Page:Ulysses, 1922.djvu/597

594 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 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 wrecks, 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 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 cum  potation, introducing an atmosphere of drink into the soirée, 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