They had been telling stock-whip stories till the tea in the old oil-keg was run out, and the smoke in the hut was thick enough to be sawn. Toothey Hoskins remembered a fellow on the Diamantina who could cut down a cow with his whip, skin her, and carve up the carcase. Spotted Boyd had cut his way through two miles of thick scrub with a new whip, and offered his "solemn oath" in corroboration. A white-headed youth, newly-arrived, had a relative who could take a stockwhip in either hand and write the Lord's prayer on the bark of a white gum with the left-hand weapon, whilst playing a jig with the other on a tin dish at five paces. Harry Clarke thought that "pretty considerable," but he had met a fellow in Bourke who could pull corks with every stroke of his whip, and wind up a Waterbury watch by flicking at it from reaching distance.

Presently the new arrival, with the clean-sweep shave and cross-bred eyes, ventured to remark. He was an inconsistent man, who had excited grave suspicion by saying grace at tea, and had then disarmed suspicion by pooling a bottle of rum big enough to go round twice.

"Yes," he said, "in knockin'-round I've met fellers thet could give yeh a hair-cut an' shave with a whip, nearly; but tain't many of 'em ken make their abilities pay. I've on'y struck one cove what gathered a pile handlin' a stockwhip."

"What could he do with it?"

"Pick pockets."

"Silas Snell"
The Bulletin, 24 September 1892, p13