Read Online Testimonies: A Novel by Patrick O'Brian - Free Book Online
Authors: Patrick O'Brian
Ads: Link
behind the ordered flock, I realized that these last hours, while I had been herding in the gap, were the first that I had spent without pain for Bronwen since that night—so long ago it seemed.
Down at the farm, with the sheep penned in the yard, my place was not with the shearers: it takes natural dexterity and years of practice to shear a sheep. I was given the task of marking them. Emyr brought me a pail of the semi-liquid pigment, the iron stamp with his father’s initials, and showed me the way to use it. Nothing could have been simpler; he wetted the iron, pressed it to the side of the bound sheep, and it was done: the only complication was that sheep of a certain category (they were already marked with a splash of metallic pink on their rumps) were to be stamped on their right sides, and the others on the left.
The sequence of operations did not vary: Emyr or his father would take a sheep from the pen and carry it to one of the fifteen shearers who sat in a semi-circle astraddle on long benches; the shearer, embracing the sheep as it lay half on his lap, half on its back on the bench, would tie its struggling feet with a long thin band of cloth: from that moment the animal would lie motionless and unresisting while the man sheared all the wool from its body: a few minutes, and the fleece, a coherent rug of wool, gray outside and white within, rolled down to the ground at the side of the bench. A woman would pick it up and roll it into a tight ball, and it was my duty to take the sheep, carry it by the feet to the place in the middle where I had my pail and stamp, search it for cuts (I had a black oil for wounds), stamp it on the right or the left, and release its feet.
After a few minutes, while the first batch of sheep were being shorn, I was plunged into unceasing activity. Six or seven sheep came simultaneously from the hands of the quickest shearers; I had to disembarrass their benches at once, so I had a row of sheep lying in the middle. Emyr, as he saw me staggering with a big wether, asked me anxiously if I could manage it. I had never been so close to a sheep before, and its smell and warmth repelled me, and the give of its paunch against my body and the feel of the bones of its legs under their thin shifting skin as I lifted it. I might have cried off in other circumstances, but Bronwen was there in the yard, somewhere behind me. The women of the house were well ahead with their cooking and they had already come out to see the shearers and to roll a few fleeces.
I worked with hard, close concentration. Sometimes an awkward knot on a sheep’s feet would delay me, and the sheep would pile up at the benches. Once or twice a sheep, newly released and kicking for its foothold, knocked my bucket over—they often kicked and I had some painful blows from them. Sometimes I could not quickly determine which was the right or the left side of the animal—it is not so easy, with the sheep lying with their heads in every direction: once I untied a sheep before I had marked it, and it had to be caught again. There was the continual necessity of watching the benches, trying to keep pace so that there should be no pile of sheep in the middle. Some boys came. They helped to distribute the llinens , the cloth bands the shearers needed for each sheep, and they brought a few of the sheep that were ready to the middle. They were sickeningly brutal to the poor beasts; it was their manliness, and nobody minded.
The sun crept higher and the wind dropped; the noise of the penned sheep was so continuous that I hardly heard it any more, any more than I smelled the all-pervading reek or tasted the dust that came into my throat each time I bent over a sheep—and I bent twice to each, once to pick it up from the bench or the side of the bench, and once to put it down.
Now and then Emyr would come to suggest that I should stamp the sheep more evenly, or higher, and on these occasions, or when I called him to doctor a bad cut, he
Down at the farm, with the sheep penned in the yard, my place was not with the shearers: it takes natural dexterity and years of practice to shear a sheep. I was given the task of marking them. Emyr brought me a pail of the semi-liquid pigment, the iron stamp with his father’s initials, and showed me the way to use it. Nothing could have been simpler; he wetted the iron, pressed it to the side of the bound sheep, and it was done: the only complication was that sheep of a certain category (they were already marked with a splash of metallic pink on their rumps) were to be stamped on their right sides, and the others on the left.
The sequence of operations did not vary: Emyr or his father would take a sheep from the pen and carry it to one of the fifteen shearers who sat in a semi-circle astraddle on long benches; the shearer, embracing the sheep as it lay half on his lap, half on its back on the bench, would tie its struggling feet with a long thin band of cloth: from that moment the animal would lie motionless and unresisting while the man sheared all the wool from its body: a few minutes, and the fleece, a coherent rug of wool, gray outside and white within, rolled down to the ground at the side of the bench. A woman would pick it up and roll it into a tight ball, and it was my duty to take the sheep, carry it by the feet to the place in the middle where I had my pail and stamp, search it for cuts (I had a black oil for wounds), stamp it on the right or the left, and release its feet.
After a few minutes, while the first batch of sheep were being shorn, I was plunged into unceasing activity. Six or seven sheep came simultaneously from the hands of the quickest shearers; I had to disembarrass their benches at once, so I had a row of sheep lying in the middle. Emyr, as he saw me staggering with a big wether, asked me anxiously if I could manage it. I had never been so close to a sheep before, and its smell and warmth repelled me, and the give of its paunch against my body and the feel of the bones of its legs under their thin shifting skin as I lifted it. I might have cried off in other circumstances, but Bronwen was there in the yard, somewhere behind me. The women of the house were well ahead with their cooking and they had already come out to see the shearers and to roll a few fleeces.
I worked with hard, close concentration. Sometimes an awkward knot on a sheep’s feet would delay me, and the sheep would pile up at the benches. Once or twice a sheep, newly released and kicking for its foothold, knocked my bucket over—they often kicked and I had some painful blows from them. Sometimes I could not quickly determine which was the right or the left side of the animal—it is not so easy, with the sheep lying with their heads in every direction: once I untied a sheep before I had marked it, and it had to be caught again. There was the continual necessity of watching the benches, trying to keep pace so that there should be no pile of sheep in the middle. Some boys came. They helped to distribute the llinens , the cloth bands the shearers needed for each sheep, and they brought a few of the sheep that were ready to the middle. They were sickeningly brutal to the poor beasts; it was their manliness, and nobody minded.
The sun crept higher and the wind dropped; the noise of the penned sheep was so continuous that I hardly heard it any more, any more than I smelled the all-pervading reek or tasted the dust that came into my throat each time I bent over a sheep—and I bent twice to each, once to pick it up from the bench or the side of the bench, and once to put it down.
Now and then Emyr would come to suggest that I should stamp the sheep more evenly, or higher, and on these occasions, or when I called him to doctor a bad cut, he
Similar Books
