“I have often heard people say that they do not believe in luck,” said the gray-haired young-looking man, “and they say it in the sense of disbelieving that there is any such thing as luck. To my notion that is very much the same as if they should say that they do not believe in the weather. I believe it was John Oakhurst who said that the only thing that is certain about luck is that it is going to change; but although the saying sounds philosophical, I am inclined to think it is inaccurate. I have known a great many men in the course of my life whose luck did not change. To illustrate this it may be enough to recall the stories that are told once in a great while about sailors who are swept overboard by the waves in a storm at sea and who are swept back on board the same vessel by the return current. The man who escapes drowning in such a way experiences one of the most extraordinary strokes of luck that can possibly occur to a human being. And it is almost inconceivable that such a thing would happen to any one man twice. “Yet I know a man to whom it has happened three times. Captain Lowden White, of East Rockaway, Long Island, is a veteran seaman. He cannot swim a stroke, and when he is asked why he never learned, he cannot, or at least he does not, give any clear answer, but turns the question with a careless ‘I don’t know’ and a pleasant laugh. I think he is superstitious about it, as many sailors are, and certainly if anybody’s experience justifies superstition his would seem to, for, as I said, he has been washed overboard three times in the course of the last forty years, and each time washed back immediately on board the vessel he had just left. And that does not include the times he has fallen or been knocked overboard and saved in some other way. I, myself, once caught him by the collar after he had fallen into the water by reason of the snapping of the bowsprit foot-rope of the sloop “Martha,” near Wreck Lead. He had rubber boots on, and the current was running like a mill-race. If I had been two seconds slower he would never have come up alive. If it were a legitimate subject for a bet I would wager any reasonable sum that a man with such an experience would never be drowned. “That is what I call one of the most wonderful runs of luck that I ever heard of. And it is something of a coincidence, perhaps, that Captain White himself is a firm believer in his own luck in other matters, though he does not talk much about his escapes from drowning. He was in his younger days fairly prosperous, and had gathered together a modest competence when he was between forty and fifty years old. Then something happened. I hinted that he was superstitious. What happened was that he killed a cat. That does not seem to the average man to be a very important occurrence, but the Captain firmly believes that it changed the whole course of his life.