articular
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 wreckers, 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 the then 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 _soiree_, 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 scene
and regaining his seat he sank rather than sat heavily on the form
provided. Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to
grind, was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent
the natural resources of Ireland or something of that sort which he
described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none on
the face of God's earth, far and away superior to England, with coal in
large quantities, six million pounds worth of pork exported every year,
ten millions between butter and eggs and all the riches drained out of
it by England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through the
nose always and gobbling up the best meat in the market and a lot more
surplus steam in the same vein. Their conversation accordingly became
general and all ag