) Great unjust God! FLORRY: (Offended) Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist. O, my foot's tickling. (Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past, yelling.) THE NEWSBOYS: Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist. (Stephen turns and sees Bloom.) STEPHEN: A time, times and half a time. (Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open on his spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. Aloft over his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the hook of which the sodden huddled mass of his only son, saved from Liffey waters, hangs from the slack of its breeches. A hobgoblin in the image of Punch Costello, hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic with receding forehead and Ally Sloper nose, tumbles in somersaults through the gathering darkness.) ALL: What? THE HOBGOBLIN: (His jaws chattering, capers to and fro, goggling his eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping with outstretched clutching arms, then all at once thrusts his lipless face through the fork of his thighs) Il vient! C'est moi! L'homme qui rit! L'homme primigene! (He whirls round and round with dervish howls) Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux! (He crouches juggling. Tiny roulette planets fly from his hands.) Les jeux sont faits! (The planets rush together, uttering crepitant cracks) Rien va plus! (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away. He springs off into vacuum.) FLORRY: (Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly) The end of the world! (A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her. Nebulous obscurity occupies space. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares over coughs and feetshuffling.) THE GRAMOPHONE: Jerusalem! Open your gates and sing Hosanna... (A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star fills from it, proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of Elijah. Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith to nadir the End of the World, a twoheaded octopus in gillie's kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in the form of the Three Legs of Man.) THE END OF THE WORLD: (with a Scotch accent) Wha'll dance the keel row, the keel row, the keel row? (Over the possing