DUCK-SHOOTING. 361 



almost fainting, this welcome prospect raised his spirits, and, 

 acting like a cordial, enabled him to endure the remaining 

 hours of his fearful imprisonment. This man escaped ; but we 

 well remember a case very similar, in which the poor sufferer 

 had to endure an equal horror, though not spared to tell the 

 tale. 



Off the north-west point of the hundred of Wirral, in 

 Cheshire, extends a wide tract of sand forming a dangerous 

 shoal, called Hoylebank, which has proved the grave of many 

 a shipwrecked mariner. To this bank, always dry at low 

 water, the fishermen of the neighbourhood are in the frequent 

 habit of going to collect mussels. One evening, a party having 

 ventured as usual, before separating, agreed upon a particular 

 point where they were to meet again when the tide began to 

 come in. Dusk came on, and those who first returned to the 

 boat rowed to the point of rendezvous, there to await the 

 arrival of their comrades ; but hour after hour passed and 

 some were yet missing. The boat-keepers began to fear the 

 worst ; the absentees had either lost their way on the wide 

 desert of sand, and were now wandering about hopelessly in 

 darkness, or they had perished in one of the many quicksands 

 which abounded on the shoal. Still they hung upon their 

 anchor, and waited till, at its appointed hour, the tide had 

 covered the whole bank, and not a doubt could remain as to 

 the fate of their friends. They then returned to reveal the 

 sad tidings to their relatives on shore, and at early dawn 

 repaired once more to the bank, now dry as when they first 

 landed. One body alone was found, and he, like the Duck- 

 shooter, had resorted to the same last and forlorn hope. He 

 had firmly fixed a boat-hook on the highest ridge of sand, and 

 having lashed himself to it with his handkerchief, had deter- 

 mined there to await the rising of the last tide he was ever 

 destined to behold. The bodies of his companions were never 

 seen again, and had probably found a resting-place in the deep 

 channels of the surrounding sea, 



Not far from the scene of this sad story, on the Cheshire 

 side of the mouth of the river Dee, runs a ridge of three small 

 rocky islands, called Great Helbree, Little Helbree, and at 



