Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/359

 that half his vigil is over. He feels refreshed by his late heartily-eaten meal. He warms himself from time to time by the blazing fires which he has piled up. Once every half-hour he walks round his watch and ward. The night is calm and starlit. The cattle have mostly lain down, and are apparently not disposed to stir. When another hour has passed, Mr. Jones begins to realise a treacherous inclination for slumber.

He has been up early, has worked hard all day, and after the third hour of watching begins to feel as if he would give all the world for a good, careless sleep. However, he combats the feeling, and it passes off. Great comfort comes from the thought that when his watch is over at ten o'clock, he can have unbroken rest till breakfast-time. The last hour dies hard, but comes to its end in due time, and then Mr. Jones, with secret joy, veiled under a careless manner, shakes the feet of the pair who are to relieve him and his mate, telling them to keep moving as the cattle are troublesome on the far side. Having seen them drowsily dressing and finally on their way to his outside fire, Mr. Jones betakes himself to his cork mattress, ground-sheet, and blankets, where under five minutes he is sleeping that sleep which comes to the just and the unjust alike if only they be sufficiently tired.

At half-past five Dan, the cook, is roaring out unfeelingly, 'All aboard!' It seems but a few minutes to our tired hero, but on reference to his watch the fact is fully borne out. So ends his first night's watching.

Another day, with its difficulties to be surmounted and its dangers to be risked. We have said farewell to the cold uplands of Monaro proper, and are entering a mountain land, amid deep ravines and narrow gorges, sunless glens, dense forests, and precipitous ranges. We become aware that our droving difficulties are commencing. The subsoil, saturated with the rains of the most severe season known for thirty years, gives under the heavy trampling of the leading bullocks. In the vain struggle to pass quickly many of the stronger cattle only succeed in getting deeper and deeper into the treacherous hillsides.

It is even difficult to ride, and Mr. Jones more than once finds himself confronted by a bullock of forbidding aspect, who, unable to advance or retire, glares as if too happy to