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.