dees strik'."

"Damn the fruit!" cheerily replied the Irishman, artistically
disposing of a mouthful of tobacco juice. "It ain't the fruit we
care about, it's the cotton."

"Hear! hear!" cried a dozen lusty comrades.

Mr. Baptiste shook his head and moved sorrowfully away.

"Hey, by howly St. Patrick, here's that little fruit-eater!"
called the centre of another group of strikers perched on
cotton-bales.

"Hello! Where--" began a second; but the leader suddenly held up
his hand for silence, and the men listened eagerly.

It might not have been a sound, for the levee lay quiet and the
mules on the cotton-drays dozed languidly, their ears pitched at
varying acute angles. But the practiced ears of the men heard a
familiar sound stealing up over the heated stillness.

"Oh--ho--ho--humph--humph--humph--ho--ho--ho--oh--o --o--humph!"

Then the faint rattle of chains, and the steady thump of a
machine pounding.

If ever you go on the levee you'll know that sound, the rhythmic
song of the stevedores heaving cotton-bales, and the steady
thump, thump, of the machine compressing them within the hold of