"malttreating themselves to their health's contempt"

(321.21-323.24)  Today's reading begins at the pub's counter ("Contrescene"), where HCE works pouring drinks ("blanding rum, milk and toddy with I hand it to you") and grabbing the coins the customers are leaving as payment.  The description of the taking of the coins is great:  "with a pattedyr but digit here, he scooped the hens, hounds and horses biddy by bunny, with an arc of his covethand, saved from the drohnings they might oncounter, untill his cubid long, to hide in dry."  On one level, this is the covetous HCE collecting the Irish coins -- which McHugh notes bore the likenesses of the animals listed here -- and hiding them in his till.  On another level, this is the newly re-arrived Norwegian Captain playing the role of Noah, taking the animals into his ark to save them from drowning.

Soon Ashe Junior, one of the tailors, reenters.  He's got some clothes with him (ostensibly for the captain).  Also reappearing is Kersse, who is separately scolded by three separate people for wearing a white hat and odd clothes.  Campbell and Robinson speculate that Ashe and Kersse are the same person.  I'm not sure about that, but I do agree with their assertion that Kersse represents the self-destructive side of HCE.  (Campbell and Robinson also have the insight that Finn MacCool -- one mythical version of HCE -- wore a white hat to a hurling match also attended by the King, who inadvertently gave Finn his name when the King asked who was wearing the "fin cumhal," or white cap.)  

Kersse (who is called a "scum of a botch" and "suck of a thick") was supposed to be tracking down the Norwegian Captain, but he comes in gallantly from the race track looking like a naval officer.  Someone asks him "who did you do at doyle today, my horsey dorksey gentryman," essentially asking him how he did betting on the horses.  Kersse tells the crowd the entire story of "how the whole blazy raze acurraghed, from lambkinsback to sliving board and from spark to phoenish."

After Kersse has given his recap of the races (the details of which don't actually appear in the book -- we just get the narrative summary), the drunken newcomers (who "had been malttreating themselves to their health's contempt") appear, saying, "Same capman no nothing horces two feller he feller go where.  Isn't that effect?  gig for gag."  I think what's happening here is that Kersse is being compared to the Norwegian Captain (this supports Campbell and Robinson's idea that Kersse is a version of HCE) and the assembled crowd now begins to conflate the two, "fag for fig" and "mhos for mhos."  This culminates in one person expressing a bloodthirsty disdain for the captain.  This man spits out an exhaustive list of insults and delivers threats to the captain's body and ship in addition to his reputation.  He finally says that no tailor could make a suit that would fit the humpbacked captain.