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
his shirt more open so that on top of the timehonoured symbol of the
mariner's hope and rest they had a full view of the figure 16 and a
young man's sideface looking frowningly rather.

--Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when we were Iying
becalmed off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton. Fellow, the
name of Antonio, done that. There he is himself, a Greek.

--Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.

That worthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting round the.
Someway in his. Squeezing or.

--See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is cursing the mate. And
there he is now, he added, the same fellow, pulling the skin with his
fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn.

And in point of fact the young man named Antonio's livid face did
actually look like forced smiling and the curious effect excited the
unreserved admiration of everybody including Skin-the-Goat, who this
time stretched over.

--Ay, ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly chest. He's gone
too. Ate by sharks after. Ay, ay.

He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expression
of before.

--Neat bit of work, one longshoreman said.

--And what's the number for? loafer number two queried.

--Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor.

--Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this
time with some sort of a half smile for a brief duration only in the
direction of the questioner about the number. Ate. A Greek he was.

And then he added with rather gallowsbird humour considering his alleged
end:

_--As bad as old Antonio, For he left me on my ownio._

The face of a streetwalker glazed and haggard under a black straw hat
peered askew round the door of the shelter palpably reconnoitring on
her own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill. Mr
Bloom, scarcely knowing which way to look, turned away on the moment
flusterfied but outwardly calm, and, picking up from the table the pink