A FORLORN QUEST, ETC. 221 



the situation did not appeal. One who resided 

 in the quaint and picturesque Essex town told 

 me that if I fished the Blackwater in winter on 

 the evening tide, I should almost certainly catch 

 brill. To catch brill in a river, even in a tidal 

 reach of it, promised sufficient novelty to make 

 the expedition worth a trial . I therefore arranged 

 by wire for Handley's yacht to be at my disposal, 

 and it was with the keen anticipation that casts 

 a halo over all such preliminaries of a novel angling 

 quest that I stepped into my train at Liverpool 

 Street one cold and clear November morning. 

 Thanks to carefully acquired wrong information, 

 I had chosen the wrong week for the tides, with the 

 pleasing result that, on a bitter evening, I had the 

 satisfaction of kicking my heels on a frost-spangled 

 deck, for three hours before the ebb tide slacked 

 sufficiently for the leads to hold the bottom. We 

 were anchored over an agreeable spot known as 

 Death Crick Hole, such a scene as the genius of Mr. 

 Baring Gould or Mr. Blyth would revel in for some 

 dreadful deed of marshman's violence. Every 

 few minutes, new flats of ooze were uncovered 

 in the silvery light of the moon, before whose cold 

 disc there passed a strange and ghostly squadron 

 of night fowl, herons, dotterel, dunlin, teal and 

 mallard. No sooner had the tide done ebbing 

 than it apparently started to flow back with little 

 less vigour, but in the brief interval I was so 



