like a sword-cut on the air. All the great tops were sinking, crumbling under the blackness of cloud; and to the men on the Brothers came a sudden giddiness and horror, as though this sucking sea would draw them under also for Eternity.
“Bedad,” said Tod, pulling up his waist-strap, “it’s mesilf wud be sooner befure the whare foire than aitin’ me meat wid this knife an fork. An’ what will come of us at all when the rain gits in behint of the shingle?”
There was no man on the Brothers was not thinking of this. There was no man was not hurrying his sheep by sharp command to his dogs, and cast stones, and quick-stumbling feet on the rough underway. The ridges lay across the Brothers like the bones of a cat’s tail, and very swiftly the gutters filled with dribbling streams that baulked and held the sheep. The straining dogs hounded them over, and down the slopes, and forward, with the storm roaring on their quarter and the thunder charging through the wild bluffs and gullies as mobs of wild brumbies charge headlong. On the far side one of Steve’s worn boots gave from the sole. He had brought two new pairs for this muster; but he was a heavy man, and shingle is more strong than calf-hide. Thereafter he blundered on bare-foot, and watching, with the keen-trained sight that is the property of every musterer, for the weak-hearted falter that
