The manager of a big Australian sheep-ranch engaged a discharged sailor
to do farm work. He was put in charge of a large flock of sheep.
"Now, all you've got to do," explained the manager, "is to keep them on
the run."
A run is a large stretch of bushland enclosed by a fence, and sheep have
many ingenious methods of escaping from their own to neighboring runs
and so getting mixed up with other flocks.
At the end of a couple of hours the manager rode up again--the air was
thick with dust as though a thousand head of cattle had passed by.
At last he distinguished the form of his new shepherd--a collapsed heap
prone upon the ground. Surrounding him were the sheep, a pitiful,
huddled mass, bleating plaintively, with considerably more than a week's
condition lost.
"What the dickens have you been doing to those sheep?" shrieked the
almost frantic manager.
The ex-sailor managed to gasp out: "Well, sir, I've done my best. You
told me to keep them on the run, and so I hunted them up and down and
round--and now--I'm just dead beat myself."