JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Scarcely under way, the manual recount of thousands of contested presidential ballots stopped abruptly Saturday by order of the U.S. Supreme Court, but not before election judges were thrust back into the world of dimpled ballots and undervotes.

''No need for us to go any further,'' said Pam Iorio, supervisor of elections in Hillsborough County, one of dozens of counties involved in the recount effort, designed to settle the presidential contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush.

''This is surreal,'' said Republican attorney Jim Post in Duval County, where officials had been deliberating how to proceed. ''This has been quite a roller coaster ride and I don't think it's over yet.''

The court's 5-4 order was issued in Washington, and spread elation throughout the Bush campaign and concern among Democrats, who had been celebrating Friday's split state Supreme Court ruling that ordered the recounts to proceed.

In at least one county, the order came as the work was wrapping up. ''We've wasted a whole day,'' said Cora Sue Robinson, elections supervisor in Gulf County. Local officials had recounted all 43 undervotes in their jurisdiction, and ''it did not change the vote anyway whatsoever,'' she said. Other counties were in various stages of recounting.

Officials had made their way through dozens of precincts in the Miami-Dade County, with no formal totals released.

The 5-4 ruling from the high court also called for oral arguments Monday on the underlying legal issues in the recount case.

That prompted local officials to make sure the ballots were packed up safely for any future recounting -- hours after they were uncrated for the counting to begin.

''The judges will be looking to discern the clear intent of the voter,'' Ion Sancho announced shortly before the seals were broken on envelopes stuffed with ballots cast Election Day and at the center of dispute ever since. Sancho presided over the counting of Miami-Dade County's estimated 9,000 so-called undervotes -- ballots on which counting machines detected no vote for president.

The process and the timetable varied from county to county, but the instructions from Circuit Judge Terry Lewis, appointed to implement the Florida high court's order, were uniform: Finish the counting by 2 p.m. Sunday so the state's 25 electoral votes could be awarded by Tuesday.

That court order would require the examination of as many as 45,000 undervotes in 64 Florida counties. The order doesn't affect Palm Beach, Broward and Volusia counties, where the undervotes already have been examined.

At the start of the day, Bush led Gore by 193 votes statewide out of 6 million ballots cast. But by midday, with partial returns from a few counties, his margin had been shaved by two votes.

Even as the counting began, Bush sought to shut it down, in federal and state courts. ''What is about to transpire in counting rooms all across the state of Florida is chaos,'' they argued in court papers filed in the Florida state capital.

''These ballots have degraded to the point that they are not the same ballots that were counted and recounted on Nov. 7 and 8, 2000,'' the Bush team said of the Miami-Dade County votes. ''The 'evidence' is not sufficiently trustworthy for any election, and certainly not for the election of the president of the United States.''

The only fair way to proceed was to complete a full statewide recount of all the ballots, the Bush lawyers said.

Miami-Dade's undervote was the largest of any county, and the ballots were being counted hundreds of miles away in Tallahassee because a judge had earlier ordered them brought there.

There, state judges, two to a table, scrutinized ballots while observers for the two campaigns looked on. Methodically, ballots were sorted, some going into a box marked for Gore, others into a box marked for Bush, others going into a box marked to indicate no valid vote. The toughest ballots were set aside for Lewis himself to look at later.

The counting geared up more slowly in other counties. In Duval, where there were nearly 5,000 ballots to be counted, officials awaited a shipment of computer hardware and software that would allow them to sort through the roughly 265,000 votes and find the ones needed to be recounted.

''Without the software we can't start,'' said Rick Mullaney, a member of Duval's canvassing board. ''The important thing is the accuracy and the integrity of counting the undervote.'' Getting the votes counted by 2 p.m. Sunday was a daunting task.

''What we're going to do is what the courts have ordered us to do,'' said Gene Crist, assistant supervisor of elections in Bay County, where 529 undervotes are hidden within a total 59,591 ballots. ''It's extremely difficult,'' Crist said. ''It's not as simple as the courts make it sound.'' Counties such as Bay and Manatee were going to have to separate the undervotes

from the regular votes before they can begin counting. ''Counting the 111 undervotes isn't the big deal; sorting through 112,000 ballots to find them is a big deal,'' said Bob Sweat, Manatee County's

elections supervisor. Despite delays, Democrats' hopes were lifted by the prospect of new hand counts.

''It's an exciting opportunity. It is going to allow us to count all the votes,'' said Mike Langton, chairman of Gore's campaign in Northeast Florida.

''This will give us a firm decision on who won.'' Gore had sought to force a recount of the undervote in Miami-Dade. But the state justices went further, ordering every canvassing board to count the ballots missed by machine counts.

In addition to the 9,000 undervotes in Miami-Dade County, Hillsborough County has the next largest batch with 5,531, followed by Duval, 4,967; Pinellas, 4,226; Marion, 2,445; Collier, 1,102; Lee, 2,017; Sarasota, 1,809; Pasco, 1,776; and Indian River, 1,058.