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When
we got down to the wool-shed we lit a tallow candle, and having stuck it
in an old bottle we sat down upon the wool bales and began to smoke. A
wool-shed is a roomy place, built somewhat on the same plan as a
cathedral, with aisles on either side full of pens for the sheep, a great
nave, at the upper end of which the shearers work, and a further space
for wool sorters and packers. It always refreshed me with a semblance of
antiquity (precious in a new country), though I very well knew that the
oldest wool-shed in the settlement was not more than seven years old,
while this was only two. Chowbok pretended to expect his grog at once,
though we both of us knew very well what the other was after, and that we
were each playing against the other, the one for grog the other for
information.

We had a hard fight: for more than two hours he had tried to put me off
with lies but had carried no conviction; during the whole time we had
been morally wrestling with one another and had neither of us apparently
gained the least advantage; at length, however, I had become sure that he
would give in ultimately, and that with a little further patience I
should get his story out of him. As upon a cold day in winter, when one
has churned (as I had often had to do), and churned in vain, and the
butter makes no sign of coming, at last one tells by the sound that the
cream has gone to sleep, and then upon a sudden the butter comes, so I
had churned at Chowbok until I perceived that he had arrived, as it were,
at the sleepy stage, and that with a continuance of steady quiet pressure
the day was mine. On a sudden, without a word of warning, he rolled two
bales of wool (his strength was very great) into the middle of the floor,
and on the top of these he placed another crosswise; he snatched up an
empty wool-pack, threw it like a mantle over his shoulders, jumped upon
the uppermost bale, and sat upon it. In a moment his whole form was
changed. His high shoulders dropped; he set his feet close together,
heel to heel and toe to toe; he laid his arms and hands close alongside
of his body, the palms following his thighs; he held his head high but
quite straight, and his eyes stared right in front of him; but he frowned
horribly, and assumed an expression of face that was positively fiendish.
At the best of times Chowbok was very ugly, but he now exceeded all
conceivable limits of the hideous. His mouth extended almost from ear to
ear, grinning horribly and showing all his teeth; his eyes glared, though
they remained quite fixed, and his forehead was contracted with a most
malevolent scowl.

I am afraid my description will have conveyed only the ridiculous side of
his appearance; but the ridiculous and the sublime are near, and the
grotesque fiendishness of Chowbok's face approached this last, if it did
not reach it. I tried to be amused, but I felt a sort of creeping at the
roots of my hair and over my whole body, as I looked and wondered what he

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