210 THE WILD PONIES OF SABLE ISLAND 



ride the green rollers with the grace of Naiads and look back with 

 great wondering eyes at their tormentor, accompanying him (at 

 a safe distance) a mile or two along his beat, semicircling inwards 

 and out again. At length he meets the patrol sent from the opposite 

 direction. The two men draw rein and compare notes. An hour 

 or two afterwards each is making his report to the superintendent 

 ' an empty barrel ; an old spar covered with barnacles ; a herd 

 of seal ; a barque in the offing under storm sails ' . There comes 

 a day when he returns at full gallop to headquarters, and shouts to 

 the lookout ' A wreck ! a wreck ! ' The telephone is set going 

 to the out-stations to muster all the able-bodied men ; the working 

 horses are driven at their best gait with the boats mounted on 

 the carts, and all is intense and eager haste to the scene of disaster. 



Here is work for man and horse for a month. To rescue the 

 crew, strip the wreck, land and store the cargo, and haul it for 

 reshipment will fill many a day with labour and excitement. 



Once a year the wild ponies are rounded up. They are driven 

 into a ' pound ', while the staff are converted into seeming vaqueros 

 as they ride after some proud ' Sultan-stallion ', detach him from 

 his troop of mares, and transfer him ignominiously bound, with 

 eyes ablaze with the fires of impotent rage, into the hold of the 

 Government boat. 



Hence it will be seen that employment on the island does not 

 lack variety. It might be thought a difficult matter to obtain 

 good men willing to banish themselves to this desolate shore. On 

 the contrary, the staff having once tasted the freedom of the life 

 seem unwilling to abandon it. They are not spiritless men, not 

 daring to leave the naked sands where they have been flung by fate, 

 but they have learned to love the passing of the ships on the sea-, the 

 wild-fowl seeking the shelter of the inland ponds, the ceaseless 

 piping of the plover, the scuttling herds of seals, the seaward roar 

 of the breakers swinging in again and again to hurl their foaming 

 cascades along the ringing beach. Once in awhile they taste 

 the supreme joy granted to human beings of bearing aid at the 

 risk of their own safety to brothers in distress ; when amid the 

 smother of flying spume and the deep and dreadful undertone 

 of the sullen thunder rolling above the shouting of the shoals, 

 they snatch some crew from the packs of hunting waves. 



Structurally the island is simply an enormous accumulation of 

 loose grey sand forming two parallel ridges united at either end. The 

 valley between these ridges is occupied for about eight miles by a 

 shallow lake, on which many black duck and sheldrake rear their 

 broods : the black duck breeding in the grassy tussocks, the shel- 

 drake on the high sand-cliffs. Separating this lake from the ocean 



