At Swim-Two-Birds

Orlick begins a new draft of the manuscript. Trellis wakes up in a palatial building on the bank of the Dublin Grand Canal. He spends most of his days inside and pays “no attention to the law of God” (139), telling lurid stories and impious poems to corrupt young people. Furriskey interrupts to suggest that they truncate the list of Trellis’s sins by including a simple catalog. In the story, Trellis looks out the window and sees a saint in his garden. Trellis attacks the saint and tears up his book of prayers. The saint curses Trellis. However, Orlick stops writing, worrying that they are “on the wrong track again” (140). He decides to ask Fergus the Pooka for help. The other characters agree but they want Orlick to hurry because they worry about Trellis waking up and uncovering their scheme. They wonder whether they could give Trellis an awkward boil for the time being.

Orlick makes another start on the manuscript. This time, Trellis wakes up and finds the Pooka MacPhellimey in his room. Much to Trellis’s annoyance, he has a boil on his back that he can’t quite reach. Fergus, also to Trellis’s annoyance, doesn’t have a cure. The Pooka says that he has been sent to inflict “a wide variety of physical scourges, torment, and piteous blood-sweats” (142) upon Trellis.