The Lonely Sea and the Sky by Sir Francis Chichester Read Free Book Online Page A

dogs would keep them cornered while we inspected them. There were pens for drafting or sorting them.
    Â Â Except for the shearing, the two of us, Arthur the boss and I the roustabout, did all the work on the station; dagging, which was shearing back legs and tails with hand shears, dipping, ear-marking and cutting the ram lambs to turn them into wethers. It was the custom for shepherds to toast the lamb's testicles over a fire and eat them, but this was not for me. It was, however, my job as undershepherd to kill and dress the hoggets that we ate. I shall never forget how my knees trembled when I killed my first sheep and the blood spurted out in beats as I cut its throat. I think that few mature people would eat beef or lamb if they had to kill the animals first.
    Â Â Arthur, my boss, was an excellent shepherd, and could work his dogs easily a mile away. Two thousand acres is a sizeable slice of country – three square miles – but the surface area is more in that part of New Zealand because, being geologically a young country, the hills are steep. The ground we were on was blue papa (volcanic mud), and the storm streams cut steep gullies out of it. Along the banks of the creeks grew clumps of lawyer vine, a kind of bramble but with hooked thorns of a vicious kind.
    Â Â We did all our own cooking, and Arthur baked the bread. I tried one baking, but it was too hard to eat. Every other Sunday it was my turn to wash the kitchen floor. Arthur was a tidy man and washed up after every meal. Once he was supposed to be away on holiday, but couldn't bear to be parted from the farm, and came back before he was due. I remember the look of disapproval on his face when I came in to find him washing up an accumulation of six days' dirty dishes that I had piled up in his absence.
    Â Â I loved the riding. One day I rode 45 miles to a dance and home again next day. Arthur was annoyed and said it was not fair on a horse out at grass. Perhaps not if I had ridden at a canter as the New Zealanders did, but 45 miles is not too far for a horse trotting in English style.
    Â Â Nothing can be more stupid and obstinate than a sheep, and sometimes I found trying to move 500 stupid, obstinate, glassy-eyed sheep hard to bear. Once I was sent out with a packhorse to a neighbouring sheep station to skin some dead sheep, and bring them back for dog food (the sheep carcasses were hung in trees out of reach of the dogs, which didn't seem to mind about the maggots). While being driven across country, the leading sheep of a mob had jumped down across a small stream below the track and landed on its knees. Before it got up, the sheep behind jumped on top of it. The sheep went on jumping until there were 500 piled up dead.
    Â Â There came a time when I asked for a rise from fifteen to twenty-five shillings a week. The visiting owner had a long discussion with Arthur about this, and then came over and offered me twenty shillings a week. This was not my style and I walked off the farm. I went to visit my blacksmith friend whom I had met on the Bremen , and he got me a job on a farm near Taihape at £2 10s a week. They asked me if I could milk, and I said 'no'. This was untrue, I had milked fifteen cows day and night while looking after de Ville's farm when he was away, but I hated the smell of milk, it rotted my boots, and I had no desire to be a milkman. I used to lie in my bunk in the morning listening to the other chaps getting the cows in; I started work the easy way at 8 o'clock.
    Â Â This farm belonged to three brothers called Williams, and their brother-in-law. Two of the Williams brothers and I totalled twelve feet round the chest, me being the smallest with forty inches. They were powerful men, and magnificent horsemen. We had eighty horses on the place, and used to break them in periodically. Sunday morning's amusement was to put me on one and see how long it took before I was thrown. Once, the bucking bust the saddle