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182 Mackerel Trolling. tobacco, which Rasmus Olsen did, and that to a considerable extent. " There isn't wind enough to capsize a tea-cup in a gutter/1 said Rasmus, and shifted his chew of tobacco with a little black chalk pipe, while he looked around him on all sides. " Last night, at sunset, there were plenty of the most respectable wind-clouds, but now there isn't a capful." The pilot-boy, who was on the look-out forward, and was keeping the boat from falling off by using the starboard oar, as the current went in a westerly direction, answered that he thought "it went a little easier forward." "No fear ! " answered Rasmus ; "it isn't as if it were sundown. We sha'n't get any wind before evening, my boy, but may be wc shall have more than wc want for the mackerel." The breeze, however, soon grew stronger, and wc were able keep our course without the assistance of the oars, and wc slipped now at a smart pace out to sea. The fog disappeared gradually, dis closing the blue line of the coast and the far outlying naked skerries, while before us lay the ocean in its interminable extent, blushing in the morning sun. The land wind still blew strongly, but the higher the sun rose, the stronger grew the seabreeze. The rising fog lay like a white sheet over the land. Wc had by this time a stiff mackerel breeze, and wc were soon in the midst of the mackerel shoals. The lines were ordered out, and the fish, one after another, took che bait till the whole line trembled ; amid violent sprawling and struggling these silvery children of the sea were hauled in. But our joy was, as usual, not of a very long duration. Later in the forcnoon the gale increased more and more ; the seas set in, and the waves grew bigger and bigger ; at last the fishing-line stood straight out behind, and the stone weights jumped along the tops of the billows, while the seas — notwithstanding the guiding hand of the pilot sought to avoid them —broke over our little nutshell, and sent the spray high above mast and sail. Wc pulled in the lines and gave up the fishing. The pilot-boy sat in the main hatch dangling his legs and looking round in all directions from