Buck Mulligan has caught up with Haines and identifies for him Parnell’s brother who is playing chess in the corner of the teashop as they sit down and order two melanges and scones and cream. Haines has his book of Irish folk songs. He dismisses with an innate confidence the angst of Stephen Dedalus and Hamlet as the lot of deranged minds.

Mulligan joins in the betrayal and laughs describing Stephen’s drunken gait and his nickname for him, wandering Aengus. Haines says that men like Stephen always have a fixed idea. Mulligan suggests it is an obsession with hell that prohibits him from connecting with the joy of creation. Haines quickly concludes that his idee fixe is Eternal Punishment. Mulligan is more interested in the waitress and the cakes as Haines evaluates Stephen’s theory that the moral idea and the concept of hell is lacking from Irish myth. They enjoy large helpings of sugar and cream. Mulligan laughs that Stephen says he will write something in ten years. They move on to discuss the cream. The Elijah flyer still floats in the Liffey.