Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/321

 they are, to use the language of the stable, 'eating their heads off' the while. The rather profuse mess and general expenditure, which caused little reflection when they were earning at the rate of two or three hundred a year, became unpleasantly suggestive now that all was going out and nothing coming in. Hence loud and deep rose the anathemas, as the discontented men gazed sadly or wrathfully at the misty sky. A few days' showery weather having well-nigh driven our shearers to desperation, out comes the sun in all his glory. He is never far away or very faint in Riverina.

All the pens are filled for the morrow; very soon after the earliest sunbeams, the bell sounds its welcome summons, and the whole force tackles to the work with an ardour proportioned to the delay, every man working as if for the ransom of his family from slavery. These men work, spurred on by the double excitement of acquiring social reputation and making money rapidly. Not an instant is lost; not a nerve, limb, or muscle doing less than the hardest taskmaster could flog out of a slave. Occasionally you see a shearer, after finishing his sheep, walk quietly out, and not appearing for a couple of hours, or perhaps not again during the day. Do not put him down as a sluggard; be assured that he has tasked Nature dangerously hard, and has only just given in before she does. Look at that silent, slight youngster, with a bandage round his swollen wrist. Every 'blow' of the shears is agony to him, yet he disdains to give in, and has been working 'in distress' for hours. The pain is great, as you can see by the flush which surges across his brown face, yet he goes on manfully to the last sheep, and endures to the very verge of fainting.

A change in the manner and tone of the shed is apparent towards the end of the day. It is now the ding-dong of the desperate fray, when the blood of the fierce animal man is up, when mortal blows are exchanged, and curses float upwards with the smoke and dust. The ceaseless clicking of the shears—the stern earnestness of the men, toiling with feverish, tireless energy—the constant succession of sheep shorn and let go, caught and commenced—the occasional savage oath or passionate gesture, as a sheep kicked and struggled with perverse, delaying obstinacy—the cuts and stabs, with