He worked as earnestly, and as steadily, as if he had
been landing an ordinary cargo at an ordinary dock.
The captain and the men in the boat carried the bags high up on the
beach, out of any danger from tide or surf, and laid them in a line along
the sand. The captain ordered this because it would be easier to handle
them afterwards--if it should ever be necessary to handle them--than if
they had been thrown into piles. If they should conclude to bury them, it
would be easier and quicker to dig a trench along the line, and tumble
them in, than to make the deep holes that would otherwise be necessary.
Until dark that day, and even after dark, they worked, stopping only for
necessary eating and drinking. The line of bags upon the shore had grown
into a double one, and it became necessary for the men, sometimes the
white and sometimes the black, to stoop deeper and deeper into the water
of the hold to reach the bags. But they worked on bravely. In the early
dawn of the next morning they went to work again. Not a negro had given
the ship the slip, nor were there any signs that one of them had thought
of such a thing.
Backward and forward through the low surf went the boat, and longer and
wider and higher grew the mass of bags upon the beach.
It was the third day after they had reached shore that the work was
finished. Every dripping bag had been taken out of the hold, and the
captain had counted them all as they had been put ashore, and verified
the number by the record in his pocket-book.
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