g from his knees</i>.) No. Gone off. He'll come to all right.
     BLOOM (<i>Glances sharply at the man</i>.) Leave him to me. I can easily...
     SECOND WATCH Who are you? Do you know him?
     PRIVATE CARR (<i>Lurches towards the watch</i>.) He insulted my lady friend.
     BLOOM (<i>Angrily</i>.)  You hit  him  without  provocation.  I'm  a  witness.
Constable, take his regimental number.
     SECOND  WATCH I  don't  want your  instructions in the discharge of  my
duty.  PRIVATE  COMPTON (<i>Pulling his  comrade</i>.) Here, bugger  off, Harry. Or
Bennett'll have you in the lockup.
     PRIVATE CARR (<i>Staggering as he is  pulled away</i>.) God fuck  old Bennett!
He's a whitearsed bugger. I don't give a shit for him.
     FIRST WATCH (<i>Taking out his notebook</i>.) What's his name?
     BLOOM (<i>Peering over the crowd</i>.) I just see a  car there. If you give me
a hand a second, sergeant.
     FIRST WATCH Name and address.
     (<i>Corny  Kelleher weepers  round his  hat,  a death  wreath in his hand,
appears among the bystanders</i>.)
     BLOOM (<i>Quickly</i>.) O, the very man!  (<i>He whispers</i>.) Simon Dedalus' son. A
bit sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back.
     SECOND WATCH Night, Mr Kelleher.
     CORNY KELLEHER  (<i>To the watch, with  drawling eye</i>.) That's all right. I
know him. Won a bit  on the races.  Gold cup. Throwaway. (<i>He laughs</i>.) Twenty
to one. Do you follow me?
     FIRST WATCH  (<i>Turns to  the crowd</i>.) Here,  what are you  all gaping at?
Move on out of that.
     (<i>The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane</i>.)
     CORNY KELLEHER Leave  it  to me,  sergeant. That'll be  all right.  (<i>He
laughs, shaking  his head</i>.) We  were often  as bad ourselves,  ay  or worse.
What? Eh, what?
     FIRST WATCH (<i>Laughs</i>.) I suppose so.
     CORNY KELLEHER  (<i>Nudges the second watch</i>.)  Come and wipe your name off
the  slate.  (<i>He  lilts,  wagging  his head</i>.)  With  my  tooraloom tooraloom
tooraloom tooraloom. What, eh, do you follow me?
     SECOND WATCH (<i>Genially</i>.) Ah, sure we were too.
     CORNY KELLEHER (<i>Winking</i>.) Boys will be boys. I've a car round there.
     SECOND WATCH All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night.
     CORNY KELLEHER I'll see to that.
     BLOOM (<i>Shakes  hands  with  both of the watch in turn</i>.) Thank  you very
much  gentlemen,  thank you. (<i>He mumbles confidentially</i>.) We don't  want any
scandal, you understand. Father  is a  well known, highly respected citizen.
Just a little wild oats, you understand.
     FIRST WATCH O, I understand, sir.
     SECOND WATCH That's all right, Sir.
     FIRST WATCH  It  was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have  had to
report it at the station.
     BLOOM (<i>Nods rapidly</i>.) Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden duty.
     SECOND WATCH It's our duty.
     CORNY KELLEHER Good night, men.
     THE  WATCH (<i>Saluting together</i>.) Night,  gentlemen. (<i>They  move off with
slow heavy tread</i>.)
     BLOOM (<i>Blows</i>.) Providential you came on the scene. You have a car?.
     CORNY KELLEHER (<i>Laughs, pointing  his thumb  over his right shoulder to
the car  brought up  against  the  scaffolding</i>.)  Two  commercials that were
standing fizz in Jammet's. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two quid on
the race. Drowning his grief and were on for a go with the jolly girls. So I
landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown.
     BLOOM I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to...
     CORNY KELLEHER (<i>Laughs</i>.) Sure they wanted me to  join in with the mots.
No, by God, says I. Not for old stagers like myself and yourself. (<i>He laughs
again and  leers  with lacklustre  eye</i>.) Thanks be to God we  have it in the
house what, eh, do you follow me? Hah! hah! hah!
     BLOOM (<i>Tries to  laugh</i>.)  He,  he,  he! Yes. Matter of fact  I was just
visiting an old friend of mine there, Virag, you don't know him (poor fellow
he's laid up for the past week) and we  had a liquor together and I was just
making my way home...
     (<i>The horse neighs</i>.)
     THE HORSE Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!
     CORNY KELLEHER Sure it was Behan, our jarvey  there, that told me after
we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told him to pull up and got
off to see. (<i>He laughs</i>.) Sober hearsedrivers a specialty.  Will I give him a
lift home? Where does he hang out? Somewhere in Cabra, what?
     BLOOM No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop.
     (<i>Stephen, prone, breathes  to the stars. Corny Kelleher asquint, drawls
at the horse. Bloom in gloom, looms down</i>.)
     CORNY KELLEHER  (<i>Scratches  his nape</i>.) Sandycove! (<i>He  bends  down  and
calls  to Stephen</i>.)  Eh! (<i>He calls again</i>.)  Eh! He's  covered with  shavings
anyhow. Take care they didn't lift anything off him.
     BLOOM No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick.
     CORNY  KELLEHER Ah well, he'll get over it. No bones broken. Well, I'll
shove  along. (<i>He  laughs</i>.) I've  a rendezvous in  the morning. Burying  the
dead. Safe home!
     THE HORSE (<i>Neighs</i>.) Hohohohohome.
     BLOOM Good night. I'll just wait and take him along in a few...
     (<i>Corny Kelleher  returns  to the outside car  and mounts it. The  horse
harness jingles</i>.)
     CORNY KELLEHER (<i>From the car, standing</i>.) Night.
     BLOOM Night.
     (<i>The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly. The car
and horse  back slowly, awkwardly and  turn. Corny Kelleher on the  sideseat
sways his  head  to and  fro in  sign of mirth at Blooms plight. The  jarvey
joins  in the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the farther seat. Bloom
shakes his head  in  mute mirthful reply. With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher
reassures that  the two bobbies will allow  the sleep  to continue for  what
else  is  to be done. With a slow nod Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is
exactly what  Stephen needs. The car jingles  tooraloom round  the corner of
the tooraloom lane. Corny Kelleher  again reassuralooms with his hand. Bloom
with his hand  assuralooms  Corny Kelleher  that he is  reassuraloomtay. The
tinkling   hoofs    and   jingling   harness   grow   fainter   with   their
tooralooloolooloo lay. Bloom,  holding in his  hand  Stephens  hat festooned
with shavings and ashplant, stands  irresolute.  Then  he  bends  to him and
shakes him by the shoulder</i>.)
     BLOOM Eh! Ho!  (<i>There is no answer he bends again</i>.)  Mr Dedalus! (<i>There
is no  answer</i>.) The name  if  you call. Somnambulist. (<i>He  bends again  and,
hesitating, brings his mouth near the  face of the prostrate form</i>.) Stephen!
(<i>There is no answer. He calls again</i>.) Stephen!
     STEPHEN  (<i>Groans</i>.) Who? Black panther vampire. (<i>He sighs and  stretches
himself then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels.)</i> Who... drive...  Fergus
now. And pierce... wood's woven shade?...
     (<i>He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together</i>.)
     BLOOM  Poetry. Well  educated.  Pity. (<i>He bends  again  and  undoes the
buttons of Stephen's  waistcoat</i>.) To breathe. (<i>He  brushes the wood shavings
from  Stephen's clothes  with light hands and fingers</i>.) One pound seven. Not
hurt anyhow. (<i>He listens</i>.) What!
     (<i>Murmurs</i>.)
     ... shadows... the woods
     ... white breast... dim...
     (<i>He stretches out his arms,  sighs  again  and  curls  his body.  Bloom
holding  his hat and ashplant stands  erect. A  dog  barks  in the distance.
Bloom  tightens  and loosens his  grip  on  the ashplant.  He looks down  on
Stephen's face and form</i>.)
     BLOOM (<i>Communes with the night</i>.) Face reminds me of his poor mother. In
the shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think  I caught.  A girl.
Some girl. Best thing could happen him... (<i>He murmurs</i>.)... swear that I will
always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or  parts,  art or arts...
(<i>He  murmurs</i>.) in the rough sands of  the sea. a cabletow's length  from the
shore... where the tide ebbs ... and flows...
     (<i>Silent, thoughtful, alert, he stands on guard, his fingers at his lips
in the attitude  of secret master.  Against  the dark  wall a figure appears
slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling,  kidnapped,  dressed in an Eton
suit with  glass shoes and  a little  bronze helmet, holding a  book  in his
hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling, kissing the page</i>.)
     BLOOM (<i>Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly</i>.) Rudy!
     RUDY (Gazes  unseeing into Bloom's eyes and goes  on  reading, kissing,
smiling. He  has a  delicate mauveface. On his  suit he has diamond and ruby
buttons. In  his free left hand he holds  a slim  ivory  cane with  a violet
howknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat pocket.)


        Ulysses 16: Eumaeus

     PREPARATORY TO ANYTHING ELSE  MR BLOOM BRUSHED OFF THE GREATER  bulk of
the  shavings and  handed  Stephen the  hat  and ashplant and bucked  him up
generally  in  orthodox Samaritan  fashion, which he very  badly needed. His
(Stephen's) mind was not  exactly  what you would  call wandering but  a bit
unsteady and on his expressed desire for some beverage to drink Mr Bloom, in
view of the  hour it was and  there being no pumps of Vartry water available
for their ablutions, let  alone drinking purposes, hit upon  an expedient by
suggesting, off the  reel, the propriety of the cabman's shelter, as  it was
called, hardly a stonesthrow  away  near Butt  Bridge, where they  might hit
upon some  drinkables in the shape of a milk  and soda or a mineral. But how
to  get  there  was  the  rub. For  the nonce  he was  rather nonplussed but
inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon him to take some measures  on the
subject he pondered suitable ways and  means during which Stephen repeatedly
yawned. So  far as he  could see he was rather pale  in the face  so that it
occurred to him  as highly advisable to get a conveyance of some description
which would answer in their then  condition, both of  them being  e.  d. ed,
particularly Stephen,  always assuming  that  there was  such a thing to  be
found.  Accordingly,  after a  few  such preliminaries,  as, in spite of his
having forgotten  to take up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it  had
done yeoman service in the shaving line, brushing, they both walked together
along Beaver street, or, more properly,  lane, as  far as the farrier's  and
the distinctly  fetid  atmosphere of the  livery stables  at  the corner  of
Montgomery  street where they made tracks to the left from thence debouching
into  Amiens  Street  round  by  the  corner  of  Dan  Bergin's. But, as  he
confidently anticipated,  there  was not a sign of a  Jehu  plying for  hire
anywhere to be seen  except a fourwheeler,  probably engaged by some fellows
inside  on the spree,  outside the North Star Hotel and there was no symptom
of its budging a  quarter of an inch when Mr Bloom, who was  anything  but a
professional  whistler, endeavoured  to  hail it  by  emitting  a kind of  a
whistle, holding his arms arched over his head, twice.
     This was a quandary but, bringing  commonsense to bear on it, evidently
there was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter and foot it which
they accordingly did. So, bevelling around by Mullet's and the Signal House,
which they shortly  reached, they  proceeded  perforce in  the direction  of
Amiens   street   railway  terminus,  Mr  Bloom  being  handicapped  by  the
circumstance that one  of the back buttons of his trousers had,  to vary the
timehonoured adage, gone the way of all buttons, though, entering thoroughly
into the spirit of the thing, he heroically made light of the mischance. So,
as neither  of  them were particularly pressed for time, as it happened, and
the temperature  refreshing since it cleared up  after the recent visitation
of Jupiter Pluvius, they dandered along past by  where the empty vehicle was
waiting  without  a  fare  or  a jarvey.  As it so happened  a Dublin United
Tramways  Company's sandstrewer  happening  to  be returning  the  elder man
recounted to his companion <i>À propos</i> of the incident his own truly miraculous
escape of some little while back. They passed the main entrance of the Great
Northern  railway station,  the starting point for Belfast,  where of course
all traffic was suspended  at that late hour, and,  passing the back door of
the morgue  (a not very enticing  locality, not to say gruesome to a degree,
more  especially at  night), ultimately  gained  the Dock Tavern and in  due
course turned into Store street, famous for its C  division  police station.
Between this point and the high, at present unlit, warehouses  of  Beresford
Place  Stephen  thought  to think  of  Ibsen,  associated with Baird's,  the
stonecutter's,  in his mind somehow in  Talbot Place,  first  turning on the
right,  while the other, who  was  acting as his <i>fidus Achates</i>, inhaled with
internal  satisfaction the  smell of James  Rourke's  city  bakery, situated
quite close to where they were, the very palatable odour indeed of our daily
bread, of all commodities of  the public the primary and most indispensable.
Bread, the staff  of life, earn your  bread, O tell me where is fancy bread?
At Rourke's the baker's, it is said.
     <i>En route</i>, to his taciturn, and,  not to put too fine a point on it, not
yet perfectly sober companion, Mr  Bloom, who at all events, was in complete
possession of his  faculties, never  more so,  in  fact  disgustingly sober,
spoke  a word of caution <i>re</i> the dangers  of nighttown, women of ill fame and
swell  mobsmen,  which, barely permissible once in a while, though  not as a
habitual practice,  was  of  the nature  of  a  regular deathtrap  for young
fellows of his age particularly if they had acquired  drinking habits  under
the  influence of liquor  unless  you  knew  a  little  juijitsu  for  every
contingency  as even a fellow on the  broad of his  back could  administer a
nasty kick if you didn't look out. Highly providential was the appearance on
the  scene of  Corny Kelleher  when Stephen was blissfully unconscious that,
but for that man in the gap turning up at the eleventh hour, the finis might
have been that he might  have  been a candidate for the  accident  ward, or,
failing that, the Bridewell and an appearance  in the court  next day before
Mr Tobias,  or, he being the solicitor, rather old Wall, he meant to say, or
Malony  which simply spelt ruin for  a chap when it got  bruited about.  The
reason  he mentioned  the fact was that a lot of  those  policemen, whom  he
cordially disliked, were admittedly unscrupulous in the service of the Crown
and, as  Mr Bloom  put  it, recalling a  case or  two in  the  A Division in
Clanbrassil street, prepared to swear a hole through a ten gallon pot. Never
on the spot when wanted but in quiet parts of the City,  Pembroke  Road, for
example, the guardians of the  law were well in evidence, the obvious reason
being  they were  paid  to  protect  the upper  classes.  Another  thing  he
commented  on  was  equipping  soldiers  with  firearms or sidearms  of  any
description, liable to go off at any  time, which was tantamount to inciting
them against civilians should by any chance they fall nut over anything. You
frittered away your time, he  very sensibly  maintained, and health and also
character  besides  which the squandermania of the thing, fast  women of the
<i>demimonde</i> ran away  with a lot of #. s. d. into the bargain and the greatest
danger of all  was who you  got drunk with though, touching the  much  vexed
question of stimulants, he relished a glass of choice old wine  in season as
both nourishing and  blood-making and possessing aperient virtues (notably a
good  burgundy  which he was a staunch  believer  in) still  never beyond  a
certain point where he invariably drew the line as it simply  led to trouble
all round to  say  nothing of  your being  at  the tender  mercy  of  others
practically. Most of  all he commented adversely on the desertion of Stephen
by all his pubhunting <i>confrÈres</i> but one, a most glaring  piece of ratting on
the part of his brother medicos under all the circs.
     -- And  that one  was Judas, said  Stephen,  who  up  to  then had said
nothing whatsoever of any kind.
     Discussing these and kindred topics they made a beeline across the back
of  the Customhouse and passed under the  Loop Line bridge when a brazier of
coke burning in front of a sentrybox, or something like one, attracted their
rather  lagging footsteps. Stephen of his  own accord stopped for no special
reason to look at the heap of barren cobblestones and by the light emanating
from the brazier he could just make out the darker figure of the corporation
watchman inside the gloom of the sentrybox.  He began  to remember that this
had  happened, or had been mentioned  as having happened, before but it cost
him no small effort before he remembered that  he recognised in the sentry a
quondam  friend of his father's Gumley. To avoid a meeting be drew nearer to
the pillars of the railway bridge.
     -- Someone saluted you, Mr Bloom said.
     A  figure of  middle height on the  prowl, evidently, under the  arches
saluted  again,  calling: <i>Night!</i>  Stephen, of course, started rather dizzily
and  stopped to  return  the  compliment. Mr  Bloom, actuated  by motives of
inherent  delicacy, inasmuch  as  he  always  believed in  minding  his  own
business, moved off but  nevertheless  remained on the <i>qui vive</i> with  just a
shade of anxiety though not funkyish in  the least. Although unusual in  the
Dublin area, he knew that it was not  by any means  unknown  for desperadoes
who  had next to  nothing to live  on  to be about  waylaying and  generally
terrorising peaceable pedestrians by placing  a pistol at their head in some
secluded  spot  outside  the city  proper, famished loiterers of the  Thames
embankment category  they might be hanging about  there or  simply marauders
ready to  decamp with whatever  boodle  they  could  in  one fell swoop at a
moments notice, your money or your life, leaving you there to point a moral,
gagged and garotted.
     Stephen,  that is  when the accosting  figure  came to close  quarters,
though he was  not in  any over  sober state  himself,  recognised  Corley's
breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord John Corley, some called him,  and
his genealogy came  about in this  wise. He was the eldest  son of Inspector
Corley  of the  G Division,  lately  deceased,  who  had  married  a certain
Katherine Brophy, the daughter  of a Louth  farmer. His grandfather, Patrick
Michael Corley, of New Ross, had married the widow of a publican there whose
maiden  name  had been  Katherine (also) Talbot. Rumour had  it,  though not
proved, that she descended from the house of the Lords Talbot de Malahide in
whose mansion, really an unquestionably fine residence of  its kind and well
worth  seeing,  his  mother  or  aunt  or  some  relative  had  enjoyed  the
distinction of being in service in the washkitchen. This, therefore, was the
reason  why the  still  comparatively  young  though dissolute  man who  now
addressed Stephen was spoken of by some  with facetious proclivities as Lord
John Corley.
     Taking Stephen on  one side he had the customary doleful ditty to tell.
Not as much as a farthing to  purchase  a night's  lodgings. His friends had
all deserted him. Furthermore, he  had a  row with Lenehan and called him to
Stephen  a  mean  bloody  swab  with  a  sprinkling  of  other  uncalled-for
expressions. He was out of a job and  implored of Stephen  to tell him where
on God's earth he could get something, anything at all to do. No, it was the
daughter of the  mother in the washkitchen that was fostersister to the heir
of the house or  else they were connected  through the  mother in  some way,
both occurrences  happening at  the same  time if the  whole thing  wasn't a
complete fabrication from start to finish. Anyhow, he was ill in.
     --  I  wouldn't ask you,  only,  pursued he, on my  solemn oath and God
knows I'm on the rocks.
     -- There'll be a job tomorrow or the  next day, Stephen told him, in  a
boys' school  at Dalkey for a gentleman usher. Mr Garret  Deasy. Try it. You
may mention my name.
     -- Ah, God, Corley replied,  sure I couldn't teach in a  school, man. I
was never  one of  your bright  ones, he added with a half laugh. Got  stuck
twice in the junior at the Christian Brothers.
     -- I have no place to sleep myself, Stephen informed him.
     Corley, at the first go-off,  was inclined  to suspect it was something
to do with Stephen being fired out of his digs for bringing in a bloody tart
off the street. There was a dosshouse in  Marlborough street, Mrs Maloney's,
but it was  only a tanner touch and full of undesirables but M'Conachie told
him you got a decent enough do in the Brazen Head over in  Winetavern street
(which was  distantly suggestive to the person addressed of friar Bacon) for
a bob. He was starving too though he hadn't said a word about it.
     Though  this  sort of  thing went on every other night  or very near it
still  Stephen's  feelings got the better of  him in  a sense though he knew
that  Corley's brandnew  rigmarole, on  a par  with  the  others, was hardly
deserving of much credence. However, <i>haud ignarus malorum miseris succurrere
disco</i>, etcetera, as the Latin poet remarks, especially as luck would have it
he got paid his screw after every middle of the month on the sixteenth which
was the date of  the month as a  matter of  fact  though  a good bit  of the
wherewithal was  demolished. But the cream of the joke was nothing would get
it Out  of Corley's head that he was living in affluence and hadn't a  thing
to  do but  hand  out the  needful - whereas. He put his  hand  in a  pocket
anyhow, not with the idea of finding any food  there,  but thinking he might
lend him  anything up  to a bob or so  in lieu so that he might endeavour at
all  events and get sufficient  to eat. But the result  was in the  negative
for, to  his chagrin, he found his cash missing. A few  broken biscuits were
all the result  of his investigation. He tried his  hardest to recollect for
the moment whether he had lost,  as well he might have,  or left, because in
that  contingency it was not a  pleasant lookout,  very much the reverse, in
fact. He was altogether too fagged out to institute a thorough search though
he  tried to  recollect about biscuits he dimly remembered. Who  now exactly
gave them,  or where was, or did he buy? However, in another pocket he  came
across  what he surmised  in the dark were pennies, erroneously, however, as
it turned out.
     -- Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him.
     And so in point of fact they turned out  to be. Stephen lent him one of
them.
     -- Thanks, Corley  answered. You're a gentleman. I'll pay you back some
time. Who's  that with you? I saw him a  few  times in the Bleeding Horse in
Camden street with Boylan the  billsticker. You might put in a good word for
us to get me taken on there. I'd carry a  sandwichboard only the girl in the
office told me they're full up for the next three weeks, man. God, you've to
book ahead, man, you'd think it was for the Carl Rosa.  I don't give a shite
anyway so long as I get a job even as a crossing sweeper.
     Subsequently,  being  not  quite  so   down  in  the  mouth  after  the
two-and-six he got, he informed Stephen  about a fellow by  the name of Bags
Comisky  that he  said Stephen knew well out of Fullam's, the shipchandler's
bookkeeper  there, that used to be often round in  Nagle's  back with O'Mara
and a  little chap with a stutter the  name of Tighe. Anyhow, he was  lagged
the  night before last and fined ten  bob for  a drunk  and  disorderly  and
refusing to go with the constable.
     Mr Bloom in the  meanwhile kept dodging about  in the vicinity  of  the
cobblestones near the brazier of coke in front of the corporation watchman's
sentrybox, who, evidently a  glutton for work, it  struck him, was having  a
quiet forty winks for all  intents and  purposes on  his own private account
while  Dublin slept. He threw an  odd eye  at the same time now and  then at
Stephen's anything but immaculately  attired interlocutor as  if he had seen
that  nobleman  somewhere or  other though where he was not in a position to
truthfully state  nor had he the  remotest idea  when.  Being  a levelheaded
individual  who  could  give  points  to  not  a  few  in  point  of  shrewd
observation,  he  also  remarked  on  his very  dilapidated hat  and slouchy
wearing  apparel generally, testifying to a chronic impecuniosity.  Probably
he  was one of his hangerson but for  the  matter  of that it  was  merely a
question of one preying on his next door neighbour all round, in every deep,
so to  put it, a deeper depth and for the matter of that if  the man in  the
street chanced to  be in the dock  himself penal servitude,  with or without
the option of a fine, would be a very <i>rara avis</i>  altogether. In any  case he
had a consummate  amount of cool assurance intercepting  people at that hour
of the night or morning. Pretty thick that was certainly.
     The  pair parted company and Stephen rejoined  Mr Bloom, who, with  his
practised  eye,  was not  without perceiving  that he  had  succumbed to the
blandiloquence of  the  other parasite. Alluding to the  encounter  he said,
laughingly, Stephen, that is:
     -- He's down  on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named
Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman.
     At this intelligence, in which he seemingly evinced little interest, Mr
Bloom gazed  abstractedly for the  space  of a  half  a second or so  in the
direction of a bucket dredger,  rejoicing  in the  farfamed  name of Eblana,
moored  alongside  Customhouse  Quay  and  quite  possibly  Out  of  repair,
whereupon he observed evasively:
     -- Everybody gets their own  ration of luck,  they say. Now you mention
it  his face was familiar to me.  But  leaving that for the moment, how much
did you part with, he queried, if I am not too inquisitive?
     -- Half-a-crown, Stephen responded.  I  daresay he  needs it  to  sleep
somewhere.
     -- Needs, Mr Bloom ejaculated, professing not the least surprise at the
intelligence, I can quite credit the assertion and I guarantee he invariably
does. Everyone according to his  needs and everyone according to his  deeds.
But talking about things in general,  where, added he with a smile, will you
sleep  yourself? Walking to Sandycove is  Out  of  the  question  and,  even
supposing you did, you  won't get  in after what  occurred at  Westland  Row
station.  Simply  fag out there for  nothing.  I  don't  mean to presume  to
dictate to you  in the slightest degree but why did you leave your  father's
house?
     -- To seek misfortune, was Stephen's answer.
     --  I  met  your  respected  father  on  a  recent  occasion, Mr  Bloom
diplomatically  returned. Today,  in fact, or, to  be strictly  accurate, on
yesterday.  Where does he live  at  present?  I gathered  in the  course  of
conversation that he had moved.
     -- I believe he is in Dublin somewhere, Stephen answered unconcernedly.
Why?
     -- A gifted man, Mr Bloom said  of Mr Dedalus senior, in more  respects
than one and a born  <i>raconteur</i>  if ever there was one. He takes great pride,
quite legitimately, Out of you. You could  go back,  perhaps,  he  hazarded,
still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at Westland Row terminus when it
was  perfectly evident  that  the other two, Mulligan,  that  is,  and  that
English tourist friend of his, who eventually euchred their third companion,
were patently trying,  as  if  the whole bally station belonged to them,  to
give Stephen the slip in the confusion.
     There was no response  forthcoming to the  suggestion, however, such as
it was, Stephen's  mind's  eye being too busily  engaged  in repicturing his
family  hearth the  last time he saw it, with his  sister, Dilly, sitting by
the ingle, her hair hanging down, waiting for some weak Trinidad shell cocoa
that was in the sootcoated  kettle to be done so that she and he could drink
it with the oatmeal water for  milk after the Friday herrings they had eaten
at two  a penny,  with  an egg apiece  for Maggy, Boody and  Katey,  the cat
meanwhile under  the mangle devouring a  mess of  eggshells and charred fish
heads and bones on a square  of brown paper  in  accordance with  the  third
precept of  the church  to fast and abstain on the days commanded, it  being
quarter tense or, if not, ember days or something like that.
     -- No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn't personally repose much trust
in  that  boon companion of yours  who  contributes the humorous element, Dr
Mulligan, as a guide, philosopher, and friend, if I  were  in your shoes. He
knows which side his bread is buttered on though in all probability he never
realised what it is to be without regular meals. Of course you didn't notice
as  much as I did but it  wouldn't occasion  me the least surprise  to learn
that a pinch of  tobacco  or some  narcotic was  put  in your drink for some
ulterior object.
     He understood, however,  from all he  heard,  that Dr  Mulligan  was  a
versatile allround  man,  by  no means confined to  medicine  only, who  was
rapidly coming to the fore in his line and, if the report was verified, bade
fair to enjoy a flourishing practice in the not too distant future as a tony
medical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his services  in addition to
which professional status  his rescue of  that man from certain  drowning by
artificial respiration and what they call first aid at Skerries, or Malahide
was it?  was,  he  was  bound to admit, an exceedingly plucky deed which  he
could  not too  highly praise,  so that frankly he was  utterly at a loss to
fathom what earthly  reason could be at the back of it except he put it down
to sheer cussedness or jealousy, pure and simple.
     --  Except  it simply amounts to one thing and  he  is  what  they call
picking your brains, he ventured to throw out.
     The guarded  glance of half  solicitude, half curiosity,  augmented  by
friendliness,  which  he gave at Stephen's  at present morose expression  of
features did not throw a flood of light, none at all in fact, on the problem
as to whether  he  had let himself be  badly bamboozled, to  judge by two or
three low spirited remarks he let drop, or, the other way about, saw through
the affair, and, for  some  reason or  other best  known to himself, allowed
matters to more or less... Grinding poverty did have that effect and he more
than conjectured that, high  educational abilities  though  he possessed, he
experienced no little difficulty in making both ends meet.
     Adjacent to  the men's public urinal he perceived an icecream car round
which a group of presumably Italians in heated altercation were getting  rid
of  voluble  expressions  in  their  vivacious language  in  a  particularly
animated way, there being some little differences between the parties.
     -- <i>Putana madonna, che ci dia i quattrini! Ho ragione? Culo rotto!</i>
     -- <i>Intendiamoci. Mezzo sovrano piÙ</i>
     -- <i>Dice lui, pero</i>.
     -- <i>Farabutto! Mortacci sui!</i>
     Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the  cabman's  shelter,  an  unpretentious
wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely, if ever, been before;
the former having previously  whispered to  the latter a few hints anent the
keeper of  it, said  to  be  the once famous Skin-the-Goat,  Fitzharris, the
invincible,  though  he  wouldn't  vouch  for the actual facts,  which quite
possibly there was not one vestige of truth in. A few  moments later saw our
two  noctambules safely seated  in a  discreet corner, only to be greeted by
stares from the decidedly miscellaneous  collection of waifs  and strays and
other nondescript  specimens of  the  genus <i>homo</i>,  already there engaged  in
eating  and drinking, diversified  by  conversation, for whom they seemingly
formed an object of marked curiosity.
     -- Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom ventured to plausibly suggest
to break the ice, it occurs to me you ought to sample something in the shape
of solid food, say a roll of some description.
     Accordingly  his first act  was  with characteristic <i>sangfroid</i> to order
these  commodities quietly.  The  <i>hoi  polloi</i> of jarvies  or stevedores,  or
whatever  they  were,  after  a  cursory  examination,  turned  their  eyes,
apparently dissatisfied, away, though one  redbearded bibulous individual, a
portion of whose hair was greyish, a sailor, probably, still stared for some
appreciable time before transferring his rapt attention to the floor.
     Mr  Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech, he having just
a  bowing acquaintance with  the language  in  dispute  though, to be  sure,
rather in a quandary over <i>voglio</i>, remarked to his <i>protÉgÉ</i> in an audible tone
of voice, <i>apropos</i> of the battle royal in the street  which  was still raging
fast and furious:
     --  Beautiful  language.  I mean for singing purposes. Why  do you  not
write your  poetry in that  language? <i>Bella Poetria!</i> it is so  melodious and
full. <i>Belladonna voglio</i>.
     Stephen,  who was trying  his dead best to yawn, if he could, suffering
from dead lassitude generally, replied:
     -- To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money.
     -- Is that so? Mr Bloom asked. Of  course, he  subjoined pensively,  at
the inward reflection of there being  more languages to start with than were
absolutely necessary, it may be only the southern glamour that surrounds it.
     The keeper  of the  shelter in the middle  of this  <i>tÊte-À-tÊte</i>  put  a
boiling swimming cup of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the table and
a rather antediluvian  specimen of  a bun,  or so it  seemed, after which he
beat  a  retreat to  his counter. Mr Bloom determining to have a good square
look at  him later  on  so as  not  to  appear  to...  for which  reason  he
encouraged Stephen to  proceed with his  eyes  while he did  the honours  by
surreptitiously pushing  the cup of  what  was temporarily  supposed  to  be
called coffee gradually nearer him.
     -- Sounds  are impostures, Stephen  said after  a  pause of some little
time. Like names,  Cicero, Podmore, Napoleon, Mr Goodbody, Jesus,  Mr Doyle.
Shakespeares were as common as Murphies. What's in a name?
     --  Yes, to be  sure,  Mr Bloom unaffectedly concurred.  Of course. Our
name was changed too, he added, pushing the socalled roll across.
     The  redbearded  sailor, who  had  his weather  eye  on the  newcomers,
boarded  Stephen,  whom  he  had  singled out  for attention  in particular,
squarely by asking:
     -- And what might your name be?
     Just in the nick of time  Mr  Bloom touched  his  companion's boot  but
Stephen,  apparently  disregarding  the  warm pressure,  from  an unexpected
quarter, answered:
     -- Dedalus.
     The sailor  stared at him heavily from  a  pair of drowsy  baggy  eyes,
rather bunged up from excessive use of boose,  preferably good  old Hollands
and water.
     -- You know Simon Dedalus? he asked at length.
     -- I've heard of him, Stephen said.
     Mr Bloom  was  all  at sea for a  moment, seeing the  others  evidently
eavesdropping too.
     -- He's Irish, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much the same
way and nodding. All Irish.
     -- All too Irish, Stephen rejoined.
     As  for Mr Bloom  he  could neither  make  head or  tail  of  the whole
business and he was just  asking himself what possible  connection when  the
sailor, of his own accord, turned to the other Occupants of the shelter with
the  remark: I seen him shoot  two eggs off  two bottles at fifty yards over
his shoulder. The left hand dead shot.
     Though he  was  slightly hampered by  an  occasional  stammer  and  his
gestures being also clumsy as it was still he did his best to explain.
     -- Bottle Out  there, say. Fifty yards measured.  Eggs on the  bottles.
Cocks his gun over his shoulder. Aims.
     He  turned his body half  round, shut up his right eye completely, then
he screwed his features up some way sideways and glared  out into the  night
with an unprepossessing cast of countenance.
     -- Pom, he then shouted once.
     The entire  audience  waited,  anticipating an  additional  detonation,
there being still a further egg.
     -- Pom, he shouted twice.
     Egg   two  evidently   demolished,   he   nodded  and   winked,  adding
bloodthirstily:
     Buffalo Bill shoots to kill,
     Never missed nor he never will.
     A silence ensued till  Mr Bloom for agreeableness'  sake just felt like
asking him whether it was for a marksmanship competition like the Bisley.
     -- Beg pardon, the sailor said.
     -- Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth.
     --  Why, the sailor replied,  relaxing  to a  certain extent  under the
magic influence of diamond cut  diamond, it might be  a matter of ten years.
He toured the wide world  with Hengler's Royal Circus. I seen him do that in
Stockholm.
     -- Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen unobtrusively.
     -- Murphy's my name, the sailor continued, W. B. Murphy, of Carrigaloe.
Know where that is?
     -- Queenstown Harbour, Stephen replied.
     -- That's right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle. That's
where I  hails from. My little woman's down there.  She's waiting  for me, I
know. <i>For England, home and  beauty</i>. She's  my  own true wife I haven't seen
for seven years now, sailing about.
     Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent on this scene - the homecoming
to the mariner's roadside shieling after having diddled Davy Jones - a rainy
night with  a  blind moon.  Across the world  for a wife.  Quite a number of
stories there were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt  topic, Enoch Arden and
Rip  van  Winkle  and  does anybody  hereabouts  remember  Caoc  O'Leary,  a
favourite  and most trying declamation piece, by the way, of poor John Casey
and a bit  of perfect poetry  in its own small  way? Never about the runaway
wife  coming back,  however much devoted  to  the absentee. The  face at the
window! Judge of his  astonishment when he finally did  breast the tape  and
the  awful truth dawned  upon  him anent his  better  half, wrecked  in  his
affections. You  little expected me but I've come to  stay  and make a fresh
start. There she sits, a grass widow, at the selfsame fireside. Believes  me
dead.  Rocked  in  the  cradle of the deep.  And there  sits uncle  Chubb or
Tomkin, as the case  might be, the  publican of  the Crown  and  Anchor,  in
shirtsleeves,  eating rumpsteak  and onions.  No chair for  father. Boo! The
wind!  Her brandnew arrival is on her  knee,  <i>post mortem</i> child. With a high
ro! and a randy ro! and my galloping tearing tandy O! Bow to the inevitable.
Grin and  bear it. I remain with much love your brokenhearted husband, W. B.
Murphy.
     The  sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, turned to one
of the jarvies with the request:
     -- You don't happen to have  such a thing as a spare chaw about you, do
you?
     The jarvey addressed, as it happened, had not but the keeper took a die
of plug from his  good jacket hanging on a  nail and  the desired object was
passed from hand to hand.
     -- Thank you, the sailor said.
     He  deposited  the quid in his gob  and,  chewing,  and with  some slow
stammers, proceeded:
     --  We  come  up this morning eleven  o'clock. The threemaster <i>Rosevean</i>
from Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid off this afternoon.
There's my discharge. See? W. B. Murphy, A. B. S.
     In  confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket
and handed to his neighbours a not very clean looking folded document.
     -- You must have seen  a fair share of the world, the keeper  remarked,
leaning on the counter.
     --  Why,   the   sailor  answered,   upon  reflection   upon  it,  I've
circumnavigated a bit since I  first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I  was
in  China  and  North  America and  South  America. I seen  icebergs plenty,
growlers.  I was  in  Stockholm and the Black  Sea,  the Dardanelles,  under
Captain Dalton the best bloody man that ever scuttled a ship. I seen Russia.
<i>Gospodi pomilooy</i>. That's how the Russians prays.
     -- You seen queer sights, don't be talking, put in a jarvey.
     --  Why,  the sailor said,  shifting  his partially chewed plug, I seen
queer things too, 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  though poles apart. Another little interesting point,  the
amours of whores and chummies, to put it  in common  parlance, reminded  him
Irish soldiers had as  often fought for England as against her,  more so, in
fact. And now, why? So the scene between the  pair  of them, the licensee of
the  place, rumoured to  be or  have been Fitzharris, the famous invincible,
and the other, obviously bogus,  reminded him forcibly as being on all fours
with the confidence trick, supposing, that  is, it  was prearranged, as  the
lookeron, a  student of the human soul, if anything, the others seeing least
of the game. And as for the lessee or keeper,  who probably wasn't the other
person at all, he (Bloom)  couldn't help feeling, and most properly, it  was
better to give  people like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot
altogether and refuse to have anything to do  with them as a  golden rule in
private life and their felonsetting, there always being  the offchance  of a
Dannyman  coming forward and turning queen's evidence - or king's now - like
Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly  repudiated. Quite apart from that,
he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and  crime on principle. Yet, though
such criminal propensities had never  been an inmate  of  his  bosom  in any
shape or form,  he  certainly did feel,  and  no denying it  (while inwardly
remaining what  he was), a certain kind of admiration  for  a  man  who  had
actually  brandished a knife, cold steel, with  the courage of his political
convictions though, personally, he would never be a party to any such thing,
off the  same bat as those love vendettas of  the south  - have her or swing
for her -  when the husband frequently, after some words  passed between the
two concerning her relations with the other lucky mortal (the man having had
the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on
     his adored  one as a  result of an  alternative  postnuptial <i>liaison</i> by
plunging his knife into  her until it just  struck him that  Fitz, nicknamed
Skin-the-Goat,  merely drove  the car  for  the actual  perpetrators of  the
outrage and so was not,  if he  was reliably informed, actually party to the
ambush which, in point of fact, was the  plea some legal luminary  saved his
skin on. In any  case that  was very ancient  history by  now and as for our
friend, the  pseudo Skin-the-etcetera,  he  had transparently  outlived  his
welcome. He ought  to  have either died naturally or on  the scaffold  high.
Like  actresses,  always farewell - positively last performance then come up
smiling again. Generous to a fault, of course, temperamental, no economising
or any idea  of the  sort, always  snapping at the  bone  for the shadow. So
similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr  Johnny Lever  got  rid  of
some #.  s. d. in  the course of his  perambulations round the  docks in the
congenial atmosphere of the <i>Old Ireland</i> tavern, come back to Erin and so on.
Then as for the others, he had heard not so long  before  the same identical
lingo,  as he  told  Stephen  how  he simply  but effectually  silenced  the
offender.
     He  took umbrage  at something  or other, that  much injured but on the
whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew, and in a
heated fashion, offensively. So I, without deviating from plain facts in the
least, told him his  God, I mean Christ, was a jew too, and all his  family,
like me, though  in  reality  I'm not. That was one for him. A  soft  answer
turns away wrath. He hadn't  a word to say for himself as everyone saw. Am I
not right?
     He turned  a long you  are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride
at  the soft  impeachment,  with a glance  also of entreaty for he seemed to
glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly .
     -- <i>Ex  quibus</i>, Stephen mumbled  in a  noncommittal accent, their two or
four  eyes  conversing,  <i>Christus</i> or  Bloom his name is, or, after all,  any
other, <i>secundum carnem</i>.
     --  Of course, Mr Bloom proceeded to  stipulate, you  must look at both
sides of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules  as to
right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is though
every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the government it
deserves. But with a little goodwill all round.  It's all very fine to boast
of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality?  I resent violence  or
intolerance in  any  shape  or  form. It  never  reaches anything  or  stops
anything. A revolution must come on the  due instalments plan. It's a patent
absurdity on the face of it  to  hate  people because  they  live  round the
corner and speak another vernacular, so to speak.
     --  Memorable bloody  bridge  battle  and seven minutes'  war,  Stephen
assented, between Skinner's alley and Ormond market.
     -- Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that
was overwhelmingly right and the whole world was overwhelmingly full of that
sort of thing.
     -- You just  took  the words out  of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of
conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely.
     All  those  wretched quarrels, in his  humble  opinion, stirring up bad
blood - bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to
be about a  punctilio of honour and a flag - were very largely a question of
the money question which was at the back of everything, greed and  jealousy,
people never knowing when to stop.
     --  They accuse -  remarked he audibly. He turned away from the others,
who probably... and spoke nearer to, so as the others... in case they...
     -- Jews, he softly imparted in an  aside  in Stephen's ear, are accused
of ruining.  Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History - would
you  be surprised to learn? - proves up to' the hilt  Spain decayed when the
Inquisition  hounded the  jews out  and  England prospered when Cromwell, an
uncommonly  able  ruffian, who, in other  respects, has much to answer  for,
imported  them. Why? Because they  are practical and are proved to  be so. I
don't want to indulge in any... because you know the standard  works on  the
subject, and then, orthodox as you are... But in  the economic, not touching
religion, domain,  the priest spells poverty.  Spain  again, you saw  in the
war, compared with  goahead America. Turks, it's  in  the dogma.  Because if
they didn't believe they'd go straight to heaven when they die they'd try to
live better  - at  least, so I think. That's the juggle on which  the p.p.'s
raise the wind on  false pretences. I'm, he resumed, with dramatic force, as
good  an Irishman as that rude person I told  you about at the  outset and I
want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes <i>pro rata</i> having a
comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in the
neighbourhood of #300 per annum That's the  vital issue  at  stake and  it's
feasible and would  be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and
man. At least that's  my idea for what  it's worth. I call that  patriotism.
<i>Ubi patria</i>, as we learned a small smattering of in our classical day in <i>Alma
Mater, vita bene</i>. Where you can live well, the sense is, if you work.
     Over his  untasteable apology  for a  cup of coffee, listening to  this
synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at  nothing  in particular. He
could hear, of course, all kinds of  words changing colour like those  crabs
about  Ringsend  in  the morning,  burrowing  quickly into  all  colours  of
different sorts of the same sand where they had a  home somewhere beneath or
seemed to. Then he looked  up and saw the eyes  that said or didn't say  the
words the voice he heard said - if you work.
     -- Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning to work.
     The eyes were surprised at this observation, because as he,  the person
who owned  them pro. tem. observed, or  rather,  his voice speaking did: All
must work, have to, together.
     -- I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in  the widest
possible sense. Also literary labour, not merely for the kudos of the thing.
Writing for  the newspapers  which is  the readiest channel nowadays. That's
work too. Important work. After all,  from the little I know  of you,  after
all  the  money expended  on  your  education, you are  entitled  to  recoup
yourself and command your price. You have every bit as much right to live by
your pen in pursuit  of your  philosophy as the peasant has. What?  You both
belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn. Each is equally important.
     --  You suspect,  Stephen  retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I
may  be important  because  I  belong to  the  <i>faubourg Saint Patrice</i> called
Ireland for short.
     -- I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated.
     -- But I suspect,  Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must  be important
because it belongs to me.
     --  What belongs?  queried Mr Bloom,  bending, fancying he was  perhaps
under some  misapprehension.  Excuse me.  Unfortunately  I didn't catch  the
latter portion. What was it you?...
     Stephen,  patently  crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of
coffee, Or whatever you like to call it, none too politely, adding:
     -- We can't change the country. Let us change the subject.
     At this pertinent suggestion, Mr Bloom,  to change the  subject, looked
down, but  in a quandary, as  he couldn't tell  exactly what construction to
put  on  belongs  to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind
was clearer than the other part. Needless  to  say, the  fumes of his recent
orgy spoke then with some  asperity in a curious bitter way, foreign  to his
sober state. Probably the  home life, to  which Mr Bloom attached the utmost
importance, had not been all that was needful or he hadn't been familiarised
with the right sort of people. With a touch of fear for the young man beside
him,  whom he  furtively  scrutinised  with  an  air of  some  consternation
remembering he  had just come back  from  Paris, the  eyes  more  especially
reminding him forcibly of father and  sister, failing to throw much light on
the subject, however, he brought to  mind instances of cultured fellows that
promised so brilliantly, nipped in the bud of premature decay, and nobody to
blame but  themselves. For instance, there was the  case of O'Callaghan, for
one,  the  half  crazy faddist,  respectably connected, though of inadequate
means,  with his mad vagaries, among whose other gay doings when  rotto  and
making  himself a  nuisance to everybody  all round he  was in  the habit of
ostentatiously sporting in public a  suit of  brown paper (a fact). And then
the  usual  <i>dÉnouement</i> after the  fun  had gone  on  fast and furious he got
landed into hot water and had to be spirited  away by a few friends, after a
strong  hint to a blind horse from John Mallon  of Lower  Castle Yard, so as
not to be made amenable under section two of the Criminal Law Amendment Act,
certain names of  those subpoenaed  being handed in  but  not divulged,  for
reasons which will occur to anyone  with a pick of  brains. Briefly, putting
two and two together, six  sixteen, which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to,
Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all  the
go  in the seventies or thereabouts, even  In  the  House of  Lords, because
early  in  life the occupant  of  the throne,  then heir apparent, the other
members of the  upper ten and other high personages simply  following in the
footsteps  of the head  of the  state,  he  reflected  about the  errors  of
notorieties  and  crowned  heads  running counter  to morality  such  as the
Cornwall case a number of years before under their  veneer in a way scarcely
intended by nature, a thing  good Mrs  Grundy as the law stands was terribly
down on, though not for the reason they thought they were probably, whatever
it was, except women chiefly, who were  always fiddling more or less at  one
another,  it being largely a matter  of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies
who like distinctive underclothing should, and every well tailored man must,
trying to make the gap  wider  between them by innuendo and  give  more of a
genuine fillip to acts  of impropriety between the  two,  she unbuttoned his
and  then  he untied her,  mind  the pin, whereas savages  in  the  cannibal
islands, say,  at ninety degrees  in the  shade  not  caring a  continental.
However, reverting to the original, there were on  the other hand others who
had  forced their way  to the top from  the lowest rung by the  aid of their
bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius, that. With brains, sir.
     For which and further reasons he felt it was interest  and duty even to
wait on and profit  by  the unlooked for occasion, though why, he  could not
exactly  tell,  being,  as  it  was,  already  several shillings to the bad,
having, in fact, let himself in for it. Still, to cultivate the acquaintance
of someone of no  uncommon calibre  who could provide  food  for  reflection
would amply  repay any small... Intellectual  stimulation  as  such  was, he
felt,  from time to time a firstrate tonic for  the mind. Added to which was
the coincidence  of  meeting,  discussion, dance, row, old salt, of the here
today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the whole galaxy of events, all
went to make up a miniature cameo of the world we live in, especially as the
lives of  the submerged tenth, viz.,  coalminers,  divers, scavengers, etc.,
were  very much under the microscope lately. To improve the shining  hour he
wondered whether he might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr
Philip  Beaufoy if taken  down in writing.  Suppose he were to pen something
out of  the  common groove (as he fully  intended  doing) at the rate of one
guinea per column, <i>My Experiences</i>, let us say, <i>in a Cabman's Shelter</i>.
     The pink edition, extra sporting, of the <i>Telegraph</i>, tell a graphic lie,
lay, as  luck  would have it, beside his elbow and  as he  was just puzzling
again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and the preceding
rebus  the vessel came from Bridgwater and the  postcard was addressed to A.
Boudin, find the captain's age,  his eyes went aimlessly over the respective
captions  which came under  his special province, the  allembracing  give us
this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a start but it turned out to
be only something about somebody named H. du Boyes, agent for typewriters or
something like that. Great battle  Tokio. Lovemaking in  Irish #200 damages.
Gordon  Bennett. Emigration  swindle. Letter  from  His Grace William. Ascot
<i>Throwaway</i> recalls  Derby of '92 when Captain Marshall's dark horse, <i>Sir Hugo</i>
, captured the blue riband at long  odds. New  York disaster, thousand lives
lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral of the late Mr Patrick Dignam.
     So  to  change the subject  he  read  about Dignam,  R.I.P.,  which, he
reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff.
     -- <i>This morning</i> (Hynes put it in,  of course), <i>the remains of  the late
Mr Patrick Dignam were removed from his  residence,  no 9 Newbridge  Avenue,
Sandymount, for internment  in Clasnevin. The deceased  gentleman was a most
popular and  genial personality  in  city life and his demise, after a brief
illness, came as great shock to citizens of all classes by whom he is deeply
regretted.  The  obsequies,  at  which many  friends  of the  deceased  were
present, were carried out</i> (certainly Hynes wrote it with a nudge from Corny)
<i>by Messrs.  H.  J.  O'Neill  & Son,  164  North  Strand  road. The  mourners
included: Patk. Dignam (son),  Bernard  Corrigan  (motherinlaw), John  Henry
Menton, solr.,  Martin Cunningham,  John Power  eatondph  1/8  ador  dorador
douradora</i> (must be where  he called Monks  the dayfather about  Keyes's ad),
<i>Thomas Kernan,  Simon Dedalus,  Stephen Dedalus,  B.  A., Edward J. Lambert,
Cornelius Kelleher, Joseph M'C. Hynes, L. Boom, C. P. M'Coy, - M'Intosh, and
several others</i>.
     Nettled not a little by <i>L. Boom</i> (as it incorrectly stated) and the line
of  bitched type, but tickled to death  simultaneously  by  C. P. M'Coy  and
Stephen Dedalus,  B.  A.,  who  were conspicuous, needless to say, by  their
total absence (to  say nothing of M'Intosh), L. Boom pointed  it out to  his
companion  B.  A., engaged in stifling  another yawn, half nervousness,  not
forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of misprints.
     --  Is  that  first epistle to the Hebrews,  he asked,  as soon  as his
bottom jaw would let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and put thy foot in it.
     -- It is, really, Mr Bloom said (though first he fancied  he alluded to
the archbishop till he added about  foot and mouth with which there could be
no  possible  connection)  overjoyed to set  his  mind  at  rest and  a  bit
flabbergasted at Myles Crawford's after all managing the thing, there.
     While  the other was reading  it on page two Boom (to give him  for the
nonce  his new misnomer) whiled away a  few odd leisure moments in  fits and
starts  with the  account  of the  third event at Ascot on page  three,  his
sidevalue 1,000 sovs., with 3,000 sovs. In specie added for entire colts and
fillies, Mr F. Alexander's  <i>Throwaway</i>, b.h. by <i>Rightaway</i>, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs,
Thrale  (W. Lane) 1. Lord Howard de  Walden's <i>Zinfandel</i> (M. Cannon) 2. Mr W.
Bass's <i>Sceptre</i>, 3. Betting  5  to 4  on <i>Zinfandel</i>,  20 to 1 <i>Throwaway</i> (off).
<i>Throwaway</i>  and <i>Zinfandel</i> stood close  order. It was  anybody's race then the
rank  outsider  drew to  the fore  got  long  lead,  beating lord  Howard de
Walden's chestnut colt and Mr W. Bass's bay  filly  Sceptre on a  2 1/2 mile
course.  Winner trained by Braine so that Lenehan's version  of the business
was all  pure buncombe.  Secured  the  verdict  cleverly by a length.  1,000
sovs.,  with 3,000 in specie. Also ran J.  de Bremond's (French horse Bantam
Lyons was anxiously  inquiring after  not  in yet but  expected any  minute)
<i>Maximum II</i>. Different  ways  of bringing  off  a  coup.  Lovemaking damages.
Though that  halfbaked Lyons ran  off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get
left.  Of  course,  gambling eminently  lent  itself to that  sort  of thing
though,  as  the  event  turned  out, the  poor fool hadn't much  reason  to
congratulate himself  on  his pick,  the forlorn  hope. Guesswork it reduced
itself to eventually.
     -- There was every indication they would arrive at that, Mr Bloom said.
     -- Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said.
     One  morning  you would open the  paper, the cabman affirmed, and read,
<i>Return of  Parnell</i>. He  bet them  what  they liked. A Dublin fusilier was in
that shelter  one night and said he  saw  him  in South Africa. Pride it was
killed him. He ought to have done away with himself or  lain  low for a time
after Committee Room No. 15 until  he was  his old self again with no-one to
point a finger  at him. Then they would all to a man have gone down on their
marrowbones to him  to come  back when he had recovered his senses.  Dead he
wasn't. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they brought over was full of
stones.  He changed his name  to De Wet, the Boer general. He made a mistake
to fight the priests. And so forth and so on.
     All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was  rather surprised at  their
memories for in nine cases out of  ten it was  a case of tarbarrels, and not
singly  but in their thousands, and  then complete  oblivion because it  was
twenty  odd years.  Highly  unlikely, of course, there was even  a shadow of
truth  in  the  stories  and,  even  supposing,  he thought a  return highly
inadvisable, all  things  considered. Something evidently riled  them in his
death. Either  he  petered out too tamely of  acute pneumonia just  when his
various different political arrangements  were nearing completion or whether
it transpired he owed his death to  his having neglected to change his boots
and clothes  after a wetting when  a cold resulted and failing  to consult a
specialist he being confined to his room till he eventually  died of it amid
widespread  regret before a fortnight was at an  end or quite possibly  they
wer