Ulysses Part 138

--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 lefthand 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.

--Bottles out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles.

c.o.c.ks his gun over his shoulder. Aims.

He turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely. Then he screwed his features up someway sideways and glared out into the night with an unprepossessing cast of countenance.

--Pom! he then shouted once.

The entire audience waited, antic.i.p.ating 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 marksmans.h.i.+p compet.i.tion 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 un.o.btrusively.

--Murphy's my name, the sailor continued. D. 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. I belongs there. That's where I hails from. My little woman's down there. She's waiting for me, I know. _For England, home and beauty_. 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 s.h.i.+eling 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 gra.s.swidow, 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 s.h.i.+rtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions. No chair for father. Broo! The wind! Her brandnew arrival is on her knee, _post mortem_ 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 D 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?

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 pa.s.sed 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 _Rosevean_ from Bridgwater with bricks. I s.h.i.+pped to get over. Paid off this afternoon. There's my discharge. See? D. B. Murphy. A. B. S.

In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket and handed to his neighbour a not very cleanlooking folded doc.u.ment.

--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 circ.u.mnavigated 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 b.l.o.o.d.y man that ever scuttled a s.h.i.+p. 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, s.h.i.+fting 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.

n.o.body volunteering a statement he winked, saying:

--Gla.s.s. That boggles 'em. Gla.s.s.

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 pa.s.sed through the latter's hat) having detected a discrepancy between his name (a.s.suming he was the person he represented himself to be and not sailing under false colours after having boxed the compa.s.s on the strict q.t. somewhere) and the fict.i.tious 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 Sat.u.r.day 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.