No More Learning

In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket
and handed to his neighbour a not very cleanlooking 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. We was chased by pirates one voyage.
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. _Gospodi pomilyou_. 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: _Choza de Indios. Beni, Bolivia. _

All focussed their attention at the scene exhibited, 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, the communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs
like breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can't bear no more
children.

See them sitting 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 generally.

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: _Tarjeta Postal, Senor A Boudin, Galeria Becche, Santiago,
Chile. _ 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 _Maritana_ 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 _bona fides_ 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 via 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 caste, the
Tweedy-Flower grand opera company with his 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 _apropos_ of the
Fishguard-Rosslare route which, it was mooted, was once more on the
_tapis_ 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 the matter of a couple of paltry
pounds was debarred from seeing more of the world they lived in instead
of being always and ever 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 _venue_ 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 steamtram, 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 _coup d'oeil_ 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 viceversa 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 chinks 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 dangerouslooking claspknife 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. _Prepare to
meet your God_, says he. Chuk! 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
_stiletto_.

After which harrowing _denouement_ 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 _where ignorance
is bliss_ Mr B. and Stephen, each in his own particular way, both
instinctively exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the
strictly _entre nous_ variety however, towards where Skin-the-Goat,
_alias_ the keeper, not turning a hair, 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 in fits and
starts a stained by coffee evening journal, another the card with the
natives _choza de_, 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, roughly 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 spirt a jet of spew into the sawdust,
and shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn.

--What year would that be about? Mr B interrogated. Can you recall the
boats?

Our _soi-disant_ 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 _minutiae_
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 highly laudable institution to which the
public at large, no matter where living inland or seaside, as 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 _Ireland expects that every man_ 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 Rover, 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. Suck 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 timehonoured 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 Iying
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, one longshoreman 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. Ate. 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 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 Evening Telegraph 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 it was nothing short of a crying scandal that ought to be put a
stop to _instanter_ to say that women of that stamp (quite apart from
any oldmaidish squeamishness on the subject), a necessary evil, w ere
not licensed and medically inspected by the proper authorities, a thing,
he could truthfully state, he, as a _paterfamilias_, was a stalwart
advocate of from the very first start. Whoever embarked on a policy of
the 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, _corruptio per se_ and _corruptio per accidens_ 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 Rontgen did or the telescope like Edison,
though I believe it was before his time Galileo was the man, I mean,
and 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 bestknown 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 with a smile of unbelief. I'm not so sure about that.
That's a matter for everyman's opinion and, without dragging in the
sectarian side of the business, I beg to differ with you _in toto_
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 _Hamlet_ 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 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 _sine qua non_ 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 O, 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 _apropos_ of
knives remarked to his _confidante sotto voce_. 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 _Hesperus_ 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 of 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, _alias_ Ledwidge, when he occupied
the boards of the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was identified with the
management in the _Flying Dutchman_, 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 icecreamers 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 tuckin with garlic _de rigueur_ 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 doublequick 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. _Roberto ruba roba sua_.

--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 890 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 then the
others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog,
goo 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 off 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 _Palme_ on Booterstown strand. That was the talk of the
town that year (Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of original
verse of 910 distinctive merit on the topic for the Irish _Times_),
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. _Lady Cairns_ of Swansea run into by the _Mona_ which
was on an opposite tack in rather muggyish weather and lost with all
hands on deck. No aid was given. Her master, the _Mona's_, 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 doze.

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 nozz1e 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, gaping 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 closer at hand, the noise of his
bilgewater some little time subsequently splashing on the ground where
it apparently awoke a horse of the cabrank. A hoof scooped anyway for
new foothold after sleep and harness jingled. Slightly disturbed in his
sentrybox by the brazier of live coke the watcher of the corporation
stones 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 to the arms
of Morpheus, a truly amazing piece of hard lines 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 pounds a year
at one time which of course the doublebarrelled 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 wreckers, the keeper said, who was evidently _au
fait_.

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 the then 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-_cum_-potation, introducing an
atmosphere of drink into the _soiree_, 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 that colonel Everard down
there in Navan growing tobacco. Where would you find anywhere the like
of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated _crescendo_ 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 _finale_. 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 everyman 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 (B. ) 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 (he having had the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on
his adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial _liaison_
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 l s d. in the
course of his perambulations round the docks in the congenial atmosphere
of the _Old Ireland_ tavern, come back to Erin and so on. Then as for
the other 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 muchinjured 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.

--_Ex quibus_, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or
four eyes conversing, _Christus_ or Bloom his name is or after all any
other, _secundum carnem_.

--Of course, Mr B. 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 and 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,
in the next house 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 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, from some 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 imbued with the proper spirit. 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 _pro rata_ having a
comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something
in the neighbourhood of 300 pounds 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. _Ubi patria_, as we learned a smattering
of in our classical days in _Alma Mater, vita bene_. Where you can live
well, the sense is, if you work.

Over his untastable 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 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 _faubourg Saint Patrice_ 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. .