They set them at work yesterday morning, and
they had nearly put all the cotton into the schooners at dinner time.
To make the niggers work harder, they gave them apple jack."
"What is that?" asked the engineer, who never heard the name before.
"It is liquor made out of apples, and it is very strong," answered
Dolly; and he might have added that it was the vilest intoxicant to
be found in the whole world, not even excepting Russian vodka.
"And this liquor made the hands drunk, I suppose."
"They did not give them enough for that, sir; but it made them kind of
crazy, and they wanted more of it. That made the trouble; the hands
struck for liquor before dinner, and when they didn't get it, they took
to the woods, about fifty of them. The soldiers had to get their dinner
before they would start out after them; and that is the reason the
schooners are not full now, sir, and not a bale had been put into this
steamer."
"But she seems to be fully loaded now."
"Yes, sir; Captain Lonley paid the soldiers that were left to load the
Havana. They worked till eleven in the evening; they were not used to
that kind of work, and they got mighty tired, I can tell you," said
Dolly, with the first smile Christy had seen on his yellow face, for he
appeared to enjoy the idea of a squad of white men doing niggers' work.
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