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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III A Rtjdf. Awakening — An Incomprehensible Order — " Connors The Hellion"—A Long, Hard Day — The Lubber's Hole — A Time-honored Custom — The First And Last Man — Handsome Harry Gives Me Good Advice — Packet-ships And Packet-rats — The Black Ball Line I WAS aroused by being flung violently on my hack, and unmercifully kicked and cursed by a young man twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, who called me a "d—d skulking rayneck," and asked if I intended to turn to or not. Dazed and bewildered, I stumbled to my feet and gazed stupidly at my assailant. He promptly knocked me down again, and amid a shower of curses and kicks, ordered me to "git up, an' out o' here! " Seeing an open door behind him, I dodged the next blow and had the good luck to bolt through it. I found myself on the deck of a big ship. It was a strange and busy scene that confronted me. Officers yelling and cursing, drunken and half-drunken sailors and raynecks like myself running to and fro, falling over each other and the tangle of ropes, fenders, and stores that littered the deck, in their efforts to obey orders and avoid the kicks and blows that were showered upon them by the officers. I had not entirely recovered from the effects of the drug. I fancied that I dreamed, and was trying to deci'de in a muddled, hazy way, whether this was a prize we had boarded, or were ourselves undergoing the process of capture by a man o' war, when my illusions were dispelled by a vigorous kick that nearly floored me again. I turned and confronted a burly ruffian, who yelled: "What ye stannin' there gapin' at, ye infernal shoemaker? Git up there 'n' overhaul them t'gallan' gear, d' ye hear?': I stared at him in blank astonishment. His language was Choctaw to me. I was about to ask him what he meant, when,...