DUCK-SHOOTING. 377 



rise or fall of tide his life depended ; but still, though he 

 gave himself up for lost, he firmly grasped his gun-harrel. 

 The main land was too far distant to admit of his shouts being 

 heard, and it was equally vain to hope that any looker -rout 

 could descry such a speck upon the waves as the head of a 

 human being. In this awful moment of suspense, on looking 

 downwards, he thought he saw the uppermost button of his 

 waistcoat beginning to appear. Intensely he watched it, but 

 for some time without any well-founded assurance that he 

 was right. At length, however, hope increased to certainty, 

 as he saw button after button rising slowly into view, an in- 

 fallible sign that the height of the tide was over, and that 

 it was now upon the ebb. Though chilled with cold, and 

 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 re- 

 turned 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 hope- 

 lessly 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 re- 



