"I shuttm, missus, like a wide sleever!"

(351.5-353.5)  Butt's defense continues in a very undefensive tone.  Instead of lamenting or justifying his past actions, he revels in them.  He looks back on those "hellscyown days for our fellows" and recalls how "our woos with the wenches went wined for a song" as their chaplain plied everyone with cigarettes.  Butt's thoughts turn toward the prostitutes he encountered while a soldier.  He "did not give one humpenny dump" for the cheaper prostitutes, the "thusengaged slavey generales of Tanah Kornalls, the meelisha's deelishas."  Instead, he says, he frequented the high-class brothels, such as "my respectables soeurs assistershood off Lyndhurst Terrace, the puttih Misses Celana Dalems" (McHugh notes that Lyndhurst Terrace was a Hong Kong brothel area) and "His Herinesss, my respeaktoble medams culonelle on Mellay Street, Lightnints Gundhr Sawabs" (Malay Street, McHugh adds, was a Singapore brothel area).

This revelry went on until the Russian General ("his urrsian gemenal") appeared on the scene and stole the prostitutes' attentions:  "and how they gave love to him and how he took the ward from us."  "[M]y oreland for a rolvever," Butt declared, arming himself.  "We insurrectioned," he says, "and, be the procuratress of the hory synnotts, before he could tell pullyirragun to parrylewis, I shuttm, missus, like a wide sleever!  Hump to dump!  Tumbleheaver!"  So, Butt and his fellow soldiers revolted against the Russian General, and before he had a chance to pull his own gun, Butt shot him.

Taff, recognizing the dangerous nature of Butt, delivers praise for his counterpart's exploits.  That praise, however, has hints of mockery:  "Oholy rasher, I'm believer!  And Oho bullyclaver of ye, bragadore-gunneral!"

Butt loves this slightly-mocking praise.  "The buckbeshottered!" he shouts.  "He'll umbozzle no more graves nor horne nor haunder . . . ."

Today's passage ends with Taff, a half-hearted sinner himself, expressing awe and slight disbelief that Butt did the deed:  "In sobber sooth and in souber civiles?  And to the dirtiment of the curtailment of his all of man?  Notshoh?"  Butt's response, and the conclusion of the Butt-Taff dialogue, will come in our next reading.