The loud crack of a bullwhip filled the air a bare moment before the pain removed any sense of time or meaning from Ali’s consciousness.  The ice cold of winter forgotten as the heat of his own blood dripping down his back as the galley master rested down and said.  “The next one of you slaves that dares to ask for a second serving will experience the same fate.  You little bastards think this is rough, wait till you reach your new home.  Ungrateful curs.”<br/><br/>Ali remained slumped until a bucket of water had met his face and he groaned as the pain still seared through him and he lifted his gaze up and he couldn’t see much of anything.  His nose was bleeding too where he had felt the foreman’s meaty fist connect with it when he had eaten the two bites of foul biscuit followed by the musty water, had they not heard of scurvy.<br/><br/>Who would have thought that he, Alivant El Mill was the eldest son of the second largest family in the kingdom of El, would have ended up on a ship to the new world.  Not only was Alivant torn he couldn’t believe that the ungrateful little sod of a brother had betrayed him like that.  Three years ago he was entered into the pits of the damned.  Where the noble men reached their manhood by cutting down the slaves and the chaff, but Alivant had the finest training.  Alivant killed the little welp who had come to fight, and of course the law said he was set free.  Free of the pits, but it didn’t say anything about being sold into the indignity of slavery right after and now .. he was to be a laborer for some rich lord and wife.  To be forgotten, an inconvenient excuse.<br/><br/>His muscles were now sharper than ever, the galley trip had now reached the sixth week and he had rowed every day, he had only asked for food as his massive frame of 6 feet and 6 inches required more food than a little man of 5 feet and 2.  It was also odd, his skin was deeply tanned but the others that served on the ship were the dark chocolate of the African.<br/><br/>Self contemplation over as the burn of a torch was jammed into the back and as much as he tried to hold it back, Ali’s lips parted in a loud scream as he felt pain sever through him the very moment where the man in the crows nest shouted that land was ahead.  Although the foreman said there was worse to come, he couldn’t believe it.  Nothing could be worse than being chained to an oar .. sleeping against it and being fed food that a rat would turn it’s nose up.    Scream over he turned his head and he saw the bullwhip holders hand and he seared the image in his mind, it might not be today, but in the future, one day, Ali would remove the head of the man.  This feeling is what gave him the will  to lift his head and stand tall.