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 Mackerel Trolling. 183 ofå. habit. Now and then he slipped down into the hold and Iqpked at his watch* which he had shut up in a large, red-paintca sé%chest. "Yes, that chest and that watch I" said Rasmus, with a starle and a nod ; " I should think he is fond of them— and quite right, too—if it hadn't been for them he would now have been at the bottom of the sea among the pebbles." I asked him for an explanation and he began : "It was late i. October last year ; we had terrible weather, and it was with the greatest difficulty I could keep at sea, but I stayed outside. The lad was with me in the boat. I bore down upon a Dutchman at last, and hailed him. I came safe on board, but I felt anything but easy about the boat and the boy ; my thoughts were not where they should be, for every moment I had to give the boat and the boy a look, and at last I saw a sea strike the boat aft, which gave it a send forward and under, and the next moment he was gone. "We could not have given him any help even if the skipper would have done so ; the lad was too far away. I prayed by myself, and thought I should never see him again. But the first person I met when I came home was the boy ; he had come home long before me. He pulled out his watch and showed it to me and said, ' I have saved the watch, Captain, and it goes too.' The Lord be praised, I thought, that you are saved ; I suppose there will be a way for a boat again, although it cost me two hundred and fifty dollars—and bran new sails it had in the bargain. How was the boy saved ? Yes, in this way— • yes, you rascal,' he said to the lad, who sat grinning at him, and swinging his legs still quicker backwards and forwards, 'he who is born to be hanged will never be drowned, — well, a brig came såiling past at the time. Suddenly they heard a cry, one of the crew ran forward, but they saw nothing, they never thought it came from the water ; but all at once they heard the cry right under the bow, and when the captain himself came forward and looked over the ship's side, there sat the boy on the sea-chest, holding his watch in the .one hand high above the seas. There