Quint

Notes:

A Dutch-Jewish three masted schooner emptied her cargo, chief. It was coming back from the coast of Africa to deliver the Bucks. 1100 bucks were led from the docks. They didn't see us for the first half hour. We cruised around looking for the more ornery ones.
Very first light, we came cruisin' so they formed themselves into tight groups You know it's kind of like ol squares in a battle, like you see on a calendar. We'd go for the nearest buck and they'd be hollerin and screamin. They look at us, we look right into their eyes. Somethin' about a buck's eyes, black eyes, like a dolls eyes. When we come at him and he doesn't seem to be breakin, you hear that terrible high pitch screamin and his butt walls turn white in spite of all the hollerin and screamin.
By the end of the first dawn, we'd broken a hundred bucks. I don't know how many buck breakers there were, maybe a thousand. I don't know how many broken bucks, we averaged six an hour.
On Thursday morning, I bumped into a friend of mine, William Eubanks from Alabama. Cotton farmer. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up and saw him bob up and down,
he'd had a buck by the waist and had fallen asleep. By noon the third day, the wagons started arriving. You could see that's when the bucks were most frightened, waitin' for their turn. So 1100 bucks came ashore, three hundred and sixteen were able to sit on the way out, buck breakers took the rest, June the 29th, 1845.