Want to return home badly. Please wire money.
Jack.
Night soon came, and I sought a lumber yard down by the wharf. I crawled up in the lumber pile and made my bed for the night. I did not sleep much, for I was thinking of home, how good a nice warm bed would feel and how glad they would all be to see me after months of separation.
The next morning I received twenty-five dollars and made ready to depart for home. I inquired of the ticket agent what my fare would be, and he told me "twenty-one dollars." This money looked too good to me to spend so foolishly, since traveling freight was so easy, I decided to hold the coin and ride cheaper. I caught a train out of there that morning, and at ten o'clock that night I arrived safely in Jacksonville after a rough ride on the rods of a freight. I went down to the docks and found one of the Clyde line steamers loading for Charleston. While the negroes were busily engaged in loading the freight I hid myself in the bottom and there awaited its departure. My hiding place was between some big boxes, and I knew I would not be discovered till after the ship had left port, so, feeling comfortably safe, I dropped off to sleep. When I awoke we were steaming northward. Just as I crawled from my hiding place one of the crew saw me and let forth an oath. He grabbed me by the nape of the neck and hauled me bodily up to the foreman who was standing nearby. I did not attempt to resist at all, for he was a great, big, ugly devil and I was not going to take any chances on being disfigured at that time. The mate could do nothing more than set me to work, so to work I bent, and it certainly was over hard. From the time they caught me till we arrived in Charleston I worked like a slave, scrubbing decks.
Arriving in Charleston, that night I sought a lodging house, and the next day, after making a thorough toilet and purchasing a few clean clothes, I bought a ticket for my home in the mountains of Western Carolina. Here endeth the first adventure, and I returned, wiser of course, and somewhat disappointed, truth to tell, in not having captured a ruffian. However, I was glad enough to have saved my skin. How uncomfortable to have passed the remainder of my days in the somewhat contracted belly of the alligator.
[CHAPTER II.]
A few years later I entered the academic department of the State University, and I can say without blushing that I worked faithfully that year both in my studies and in athletics. When the summer came and the vacation months set in, I returned home and began work on one of the dailies as a reporter, which position I held until college opened the following fall.
During my sophomore year I succeeded in making the 'varsity football and track teams, and as a consequence I was pretty much the man by the end of the season. The same year I was elected athletic editor of the Tar Heel, the college weekly, which I held down fairly well, as I had had some previous training in the newspaper field.
Spring came, and in due time summer and vacation days would follow, but before the spring had fairly set in I began to formulate plans for the summer months. There are numerous ways by which a young man may spend a pleasant summer, but I think by far the most interesting and adventurous one is a trip across the Atlantic on a regular old cattle boat. I decided to make the trip across with two college chums. Arriving at Newport News, Va., two days after we had finished our examinations, we were not long in completing our arrangements for a trip on the cattle boat. The cattle exporter agreed to give us each one pound, English money, and a return passage on one of the company's boats. This being satisfactory, we were instructed to be on board early the following morning, as the ship was due to sail by seven o'clock sharp. The night previous to our sailing we slept very little, so anxious were we for the morrow.