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Mackerel Trolling. 181 dearest memories of the past. Free and happy as a bird I flew over the billows, — in the pilot's light yawl we cruised about among the skerries shooting ducks, eider-ducks, and seals, — in his deck boat we steered out far to sea trolling for mackerel, and when he got a ship to pilot in, I sailed the boat home, sometimes alone, sometimes in company with the pilofs boy. Since that time I have always yearned for a sailor's life and the open sea. But instead of losing myself in extolling the glory of a sailor's life I will give you an account of a trip we made together when I, some years ago, was on a visit at home. We were to spend some days by the outermost skerries. We had the deck-boat, and its crew consisted of Rasmus Olsen— this was the nåme of my old friend—the pilot's boy, and myself. One morning in the early grey of the dawn we stood out to sea to troll for mackereL There was a light breeze off the land ;it was scarcely strong enough to lift the heavy fog which lay over the skerries and the naked cliffs, from which the scared sea-gulls flew and hovered around us with their hoarse cry ; the sea swallows uttered their ringing " Tree, tree," and the oyster catchers their mocking ** Click, click ! " which has caused so many an unsuccessful sportsman to smile. A hazy, close atmos phere hung over the leaden sea ; an auk, a guillemot, an eider duck, or a tumbling porpoise enlivened now and then the scene. Rasmus sat in the after-hatch at the heim, while the boy was now forward, now aft, as circumstances required. Rasmus was a tall, powerful man, with a weather-beaten, furrowed face of a good-natured expression. In his grey intelligent eye lay an earnest searching look, which told that he was used to encounter dangers, and look deeper into things than the smile about his mouth and jesting words would denote. As he sat there with a souVester down over his ears, in a long pilot coat, his figure appeared in the misty morning air to assume quite supernatural proportions, and you might almost imagine that you had one of the old Vikings before you—the Vikings, however, did not smoke