Page 584 (16.570-606) "I seen a Chinese... the civilised world"

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— I seen a Chinese one time, related the doughty narrator, that had little pills like putty and he put them in the water and they opened, and every pill was something different. One was a ship, another was a house, another was a flower. Cooks rats in your soup, he appetisingly added, the Chinese does.

rat stew

Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces, the globetrotter went on, adhering to his adventures.




— And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his back. Knife like that.




Whilst speaking he produced a dangerous looking claspknife, quite in keeping with his character, and held it in the striking position.

— In a knockingshop it was count of a tryon between two smugglers. Fellow hid behind a door, come up behind him. Like that. Prepare to meet your God, says he. Chuk! It went into his back up to the butt.




His heavy glance, drowsily roaming about, kind of defied their further questions even should they by any chance want to.




— That's a good bit of steel, repeated he, examining his formidable stiletto.




After which harrowing dénouement sufficient to appal the stoutest he snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before in his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket.




— They're great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently quite in the dark said for the benefit of them all. That was why they thought the park murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account of them using knives.




At this remark, passed obviously in the spirit of where ignorance is bliss, Mr Bloom 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 by 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

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