CHAPTER XV
WORK AND PLAY
The captain's first cattle-muster was fixed for a certain day. I had the honour of being invited specially to superintend the classing and drafting of the bullocks, retaining the presumably marketable, and condemning the irreconcilables. I was happy to accede, but a slight difficulty stood in the way. The night preceding the muster had been devoted to the coming ball at Dunmore, an anxiously-anticipated festivity, to which all Port Fairy was bidden, and from which no loyal Western man could be absent if alive. Certainly not the writer, Terpsichore's not least ardent votary. The difficulty was to combine drafting and dancing with a conscientious attention to both. "Minorca lies in the middle sea." Lyne is half-way between Dunmore and Hamilton—over twenty miles anyhow. The drafting would commence at sunrise—the dancing would continue till daylight. Such trivial discrepancies were negotiable, however,
Ere nerve and sinew began to fail
In the consulship of Plancus.
