Page:Ulysses, 1922.djvu/584

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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. Gospodi pomilooy. 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 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 : ''Tarjeta Postal. Señor 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