Ulysses eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 997 pages of information about Ulysses.

Ulysses eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 997 pages of information about Ulysses.
And the odds were twenty to nil there was really no secret about it at all.  Nevertheless, without going into the minutiae of the business, the eloquent fact remained that the sea was there in all its glory and in the natural course of things somebody or other had to sail on it and fly in the face of providence though it merely went to show how people usually contrived to load that sort of onus on to the other fellow like the hell idea and the lottery and insurance which were run on identically the same lines so that for that very reason if no other lifeboat Sunday was a highly laudable institution to which the public at large, no matter where living inland or seaside, as the case might be, having it brought home to them like that should extend its gratitude also to the harbourmasters and coastguard service who had to man the rigging and push off and out amid the elements whatever the season when duty called Ireland expects that every man and so on and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to capsize at any moment, rounding which he once with his daughter had experienced some remarkably choppy, not to say stormy, weather.

—­There was a fellow sailed with me in the Rover, the old seadog, himself a rover, proceeded, went ashore and took up a soft job as gentleman’s valet at six quid a month.  Them are his trousers I’ve on me and he gave me an oilskin and that jackknife.  I’m game for that job, shaving and brushup.  I hate roaming about.  There’s my son now, Danny, run off to sea and his mother got him took in a draper’s in Cork where he could be drawing easy money.

—­What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, seen from the side, bore a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk, away from the carking cares of office, unwashed of course and in a seedy getup and a strong suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage.

—­Why, the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance, my son, Danny?  He’d be about eighteen now, way I figure it.

The Skibbereen father hereupon 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.

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Ulysses from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.