and pulling it out again told them all his new name. Then, with the
water running off him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had
belonged to his grandmother and bought a grammar of the bulls' language
to study but he could never learn a word of it except the first personal
pronoun which he copied out big and got off by heart and if ever he went
out for a walk he filled his pockets with chalk to write it upon what
took his fancy, the side of a rock or a teahouse table or a bale of
cotton or a corkfloat. In short, he and the bull of Ireland were soon as
fast friends as an arse and a shirt. They were, says Mr Stephen, and
the end was that the men of the island seeing no help was toward, as
the ungrate women were all of one mind, made a wherry raft, loaded
themselves and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all masts
erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, spread three
sheets in the wind, put her head between wind and water, weighed anchor,
ported her helm, ran up the jolly Roger, gave three times three, let the
bullgine run, pushed off in their bumboat and put to sea to recover
the main of America. Which was the occasion, says Mr Vincent, of the
composing by a boatswain of that rollicking chanty:

_--Pope Peter's but a pissabed.
A man's a man for a' that._

Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the doorway
as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend
whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon,
who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a
cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil
enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a
project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched
on. Whereat he handed round to the company a set of pasteboard cards
which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a legend
printed in fair italics: _Mr Malachi Mulligan. Fertiliser and Incubator.
Lambay Island_. His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw
from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir
Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself
to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed. Well,
let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it
smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. 'Tis as cheap sitting as
standing. Mr M