Ulysses
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’œil_ 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 _dénouement_ 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