DUCK-SHOOTING. 
201 
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 fre- 
quent habit of going to collect muscles. 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 appointed rendez- 
vous, there to await the arrival of their comrades; 
hut 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 
hank, 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 hank, now dry as 
when they first landed. One body alone was found, 
and he, like the Duck-shooter, had resorted to the 
