nd, chewing and with some slow
stammers, proceeded:
--We come up this morning eleven o'clock. The threemaster _Rosevean_
from Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped 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 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 oblit
|