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-barrel. 
The main land was too far distant to admit of his shouts being 
heard, and it was equally vain to hope that any looker- out 
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 w’ell-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- 
