In James Joyce's Ulysses Stuart Gilbert observes
that Pharos is described as an "isle of dreadful hunger," and
that "such isles of hunger and thirst were only too familiar
to Egyptian and Phoenician mariners" (124). In Book 4 of the Odyssey,
the Greeks on the island are starving until Proteus's daughter
Eidothea takes pity on
Menelaus and tells him how to subdue her father.
Stephen, aware of all the new money burning a hole in his
pocket, may be contemplating his own dreadful thirst. He has
thought a little earlier of his promise to meet Mulligan at "The Ship, half twelve," i.e.
in about an hour. He fails to show, but proceeds instead to
the newspaper office, where after a decorous interval he
proposes that "the house do now adjourn" to a pub. It is the
beginning of a very long day of drinking.