“I did not speak to you,” answered Mr Gordon, as calmly as if he had expected the speech, “but of course you can go.”

He said this with an air of studied unconcern, as if he would rather like a dozen more men to knock off work.  The two men walk out, but the epidemic does not spread, and several take the lesson home and mend their ways accordingly.

The weather now was splendid; not a cloud specked the bright blue sky.  The shearers continue to work at the same express-train pace; fifty bales of wool roll every day from the wool-presses; as fast as they reach that number they are loaded upon the numerous drays and wagons which have been waiting for weeks.  Tall brown men have been recklessly cutting up hides for the last fortnight, wherewith to lash the bales securely.  It is considered safer practice to load wool as soon as may be; fifty bales represent about a thousand pounds sterling.  In a building, however secure, should a fire break out, a few hundred bales are easily burned; but once on the dray, this much-dreaded “edax rerum” in a dry country has little chance.  The driver, responsible to the extent of his freight, generally sleeps under his dray; hence both watchman and insulation are provided.

The unrelaxing energy with which the work was pushed at this stage was exciting and contagious; at or before daylight every soul in the great establishment was up.  The boundary-riders were always starting off for a twenty or thirty mile ride, and bringing tens of thousands of sheep to the wash-pen.  At that huge lavatory there was splashing and soaking all day with an army of washers; not a moment is lost from daylight till dark, or used for any purpose save the all-engrossing work and needful food.  At nine o’clock p.m. luxurious dreamless sleep, given only to those whose physical powers have been taxed to the utmost and who can bear without injury the daily tension.

Everything and everybody were in splendid working order, nothing out of gear.  Rapid and regular as a steam-engine the great host of toilers moved onward daily with a march which promised an unusually early completion.  Mr Gordon was not in high spirits, for so cautious and far-seeing a captain rarely felt himself so independent of circumstances as to indulge in that reckless mood—­but much satisfied with the prospect.  Whew!  The afternoon darkens, and the night is delivered over to water-spouts and hurricanes, as it appears.  Next day was raw, gusty, with chill heavy showers; drains had to be cut, roofs to be seen to; shorn sheep were shivering, washers all playing pitch-and-toss, shearers sulky; everybody but the young gentlemen wearing a most injured expression of countenance.  “Looks as if it would rain for a month,” says Long Jack.  “If we hadn’t been delayed might have had the shearing over by this.”  Reminded that there are 50,000 sheep yet remaining to be shorn, and that by no possibility could they have been finished, he answers, “Suppose