzled old veteran irately
interrogated. And the best jumpers  and racers?  And  the best admirals  and
generals we've got? Tell me that.
     -- The  Irish  for  choice,  retorted the cabby  like Campbell,  facial
blemishes apart.
     -- That's right,  the  old tarpaulin  corroborated. The  Irish catholic
peasant. He's the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins?
     While  allowing him  his individual opinions,  as every man, the keeper
added  he cared nothing  for  any  empire, ours  or  his, and  considered no
Irishman worthy of  his salt  that served it. Then they began to have  a few
irascible  words, when it  waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to
the listeners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as they
didn't indulge in recriminations and come to blows.
     >From inside information extending over a  series of years Mr Bloom was
rather  inclined to  poohpooh  the  suggestion as egregious balderdash  for,
pending  that consummation  devoutly to  be or not to be wished for,  he was
fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the channel, unless
they were  much bigger fools than he  took them for, rather concealed  their
strength than the opposite. It was quite on  a par with the quixotic idea in
certain quarters that in a hundred million years the coal seam of the sister
island would be played out and if,  as time went  On,  that turned Out to be
how the cat jumped all he could personally say on  the matter was that as  a
host of contingencies, equally relevant to  the  issue, might occur ere then
it was highly  advisable in the interim  to  try  to make  the most  of both
countries,  even