SINGULAR ACCIDENT. 
265 
admit the foot of a goat, and thence pick their way 
with or without the rope, to pillage the nest of a 
Gull, which, if aware of its own powers, might flap 
them headlong to the bottom. 
Here too, as in St. Kilda, accidents are said to be 
of rare occurrence, though, of course, they do occa- 
sionally happen; but escapes, sufficiently appalling 
to make the blood run cold to hear of, are common 
enough. 
The first we shall mention happened about two 
miles from the South Stack, on the rocky coast of 
Rhoscolin. A lady, living near the spot, sent a boy 
in search of samphire, with a trusty servant to hold 
the rope at the top. While the boy was dangling 
midway between sky and water, the servant, who 
was unused to his situation, whether owing to 
a sudden dizziness from looking downward on the 
boy’s motions, or misgivings as to his own powers 
of holding him up, felt a cold, sickly shivering, 
creep over him, accompanied with a certainty that 
he was about to faint ; the inevitable consequence 
of which, he had sense enough left to know, 
would be the certain death of the boy, and, in all 
probability, of himself, as in the act of fainting, 
it was most likely he would fall forward, and follow 
the rope and boy down the precipice. In this 
dilemma, he uttered a loud despairing scream, which 
was fortunately heard by a woman working in an 
adjoining field, who, running up, was just in time to 
catch the rope, as the fainting man fell senseless at 
her feet. 
We shall add two more, equally hazardous, and 
one fatal. Many bird-catchers go on these expe- 
