“What you guff about?” the burly steward asked.

“Schmell, py gee—­its tick mit bad schmell!”

“Vell, you shut your ——­ maut or I smash your ——­ head, see?”

The boy laughed, then the steward removed his plate and refused to give any more.  Nobody took any notice.  We were too busy and too brutally selfish to interfere.  The steward was the camp bully and the men were afraid of him.  They must not even laugh at his provisions.  We had pork for breakfast, we took pork chops to the mines for dinner, and the staple article—­the standby—­of every supper was pork.  Pigs in Alabama are like turnips in Scotland—­there are no property rights in them.  They breed and litter in the tall dog-fennel; they root around the shanties and cover the landscape.

“Who owns these pigs?” I asked old Ransom Pope, a Negro.

“One an’ anoder!” he said.

The gullies and the weeds were full of them and the steward found them easy and cheap feeding.

“You come yere for breakfast to-morrow an’ I smash your dam head!” the steward said to the boy, as we left the dining room.  There was no reply.  Each man went his way.  They were tired—­too tired to think.  Though a stranger to even the taste of liquor, I had an intense craving for it and it seemed as if I had used it all my life.  An hour after supper, I lay down on my sodden pile and went to sleep.

I was awakened next morning by a Norwegian mucker who was organizing a strike over the incident of the tainted pork.  Five minutes later, every man in the shed was around the stove in an impromptu indignation meeting.  It was agreed that Max, the German boy, should go in first; if the steward put him out, we were all to leave with him and refuse to work.  He was allowed to take breakfast but was refused a dinner pail.  We dropped ours and marched to the office in a body.  An investigation was made and it was discovered that the steward was feeding us on his neighbour’s pork and charging it to the company.  He was discharged and we went back to the camp to make merry for the rest of the forenoon.  The fun, for most of them, consisted of an extra demand on their physical force—­rough horse-play, leap-frog and wrestling.  One man went to town for extra stimulants.  Another, a big Swede, stripped nude, drained at a single draught a bottle of whiskey and lay down to sleep himself drunk and sober again before his next call to the pits.  At the close of the day he lay there—­a big, shaggy animal, wallowing.

The mines were shut down on Sunday and we had an opportunity to look around.  Though a place of one thousand inhabitants, it has no post-office.  There are ditches but no drains; wide, deep gullies, but no streets.  The moon shines there in her season, but there are no street lamps.  The hogs are somewhat tame and we fed them as we went along.  There is a church but it’s for black folks—­it’s essential to them.  The whites fare not so well.  If they want one, they travel for it.  They do likewise for a school, for the little school beside the church is for coloured children.  The only “modern convenience” was an ancient style of hydrant, around which the children were organizing fire companies and extinguishing imaginary fires.