The next day was wet, and threatened further broken weather.  Matters were not too placid with the shearers.  A day or two for rest is very well, but continuous wet weather means compulsory idleness, and gloom succeeds repose; for not only are all hands losing time and earning no money, but 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 pounds a year, became unpleasantly suggestive, now that all is going out and nothing coming in.  Hence loud and deep were the anathemas as the discontented men gazed sadly or wrathfully at the misty sky.

A few days showery weather having, therefore, wellnigh 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 whole family from slavery.  How 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 task-master could flog out of a slave.  Occasionally you see a shearer, after finishing his sheep, walk quickly out and not appear 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 given in just 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 occasionally surges across his brown face, yet he goes on manfully to the last sheep, and endures to the very verge of fainting.

There was now a change in the manner and tone of the shed, especially towards the end of the day.  It was now the ding of the desperate fray, when the blood of the fierce animal man is up, when mortal blows are exchanged, and curses float upward with the smoke and dust.  The ceaseless clicking of the shears—­the stern earnestness of the men, toiling with a feverish and 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 brief decided tones of Mr Gordon, in repression or command—­all told the spectator that tragic action was introduced into the performance.  Indeed, one of the minor excitements of shearing was then and there transacted.  Mr Gordon had more than once warned a dark sullen-looking man that he did not approve of his style of shearing.  He was temporarily absent, and on his return found the same man about to let go a sheep whose appearance, as a shorn wool-bearing quadruped, was painful and discreditable in the extreme.