ran them hard
for a quarter of a mile and then edged out a little, and slowed down
till they slowed and left a space betwixt the three and Lachlan. I
suddenly spoke to Beeswing and shook her up till she came swiftly
abreast of my three galloping like horses in a Roman chariot. Then
left-handed I cut Lachlan in the flank, and with a swift turn Beeswing
swept between him and the others. They stayed and turned while disparted
Lachlan ran wildly. And now my three, being turned, ran back for the
others; and Beeswing followed them like fire and came up with them, and
once more turned them and sent them for home. To keep them going while
the others whinnied meant urging; it meant filling their minds,
occupying their attention. So once more, with a great shout, I was upon
them and swung the whip, letting it fall with a crack first on this side
and then on that, and now in the growing daylight the dust rose up as we
galloped. And presently I saw the little "tin" house where the
out-station boss lived, and the tent I shared with my chum the
"rouseabout." And as we went fast and faster (for it was morning and I
was young) the sun thrust up a shoulder behind me and it was day in
Australia, day in the Lachlan back-blocks. And I could see Long Clump, a
patch of dwarf-box, over my shoulder as I turned loosely in the saddle
to note whether the other horses still followed. I laughed at the day
(for it was dawn), and yet I knew as I ran my three into the yard that
ere the day was done I should have ridden sixty miles, and have mustered
20,000 sheep in Long Clump Paddock. And when I stayed outside the
stock-yard and put up the slip panels and patted Beeswing on the neck
the one great pleasure of the day was over. The rest was not to be
accomplished in the dusk of dawn and under the morning star, but had to
be wrought out in flying dust, amid the plague of flies and the fierce
heat of an Austral noon, whose heat increased with the slow sun's
decline. But that swift sweet hour of the morning had been my very own.
The remainder of the day belonged to the world, to duty, to the man who
paid me a pound a week and "tucker" for my hands and arms and as much
brains as work with sheep demanded. Yet through these hours sometimes
the glory of the morning remained.

* * * * *

There are mornings on land and mornings on the sea, and when the world
is a grey wash and a mask of spindrift it is good to be alive upon the
s