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data/lib/omats.txt

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+He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he
+had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.  In the first
+forty days a boy had been with him.  But after forty days without a
+fish the boy's parents had told him that the old man was now definitely
+and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy
+had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish
+the first week.  It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each
+day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry
+either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was
+furled around the mast.  The sail was patched with flour sacks and,
+furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.
+
+The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his
+neck.  The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings
+from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks.  The blotches
+ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased
+scars from handling heavy fish on the cords.  But none of these scars
+were fresh.  They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.
+
+Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same
+color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.
+
+"Santiago," the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the
+skiff was hauled up.  "I could go with you again.  We've made some
+money."
+
+The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.
+
+"No," the old man said.  "You're with a lucky boat.  Stay with them."
+
+"But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we
+caught big ones every day for three weeks."
+
+"I remember," the old man said.  "I know you did not leave me because
+you doubted."
+
+"It was papa made me leave.  I am a boy and I must obey him."
+
+"I know," the old man said.  "It is quite normal."
+
+"He hasn't much faith."
+
+"No," the old man said.  "But we have.  Haven't we?"
+
+"Yes," the boy said.  "Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then
+we'll take the stuff home."
+
+"Why not?" the old man said.  "Between fishermen."
+
+They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old
+man and he was not angry.  Others, of the older fishermen, looked at
+him and were sad.  But they did not show it and they spoke politely
+about the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and
+the steady good weather and of what they had seen.  The successful
+fishermen of that day were already in and had butchered their marlin
+out and carried them laid full length across two planks, with two men
+staggering at the end of each plank, to the fish house where they
+waited for the ice truck to carry them to the market in Havana.  Those
+who had caught sharks had taken them to the shark factory on the other
+side of the cove where they were hoisted on a block and tackle, their
+livers removed, their fins cut off and their hides skinned out and
+their flesh cut into strips for salting.
+
+When the wind was in the east a smell came across the harbour from the
+shark factory; but today there was only the faint edge of the odour
+because the wind had backed into the north and then dropped off and it
+was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace.
+
+"Santiago," the boy said.
+
+"Yes," the old man said.  He was holding his glass and thinking of many
+years ago.
+
+"Can I go out to get sardines for you for tomorrow?"
+
+"No.  Go and play baseball.  I can still row and Rogelio will throw the
+net."
+
+"I would like to go.  If I cannot fish with you, I would like to serve
+in some way."
+
+"You bought me a beer," the old man said.  "You are already a man."
+
+"How old was I when you first took me in a boat?"
+
+"Five and you nearly were killed when I brought the fish in too green
+and he nearly tore the boat to pieces.  Can you remember?"
+
+"I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking
+and the noise of the clubbing.  I can remember you throwing me into the
+bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling the whole boat shiver
+and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the
+sweet blood smell all over me."
+
+"Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you?"
+
+"I remember everything from when we first went together."
+
+The old man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes.
+
+"If you were my boy I'd take you out and gamble," he said.  "But you
+are your father's and your mother's and you are in a lucky boat."
+
+"May I get the sardines?  I know where I can get four baits too."
+
+"I have mine left from today.  I put them in salt in the box."
+
+"Let me get four fresh ones."
+
+"One," the old man said.  His hope and his confidence had never gone.
+But now they were freshening as when the breeze rises.
+
+"Two," the boy said.
+
+"Two," the old man agreed.  "You didn't steal them?"
+
+"I would," the boy said.  "But I bought these."
+
+"Thank you," the old man said.  He was too simple to wonder when he had
+attained humility.  But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was
+not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.
+
+"Tomorrow is going to be a good day with this current," he said.
+
+"Where are you going?" the boy asked.
+
+"Far out to come in when the wind shifts.  I want to be out before it
+is light."
+
+"I'll try to get him to work far out," the boy said.  "Then if you hook
+something truly big we can come to your aid."
+
+"He does not like to work too far out."
+
+"No," the boy said.  "But I will see something that he cannot see such
+as a bird working and get him to come out after dolphin."
+
+"Are his eyes that bad?"
+
+"He is almost blind."
+
+"It is strange," the old man said.  "He never went turtle-ing.  That is
+what kills the eyes."
+
+"But you went turtle-ing for years off the Mosquito Coast and your eyes
+are good."
+
+"I am a strange old man."
+
+"But are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?"
+
+"I think so.  And there are many tricks."
+
+"Let us take the stuff home," the boy said.  "So I can get the cast net
+and go after the sardines."
+
+They picked up the gear from the boat.  The old man carried the mast on
+his shoulder and the boy carried the wooden box with the coiled,
+hard-braided brown lines, the gaff and the harpoon with its shaft.  The
+box with the baits was under the stern of the skiff along with the club
+that was used to subdue the big fish when they were brought alongside.
+No one would steal from the old man but it was better to take the sail
+and the heavy lines home as the dew was bad for them and, though he was
+quite sure no local people would steal from him, the old man thought
+that a gaff and a harpoon were needless temptations to leave in a boat.
+
+They walked up the road together to the old man's shack and went in
+through its open door.  The old man leaned the mast with its wrapped
+sail against the wall and the boy put the box and the other gear beside
+it.  The mast was nearly as long as the one room of the shack.  The
+shack was made of the tough bud-shields of the royal palm which are
+called guano and in it there was a bed, a table, one chair, and a
+place on the dirt floor to cook with charcoal.  On the brown walls of
+the flattened, overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered guano there
+was a picture in color of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the
+Virgin of Cobre.  These were relics of his wife.  Once there had been a
+tinted photograph of his wife on the wall but he had taken it down
+because it made him too lonely to see it and it was on the shelf in the
+corner under his clean shirt.
+
+"What do you have to eat?" the boy asked.
+
+"A pot of yellow rice with fish.  Do you want some?"
+
+"No.  I will eat at home.  Do you want me to make the fire?"
+
+"No.  I will make it later on.  Or I may eat the rice cold."
+
+"May I take the cast net?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it.
+But they went through this fiction every day.  There was no pot of
+yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too.
+
+"Eighty-five is a lucky number," the old man said.  "How would you like
+to see me bring one in that dressed out over a thousand pounds?"
+
+"I'll get the cast net and go for sardines.  Will you sit in the sun in
+the doorway?"
+
+"Yes.  I have yesterday's paper and I will read the baseball."
+
+The boy did not know whether yesterday's paper was a fiction too.  But
+the old man brought it out from under the bed.
+
+"Perico gave it to me at the bodega," he explained.
+
+"I'll be back when I have the sardines.  I'll keep yours and mine
+together on ice and we can share them in the morning.  When I come back
+you can tell me about the baseball."
+
+"The Yankees cannot lose."
+
+"But I fear the Indians of Cleveland."
+
+"Have faith in the Yankees my son.  Think of the great DiMaggio."
+
+"I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland."
+
+"Be careful or you will fear even the Reds of Cincinnati and the White
+Sox of Chicago."
+
+"You study it and tell me when I come back."
+
+"Do you think we should buy a terminal of the lottery with an
+eighty-five?  Tomorrow is the eighty-fifth day."
+
+"We can do that," the boy said.  "But what about the eighty-seven of
+your great record?"
+
+"It could not happen twice.  Do you think you can find an eighty-five?"
+
+"I can order one."
+
+"One sheet.  That's two dollars and a half.  Who can we borrow that
+from?"
+
+"That's easy.  I can always borrow two dollars and a half."
+
+"I think perhaps I can too.  But I try not to borrow.  First you
+borrow.  Then you beg."
+
+"Keep warm old man," the boy said.  "Remember we are in September."
+
+"The month when the great fish come," the old man said.  "Anyone can be
+a fisherman in May."
+
+"I go now for the sardines," the boy said.
+
+When the boy came back the old man was asleep in the chair and the sun
+was down.  The boy took the old army blanket off the bed and spread it
+over the back of the chair and over the old man's shoulders.  They were
+strange shoulders, still powerful although very old, and the neck was
+still strong too and the creases did not show so much when the old man
+was asleep and his head fallen forward.  His shirt had been patched so
+many times that it was like the sail and the patches were faded to many
+different shades by the sun.  The old man's head was very old though
+and with his eyes closed there was no life in his face.  The newspaper
+lay across his knees and the weight of his arm held it there in the
+evening breeze.  He was barefooted.
+
+The boy left him there and when he came back the old man was still
+asleep.
+
+"Wake up old man," the boy said and put his hand on one of the old
+man's knees.
+
+The old man opened his eyes and for a moment he was coming back from a
+long way away.  Then he smiled.
+
+"What have you got?" he asked.
+
+"Supper," said the boy.  "We're going to have supper."
+
+"I'm not very hungry."
+
+"Come on and eat.  You can't fish and not eat."
+
+"I have," the old man said getting up and taking the newspaper and
+folding it.  Then he started to fold the blanket.
+
+"Keep the blanket around you," the boy said.  "You'll not fish without
+eating while I'm alive."
+
+"Then live a long time and take care of yourself," the old man said.
+"What are we eating?"
+
+"Black beans and rice, fried bananas, and some stew."
+
+The boy had brought them in a two-decker metal container from the
+Terrace.  The two sets of knives and forks and spoons were in his
+pocket with a paper napkin wrapped around each set.
+
+"Who gave this to you?"
+
+"Martin.  The owner."
+
+"I must thank him."
+
+"I thanked him already," the boy said.  "You don't need to thank him."
+
+"I'll give him the belly meat of a big fish," the old man said.  "Has
+he done this for us more than once?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"I must give him something more than the belly meat then.  He is very
+thoughtful for us."
+
+"He sent two beers."
+
+"I like the beer in cans best."
+
+"I know.  But this is in bottles, Hatuey beer, and I take back the
+bottles."
+
+"That's very kind of you," the old man said.  "Should we eat?"
+
+"I've been asking you to," the boy told him gently.  "I have not wished
+to open the container until you were ready."
+
+"I'm ready now," the old man said.  "I only needed time to wash."
+
+Where did you wash? the boy thought.  The village water supply was two
+streets down the road.  I must have water here for him, the boy
+thought, and soap and a good towel.  Why am I so thoughtless?  I must
+get him another shirt and a jacket for the winter and some sort of
+shoes and another blanket.
+
+"Your stew is excellent," the old man said.
+
+"Tell me about the baseball," the boy asked him.
+
+"In the American League it is the Yankees as I said," the old man said
+happily.
+
+"They lost today," the boy told him.
+
+"That means nothing.  The great DiMaggio is himself again."
+
+"They have other men on the team."
+
+"Naturally.  But he makes the difference.  In the other league, between
+Brooklyn and Philadelphia I must take Brooklyn.  But then I think of
+Dick Sisler and those great drives in the old park."
+
+"There was nothing ever like them.  He hits the longest ball I have
+ever seen."
+
+"Do you remember when he used to come to the Terrace?  I wanted to take
+him fishing but I was too timid to ask him.  Then I asked you to ask
+him and you were too timid."
+
+"I know.  It was a great mistake.  He might have gone with us.  Then we
+would have that for all of our lives."
+
+"I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing," the old man said.
+"They say his father was a fisherman.  Maybe he was as poor as we are
+and would understand."
+
+"The great Sisler's father was never poor and he, the father, was
+playing in the big leagues when he was my age."
+
+"When I was your age I was before the mast on a square rigged ship that
+ran to Africa and I have seen lions on the beaches in the evening."
+
+"I know.  You told me."
+
+"Should we talk about Africa or about baseball?"
+
+"Baseball I think," the boy said.  "Tell me about the great John J.
+McGraw."  He said Jota for J.
+
+"He used to come to the Terrace sometimes too in the older days.  But
+he was rough and harsh-spoken and difficult when he was drinking.  His
+mind was on horses as well as baseball.  At least he carried lists of
+horses at all times in his pocket and frequently spoke the names of
+horses on the telephone."
+
+"He was a great manager," the boy said.  "My father thinks he was the
+greatest."
+
+"Because he came here the most times," the old man said.  "If Durocher
+had continued to come here each year your father would think him the
+greatest manager."
+
+"Who is the greatest manager, really, Luque or Mike Gonzalez?"
+
+"I think they are equal."
+
+"And the best fisherman is you."
+
+"No.  I know others better."
+
+"Qué va," the boy said.  "There are many good fishermen and some
+great ones.  But there is only you."
+
+"Thank you.  You make me happy.  I hope no fish will come along so
+great that he will prove us wrong."
+
+"There is no such fish if you are still strong as you say."
+
+"I may not be as strong as I think," the old man said.  "But I know
+many tricks and I have resolution."
+
+"You ought to go to bed now so that you will be fresh in the morning.
+I will take the things back to the Terrace."
+
+"Good night then.  I will wake you in the morning."
+
+"You're my alarm clock," the boy said.
+
+"Age is my alarm clock," the old man said.  "Why do old men wake so
+early?  Is it to have one longer day?"
+
+"I don't know," the boy said.  "All I know is that young boys sleep
+late and hard."
+
+"I can remember it," the old man said.  "I'll waken you in time."
+
+"I do not like for him to waken me.  It is as though I were inferior."
+
+"I know."
+
+"Sleep well, old man."
+
+The boy went out.  They had eaten with no light on the table and the
+old man took off his trousers and went to bed in the dark.  He rolled
+his trousers up to make a pillow, putting the newspaper inside them.
+He rolled himself in the blanket and slept on the other old newspapers
+that covered the springs of the bed.
+
+He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a
+boy and the long golden beaches and the white beaches, so white they
+hurt your eyes, and the high capes and the great brown mountains.  He
+lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the
+surf roar and saw the native boats come riding through it.  He smelled
+the tar and oakum of the deck as he slept and he smelled the smell of
+Africa that the land breeze brought at morning.
+
+Usually when he smelled the land breeze he woke up and dressed to go
+and wake the boy.  But tonight the smell of the land breeze came very
+early and he knew it was too early in his dream and went on dreaming to
+see the white peaks of the Islands rising from the sea and then he
+dreamed of the different harbours and roadsteads of the Canary Islands.
+
+He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences,
+nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his
+wife.  He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach.
+They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved
+the boy.  He never dreamed about the boy.  He simply woke, looked out
+the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on.
+He urinated outside the shack and then went up the road to wake the
+boy.  He was shivering with the morning cold.  But he knew he would
+shiver himself warm and that soon he would be rowing.
+
+The door of the house where the boy lived was unlocked and he opened it
+and walked in quietly with his bare feet.  The boy was asleep on a cot
+in the first room and the old man could see him clearly with the light
+that came in from the dying moon.  He took hold of one foot gently and
+held it until the boy woke and turned and looked at him.  The old man
+nodded and the boy took his trousers from the chair by the bed and,
+sitting on the bed, pulled them on.
+
+The old man went out the door and the boy came after him.  He was
+sleepy and the old man put his arm across his shoulders and said, "I am
+sorry."
+
+"Qué va," the boy said.  "It is what a man must do."
+
+They walked down the road to the old man's shack and all along the
+road, in the dark, barefoot men were moving, carrying the masts of
+their boats.
+
+When they reached the old man's shack the boy took the rolls of line in
+the basket and the harpoon and gaff and the old man carried the mast
+with the furled sail on his shoulder.
+
+"Do you want coffee?" the boy asked.
+
+"We'll put the gear in the boat and then get some."
+
+They had coffee from condensed milk cans at an early morning place that
+served fishermen.
+
+"How did you sleep old man?" the boy asked.  He was waking up now
+although it was still hard for him to leave his sleep.
+
+"Very well, Manolin," the old man said.  "I feel confident today."
+
+"So do I," the boy said.  "Now I must get your sardines and mine and
+your fresh baits.  He brings our gear himself.  He never wants anyone
+to carry anything."
+
+"We're different," the old man said.  "I let you carry things when you
+were five years old."
+
+"I know it," the boy said.  "I'll be right back.  Have another coffee.
+We have credit here."
+
+He walked off, bare-footed on the coral rocks, to the ice house where
+the baits were stored.
+
+The old man drank his coffee slowly.  It was all he would have all day
+and he knew that he should take it.  For a long time now eating had
+bored him and he never carried a lunch.  He had a bottle of water in
+the bow of the skiff and that was all he needed for the day.
+
+The boy was back now with the sardines and the two baits wrapped in a
+newspaper and they went down the trail to the skiff, feeling the
+pebbled sand under their feet, and lifted the skiff and slid her into
+the water.
+
+"Good luck old man."
+
+"Good luck," the old man said.  He fitted the rope lashings of the oars
+onto the thole pins and, leaning forward against the thrust of the
+blades in the water, he began to row out of the harbour in the dark.
+There were other boats from the other beaches going out to sea and the
+old man heard the dip and push of their oars even though he could not
+see them now the moon was below the hills.
+
+Sometimes someone would speak in a boat.  But most of the boats were
+silent except for the dip of the oars.  They spread apart after they
+were out of the mouth of the harbour and each one headed for the part
+of the ocean where he hoped to find fish.  The old man knew he was
+going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out
+into the clean early morning smell of the ocean.  He saw the
+phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in the water as he rowed over the part
+of the ocean that the fishermen called the great well because there was
+a sudden deep of seven hundred fathoms where all sorts of fish
+congregated because of the swirl the current made against the steep
+walls of the floor of the ocean.  Here there were concentrations of
+shrimp and bait fish and sometimes schools of squid in the deepest
+holes and these rose close to the surface at night where all the
+wandering fish fed on them.
+
+In the dark the old man could feel the morning coming and as he rowed
+he heard the trembling sound as flying fish left the water and the
+hissing that their stiff set wings made as they soared away in the
+darkness.  He was very fond of flying fish as they were his principal
+friends on the ocean.  He was sorry for the birds, especially the small
+delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost
+never finding, and he thought, "The birds have a harder life than we do
+except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones.  Why did they
+make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean
+can be so cruel?  She is kind and very beautiful.  But she can be so
+cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and
+hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the
+sea."
+
+He always thought of the sea as la mar which is what people call her
+in Spanish when they love her.  Sometimes those who love her say bad
+things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman.
+Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats for their
+lines and had motorboats, bought when the shark livers had brought much
+money, spoke of her as el mar which is masculine.  They spoke of her
+as a contestant or a place or even an enemy.  But the old man always
+thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great
+favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could
+not help them.  The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.
+
+He was rowing steadily and it was no effort for him since he kept well
+within his speed and the surface of the ocean was flat except for the
+occasional swirls of the current.  He was letting the current do a
+third of the work and as it started to be light he saw he was already
+further out than he had hoped to be at this hour.
+
+I worked the deep wells for a week and did nothing, he thought.  Today
+I'll work out where the schools of bonita and albacore are and maybe
+there will be a big one with them.
+
+Before it was really light he had his baits out and was drifting with
+the current.  One bait was down forty fathoms.  The second was at
+seventy-five and the third and fourth were down in the blue water at
+one hundred and one hundred and twenty-five fathoms.  Each bait hung
+head down with the shank of the hook inside the bait fish, tied and
+sewed solid and all the projecting part of the hook, the curve and the
+point, was covered with fresh sardines.  Each sardine was hooked
+through both eyes so that they made a half-garland on the projecting
+steel.  There was no part of the hook that a great fish could feel
+which was not sweet smelling and good tasting.
+
+The boy had given him two fresh small tunas, or albacores, which hung
+on the two deepest lines like plummets and, on the others, he had a big
+blue runner and a yellow jack that had been used before; but they were
+in good condition still and had the excellent sardines to give them
+scent and attractiveness.  Each line, as thick around as a big pencil,
+was looped onto a green-sapped stick so that any pull or touch on the
+bait would make the stick dip and each line had two forty-fathom coils
+which could be made fast to the other spare coils so that, if it were
+necessary, a fish could take out over three hundred fathoms of line.
+
+Now the man watched the dip of the three sticks over the side of the
+skiff and rowed gently to keep the lines straight up and down and at
+their proper depths.  It was quite light and any moment now the sun
+would rise.
+
+The sun rose thinly from the sea and the old man could see the other
+boats, low on the water and well in toward the shore, spread out across
+the current.  Then the sun was brighter and the glare came on the water
+and then, as it rose clear, the flat sea sent it back at his eyes so
+that it hurt sharply and he rowed without looking into it.  He looked
+down into the water and watched the lines that went straight down into
+the dark of the water.  He kept them straighter than anyone did, so
+that at each level in the darkness of the stream there would be a bait
+waiting exactly where he wished it to be for any fish that swam there.
+Others let them drift with the current and sometimes they were at sixty
+fathoms when the fishermen thought they were at a hundred.
+
+But, he thought, I keep them with precision.  Only I have no luck any
+more.  But who knows?  Maybe today.  Every day is a new day.  It is
+better to be lucky.  But I would rather be exact.  Then when luck comes
+you are ready.
+
+The sun was two hours higher now and it did not hurt his eyes so much
+to look into the east.  There were only three boats in sight now and
+they showed very low and far inshore.
+
+All my life the early sun has hurt my eyes, he thought.  Yet they are
+still good.  In the evening I can look straight into it without getting
+the blackness.  It has more force in the evening too.  But in the
+morning it is painful.
+
+Just then he saw a man-of-war bird with his long black wings circling
+in the sky ahead of him.  He made a quick drop, slanting down on his
+back-swept wings, and then circled again.
+
+"He's got something," the old man said aloud.  "He's not just looking."
+
+He rowed slowly and steadily toward where the bird was circling.  He
+did not hurry and he kept his lines straight up and down.  But he
+crowded the current a little so that he was still fishing correctly
+though faster than he would have fished if he was not trying to use the
+bird.
+
+The bird went higher in the air and circled again, his wings
+motionless.  Then he dove suddenly and the old man saw flying fish
+spurt out of the water and sail desperately over the surface.
+
+"Dolphin," the old man said aloud.  "Big dolphin."
+
+He shipped his oars and brought a small line from under the bow.  It
+had a wire leader and a medium-sized hook and he baited it with one of
+the sardines.  He let it go over the side and then made it fast to a
+ring bolt in the stern.  Then he baited another line and left it coiled
+in the shade of the bow.  He went back to rowing and to watching the
+long-winged black bird who was working, now, low over the water.
+
+As he watched the bird dipped again slanting his wings for the dive and
+then swinging them wildly and ineffectually as he followed the flying
+fish.  The old man could see the slight bulge in the water that the big
+dolphin raised as they followed the escaping fish.  The dolphin were
+cutting through the water below the flight of the fish and would be in
+the water, driving at speed, when the fish dropped.  It is a big school
+of dolphin, he thought.  They are wide spread and the flying fish have
+little chance.  The bird has no chance.  The flying fish are too big
+for him and they go too fast.
+
+He watched the flying fish burst out again and again and the
+ineffectual movements of the bird.  That school has gotten away from
+me, he thought.  They are moving out too fast and too far.  But perhaps
+I will pick up a stray and perhaps my big fish is around them.  My big
+fish must be somewhere.
+
+The clouds over the land now rose like mountains and the coast was only
+a long green line with the gray blue hills behind it.  The water was a
+dark blue now, so dark that it was almost purple.  As he looked down
+into it he saw the red sifting of the plankton in the dark water and
+the strange light the sun made now.  He watched his lines to see them
+go straight down out of sight into the water and he was happy to see so
+much plankton because it meant fish.  The strange light the sun made in
+the water, now that the sun was higher, meant good weather and so did
+the shape of the clouds over the land.  But the bird was almost out of
+sight now and nothing showed on the surface of the water but some
+patches of yellow, sun-bleached Sargasso weed and the purple,
+formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war
+floating close beside the boat.  It turned on its side and then righted
+itself.  It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple
+filaments trailing a yard behind it in the water.
+
+"Agua mala," the man said.  "You whore."
+
+From where he swung lightly against his oars he looked down into the
+water and saw the tiny fish that were coloured like the trailing
+filaments and swam between them and under the small shade the bubble
+made as it drifted.  They were immune to its poison.  But men were not
+and when some of the filaments would catch on a line and rest there
+slimy and purple while the old man was working a fish, he would have
+welts and sores on his arms and hands of the sort that poison ivy or
+poison oak can give.  But these poisonings from the agua mala came
+quickly and struck like a whiplash.
+
+The iridescent bubbles were beautiful.  But they were the falsest thing
+in the sea and the old man loved to see the big sea turtles eating
+them.  The turtles saw them, approached them from the front, then shut
+their eyes so they were completely carapaced and ate them filaments and
+all.  The old man loved to see the turtles eat them and he loved to
+walk on them on the beach after a storm and hear them pop when he
+stepped on them with the horny soles of his feet.
+
+He loved green turtles and hawks-bills with their elegance and speed
+and their great value and he had a friendly contempt for the huge,
+stupid loggerheads, yellow in their armour-plating, strange in their
+love-making, and happily eating the Portuguese men-of-war with their
+eyes shut.
+
+He had no mysticism about turtles although he had gone in turtle boats
+for many years.  He was sorry for them all, even the great trunk backs
+that were as long as the skiff and weighed a ton.  Most people are
+heartless about turtles because a turtle's heart will beat for hours
+after he has been cut up and butchered.  But the old man thought, I
+have such a heart too and my feet and hands are like theirs.  He ate
+the white eggs to give himself strength.  He ate them all through May
+to be strong in September and October for the truly big fish.
+
+He also drank a cup of shark liver oil each day from the big drum in
+the shack where many of the fishermen kept their gear.  It was there
+for all fishermen who wanted it.  Most fishermen hated the taste.  But
+it was no worse than getting up at the hours that they rose and it was
+very good against all colds and grippes and it was good for the eyes.
+
+Now the old man looked up and saw that the bird was circling again.
+
+"He's found fish," he said aloud.  No flying fish broke the surface and
+there was no scattering of bait fish.  But as the old man watched, a
+small tuna rose in the air, turned and dropped head first into the
+water.  The tuna shone silver in the sun and after he had dropped back
+into the water another and another rose and they were jumping in all
+directions, churning the water and leaping in long jumps after the
+bait.  They were circling it and driving it.
+
+If they don't travel too fast I will get into them, the old man
+thought, and he watched the school working the water white and the bird
+now dropping and dipping into the bait fish that were forced to the
+surface in their panic.
+
+"The bird is a great help," the old man said.  Just then the stern line
+came taut under his foot, where he had kept a loop of the line, and he
+dropped his oars and felt the weight of the small tuna's shivering pull
+as he held the line firm and commenced to haul it in.  The shivering
+increased as he pulled in and he could see the blue back of the fish in
+the water and the gold of his sides before he swung him over the side
+and into the boat.  He lay in the stern in the sun, compact and bullet
+shaped, his big, unintelligent eyes staring as he thumped his life out
+against the planking of the boat with the quick shivering strokes of
+his neat, fast-moving tail.  The old man hit him on the head for
+kindness and kicked him, his body still shuddering, under the shade of
+the stern.
+
+"Albacore," he said aloud.  "He'll make a beautiful bait.  He'll weigh
+ten pounds."
+
+He did not remember when he had first started to talk aloud when he was
+by himself.  He had sung when he was by himself in the old days and he
+had sung at night sometimes when he was alone steering on his watch in
+the smacks or in the turtle boats.  He had probably started to talk
+aloud, when alone, when the boy had left.  But he did not remember.
+When he and the boy fished together they usually spoke only when it was
+necessary.  They talked at night or when they were storm-bound by bad
+weather.  It was considered a virtue not to talk unnecessarily at sea
+and the old man had always considered it so and respected it.  But now
+he said his thoughts aloud many times since there was no one that they
+could annoy.
+
+"If the others heard me talking out loud they would think that I am
+crazy," he said aloud.  "But since I am not crazy, I do not care.  And
+the rich have radios to talk to them in their boats and to bring them
+the baseball."
+
+Now is no time to think of baseball, he thought.  Now is the time to
+think of only one thing.  That which I was born for.  There might be a
+big one around that school, he thought.  I picked up only a straggler
+from the albacore that were feeding.  But they are working far out and
+fast.  Everything that shows on the surface today travels very fast and
+to the north-east.  Can that be the time of day?  Or is it some sign of
+weather that I do not know?
+
+He could not see the green of the shore now but only the tops of the
+blue hills that showed white as though they were snow-capped and the
+clouds that looked like high snow mountains above them.  The sea was
+very dark and the light made prisms in the water.  The myriad flecks of
+the plankton were annulled now by the high sun and it was only the
+great deep prisms in the blue water that the old man saw now with his
+lines going straight down into the water that was a mile deep.
+
+The tuna, the fishermen called all the fish of that species tuna and
+only distinguished among them by their proper names when they came to
+sell them or to trade them for baits, were down again.  The sun was hot
+now and the old man felt it on the back of his neck and felt the sweat
+trickle down his back as he rowed.
+
+I could just drift, he thought, and sleep and put a bight of line
+around my toe to wake me.  But today is eighty-five days and I should
+fish the day well.
+
+Just then, watching his lines, he saw one of the projecting green
+sticks dip sharply.
+
+"Yes," he said.  "Yes," and shipped his oars without bumping the boat.
+He reached out for the line and held it softly between the thumb and
+forefinger of his right hand.  He felt no strain nor weight and he held
+the line lightly.  Then it came again.  This time it was a tentative
+pull, not solid nor heavy, and he knew exactly what it was.  One
+hundred fathoms down a marlin was eating the sardines that covered the
+point and the shank of the hook where the hand-forged hook projected
+from the head of the small tuna.
+
+The old man held the line delicately, and softly, with his left hand,
+unleashed it from the stick.  Now he could let it run through his
+fingers without the fish feeling any tension.
+
+This far out, he must be huge in this month, he thought.  Eat them,
+fish.  Eat them.  Please eat them.  How fresh they are and you down
+there six hundred feet in that cold water in the dark.  Make another
+turn in the dark and come back and eat them.
+
+He felt the light delicate pulling and then a harder pull when a
+sardine's head must have been more difficult to break from the hook.
+Then there was nothing.
+
+"Come on," the old man said aloud.  "Make another turn.  Just smell
+them.  Aren't they lovely?  Eat them good now and then there is the
+tuna.  Hard and cold and lovely.  Don't be shy, fish.  Eat them."
+
+He waited with the line between his thumb and his finger, watching it
+and the other lines at the same time for the fish might have swum up or
+down.  Then came the same delicate pulling touch again.
+
+"He'll take it," the old man said aloud.  "God help him to take it."
+
+He did not take it though.  He was gone and the old man felt nothing.
+
+"He can't have gone," he said.  "Christ knows he can't have gone.  He's
+making a turn.  Maybe he has been hooked before and he remembers
+something of it."
+
+Then he felt the gentle touch on the line and he was happy.
+
+"It was only his turn," he said.  "He'll take it."
+
+He was happy feeling the gentle pulling and then he felt something hard
+and unbelievably heavy.  It was the weight of the fish and he let the
+line slip down, down, down, unrolling off the first of the two reserve
+coils.  As it went down, slipping lightly through the old man's
+fingers, he still could feel the great weight, though the pressure of
+his thumb and finger were almost imperceptible.
+
+"What a fish," he said.  "He has it sideways in his mouth now and he is
+moving off with it."
+
+Then he will turn and swallow it, he thought.  He did not say that
+because he knew that if you said a good thing it might not happen.  He
+knew what a huge fish this was and he thought of him moving away in the
+darkness with the tuna held crosswise in his mouth.  At that moment he
+felt him stop moving but the weight was still there.  Then the weight
+increased and he gave more line.  He tightened the pressure of his
+thumb and finger for a moment and the weight increased and was going
+straight down.
+
+"He's taken it," he said.  "Now I'll let him eat it well."
+
+He let the line slip through his fingers while he reached down with his
+left hand and made fast the free end of the two reserve coils to the
+loop of the two reserve coils of the next line.  Now he was ready.  He
+had three forty-fathom coils of line in reserve now, as well as the
+coil he was using.
+
+"Eat it a little more," he said.  "Eat it well."
+
+Eat it so that the point of the hook goes into your heart and kills
+you, he thought.  Come up easy and let me put the harpoon into you.
+All right.  Are you ready?  Have you been long enough at table?
+
+"Now!" he said aloud and struck hard with both hands, gained a yard of
+line and then struck again and again, swinging with each arm
+alternately on the cord with all the strength of his arms and the
+pivoted weight of his body.
+
+Nothing happened.  The fish just moved away slowly and the old man
+could not raise him an inch.  His line was strong and made for heavy
+fish and he held it against his back until it was so taut that beads of
+water were jumping from it.  Then it began to make a slow hissing sound
+in the water and he still held it, bracing himself against the thwart
+and leaning back against the pull.  The boat began to move slowly off
+toward the North-West.
+
+The fish moved steadily and they travelled slowly on the calm water.
+The other baits were still in the water but there was nothing to be
+done.
+
+"I wish I had the boy," the old man said aloud.  "I'm being towed by a
+fish and I'm the towing bitt.  I could make the line fast.  But then he
+could break it.  I must hold him all I can and give him line when he
+must have it.  Thank God he is travelling and not going down."
+
+What I will do if he decides to go down, I don't know.  What I'll do if
+he sounds and dies I don't know.  But I'll do something.  There are
+plenty of things I can do.
+
+He held the line against his back and watched its slant in the water
+and the skiff moving steadily to the North-West.
+
+This will kill him, the old man thought.  He can't do this forever.
+But four hours later the fish was still swimming steadily out to sea,
+towing the skiff, and the old man was still braced solidly with the
+line across his back.
+
+"It was noon when I hooked him," he said.  "And I have never seen him."
+
+He had pushed his straw hat hard down on his head before he hooked the
+fish and it was cutting his forehead.  He was thirsty too and he got
+down on his knees and, being careful not to jerk on the line, moved as
+far into the bow as he could get and reached the water bottle with one
+hand.  He opened it and drank a little.  Then he rested against the
+bow.  He rested sitting on the un-stepped mast and sail and tried not
+to think but only to endure.
+
+Then he looked behind him and saw that no land was visible.  That makes
+no difference, he thought.  I can always come in on the glow from
+Havana.  There are two more hours before the sun sets and maybe he will
+come up before that.  If he doesn't maybe he will come up with the
+moon.  If he does not do that maybe he will come up with the sunrise.
+I have no cramps and I feel strong.  It is he that has the hook in his
+mouth.  But what a fish to pull like that.  He must have his mouth shut
+tight on the wire.  I wish I could see him.  I wish I could see him
+only once to know what I have against me.
+
+The fish never changed his course nor his direction all that night as
+far as the man could tell from watching the stars.  It was cold after
+the sun went down and the old man's sweat dried cold on his back and
+his arms and his old legs.  During the day he had taken the sack that
+covered the bait box and spread it in the sun to dry.  After the sun
+went down he tied it around his neck so that it hung down over his back
+and he cautiously worked it down under the line that was across his
+shoulders now.  The sack cushioned the line and he had found a way of
+leaning forward against the bow so that he was almost comfortable.  The
+position actually was only somewhat less intolerable; but he thought of
+it as almost comfortable.
+
+I can do nothing with him and he can do nothing with me, he thought.
+Not as long as he keeps this up.
+
+Once he stood up and urinated over the side of the skiff and looked at
+the stars and checked his course.  The line showed like a
+phosphorescent streak in the water straight out from his shoulders.
+They were moving more slowly now and the glow of Havana was not so
+strong, so that he knew the current must be carrying them to the
+eastward.  If I lose the glare of Havana we must be going more to the
+eastward, he thought.  For if the fish's course held true I must see it
+for many more hours.  I wonder how the baseball came out in the grand
+leagues today, he thought.  It would be wonderful to do this with a
+radio.  Then he thought, think of it always.  Think of what you are
+doing.  You must do nothing stupid.
+
+Then he said aloud, "I wish I had the boy.  To help me and to see this."
+
+No one should be alone in their old age, he thought.  But it is
+unavoidable.  I must remember to eat the tuna before he spoils in order
+to keep strong.  Remember, no matter how little you want to, that you
+must eat him in the morning.  Remember, he said to himself.
+
+During the night two porpoise came around the boat and he could hear
+them rolling and blowing.  He could tell the difference between the
+blowing noise the male made and the sighing blow of the female.
+
+"They are good," he said.  "They play and make jokes and love one
+another.  They are our brothers like the flying fish."
+
+Then he began to pity the great fish that he had hooked.  He is
+wonderful and strange and who knows how old he is, he thought.  Never
+have I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely.  Perhaps
+he is too wise to jump.  He could ruin me by jumping or by a wild rush.
+But perhaps he has been hooked many times before and he knows that this
+is how he should make his fight.  He cannot know that it is only one
+man against him, nor that it is an old man.  But what a great fish he
+is and what he will bring in the market if the flesh is good.  He took
+the bait like a male and he pulls like a male and his fight has no
+panic in it.  I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as
+desperate as I am?
+
+He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin.  The male
+fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the
+female, made a wild, panic-stricken, despairing fight that soon
+exhausted her, and all the time the male had stayed with her, crossing
+the line and circling with her on the surface.  He had stayed so close
+that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which
+was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape.  When the old
+man had gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its
+sandpaper edge and clubbing her across the top of her head until her
+colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then,
+with the boy's aid, hoisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the
+side of the boat.  Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and
+preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside
+the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his
+lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his
+wide lavender stripes showing.  He was beautiful, the old man
+remembered, and he had stayed.
+
+That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them, the old man thought.
+The boy was sad too and we begged her pardon and butchered her promptly.
+
+"I wish the boy was here," he said aloud and settled himself against
+the rounded planks of the bow and felt the strength of the great fish
+through the line he held across his shoulders moving steadily toward
+whatever he had chosen.
+
+When once, through my treachery, it had been necessary to him to make a
+choice, the old man thought.
+
+His choice had been to stay in the deep dark water far out beyond all
+snares and traps and treacheries.  My choice was to go there to find
+him beyond all people.  Beyond all people in the world.  Now we are
+joined together and have been since noon.  And no one to help either
+one of us.
+
+Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman, he thought.  But that was
+the thing that I was born for.  I must surely remember to eat the tuna
+after it gets light.
+
+Some time before daylight something took one of the baits that were
+behind him.  He heard the stick break and the line begin to rush out
+over the gunwale of the skiff.  In the darkness he loosened his sheath
+knife and taking all the strain of the fish on his left shoulder he
+leaned back and cut the line against the wood of the gunwale.  Then he
+cut the other line closest to him and in the dark made the loose ends
+of the reserve coils fast.  He worked skillfully with the one hand and
+put his foot on the coils to hold them as he drew his knots tight.  Now
+he had six reserve coils of line.  There were two from each bait he had
+severed and the two from the bait the fish had taken and they were all
+connected.
+
+After it is light, he thought, I will work back to the forty-fathom
+bait and cut it away too and link up the reserve coils.  I will have
+lost two hundred fathoms of good Catalan cordel and the hooks and
+leaders.  That can be replaced.  But who replaces this fish if I hook
+some fish and it cuts him off?  I don't know what that fish was that
+took the bait just now.  It could have been a marlin or a broadbill or
+a shark.  I never felt him.  I had to get rid of him too fast.
+
+Aloud he said, "I wish I had the boy."
+
+But you haven't got the boy, he thought.  You have only yourself and
+you had better work back to the last line now, in the dark or not in
+the dark, and cut it away and hook up the two reserve coils.
+
+So he did it.  It was difficult in the dark and once the fish made a
+surge that pulled him down on his face and made a cut below his eye.
+The blood ran down his cheek a little way.  But it coagulated and dried
+before it reached his chin and he worked his way back to the bow and
+rested against the wood.  He adjusted the sack and carefully worked the
+line so that it came across a new part of his shoulders and, holding it
+anchored with his shoulders, he carefully felt the pull of the fish and
+then felt with his hand the progress of the skiff through the water.
+
+I wonder what he made that lurch for, he thought.  The wire must have
+slipped on the great hill of his back.  Certainly his back cannot feel
+as badly as mine does.  But he cannot pull this skiff forever, no
+matter how great he is.  Now everything is cleared away that might make
+trouble and I have a big reserve of line; all that a man can ask.
+
+"Fish," he said softly, aloud, "I'll stay with you until I am dead."
+
+He'll stay with me too, I suppose, the old man thought and he waited
+for it to be light.  It was cold now in the time before daylight and he
+pushed against the wood to be warm.  I can do it as long as he can, he
+thought.  And in the first light the line extended out and down into
+the water.  The boat moved steadily and when the first edge of the sun
+rose it was on the old man's right shoulder.
+
+"He's headed north," the old man said.  The current will have set us
+far to the eastward, he thought.  I wish he would turn with the
+current.  That would show that he was tiring.
+
+When the sun had risen further the old man realized that the fish was
+not tiring.  There was only one favorable sign.  The slant of the line
+showed he was swimming at a lesser depth.  That did not necessarily
+mean that he would jump.  But he might.
+
+"God let him jump," the old man said.  "I have enough line to handle
+him."
+
+Maybe if I can increase the tension just a little it will hurt him and
+he will jump, he thought.  Now that it is daylight let him jump so that
+he'll fill the sacks along his backbone with air and then he cannot go
+deep to die.
+
+He tried to increase the tension, but the line had been taut up to the
+very edge of the breaking point since he had hooked the fish and he
+felt the harshness as he leaned back to pull and knew he could put no
+more strain on it.  I must not jerk it ever, he thought.  Each jerk
+widens the cut the hook makes and then when he does jump he might throw
+it.  Anyway I feel better with the sun and for once I do not have to
+look into it.
+
+There was yellow weed on the line but the old man knew that only made
+an added drag and he was pleased.  It was the yellow Gulf weed that had
+made so much phosphorescence in the night.
+
+"Fish," he said, "I love you and respect you very much.  But I will
+kill you dead before this day ends."
+
+Let us hope so, he thought.
+
+A small bird came toward the skiff from the north.  He was a warbler
+and flying very low over the water.  The old man could see that he was
+very tired.
+
+The bird made the stern of the boat and rested there.  Then he flew
+around the old man's head and rested on the line where he was more
+comfortable.
+
+"How old are you?" the old man asked the bird.  "Is this your first
+trip?"
+
+The bird looked at him when he spoke.  He was too tired even to examine
+the line and he teetered on it as his delicate feet gripped it fast.
+
+"It's steady," the old man told him.  "It's too steady.  You shouldn't
+be that tired after a windless night.  What are birds coming to?"
+
+The hawks, he thought, that come out to sea to meet them.  But he said
+nothing of this to the bird who could not understand him anyway and who
+would learn about the hawks soon enough.
+
+"Take a good rest, small bird," he said.  "Then go in and take your
+chance like any man or bird or fish."
+
+It encouraged him to talk because his back had stiffened in the night
+and it hurt truly now.
+
+"Stay at my house if you like, bird," he said.  "I am sorry I cannot
+hoist the sail and take you in with the small breeze that is rising.
+But I am with a friend."
+
+Just then the fish gave a sudden lurch that pulled the old man down
+onto the bow and would have pulled him overboard if he had not braced
+himself and given some line.
+
+The bird had flown up when the line jerked and the old man had not even
+seen him go.  He felt the line carefully with his right hand and
+noticed his hand was bleeding.
+
+"Something hurt him then," he said aloud and pulled back on the line to
+see if he could turn the fish.  But when he was touching the breaking
+point he held steady and settled back against the strain of the line.
+
+"You're feeling it now, fish," he said.  "And so, God knows, am I."
+
+He looked around for the bird now because he would have liked him for
+company.  The bird was gone.
+
+You did not stay long, the man thought.  But it is rougher where you
+are going until you make the shore.  How did I let the fish cut me with
+that one quick pull he made?  I must be getting very stupid.  Or
+perhaps I was looking at the small bird and thinking of him.  Now I
+will pay attention to my work and then I must eat the tuna so that I
+will not have a failure of strength.
+
+"I wish the boy were here and that I had some salt," he said aloud.
+
+Shifting the weight of the line to his left shoulder and kneeling
+carefully he washed his hand in the ocean and held it there, submerged,
+for more than a minute watching the blood trail away and the steady
+movement of the water against his hand as the boat moved.
+
+"He has slowed much," he said.
+
+The old man would have liked to keep his hand in the salt water longer
+but he was afraid of another sudden lurch by the fish and he stood up
+and braced himself and held his hand up against the sun.  It was only a
+line burn that had cut his flesh.  But it was in the working part of
+his hand.  He knew he would need his hands before this was over and he
+did not like to be cut before it started.
+
+"Now," he said, when his hand had dried, "I must eat the small tuna.  I
+can reach him with the gaff and eat him here in comfort."
+
+He knelt down and found the tuna under the stern with the gaff and drew
+it toward him keeping it clear of the coiled lines.  Holding the line
+with his left shoulder again, and bracing on his left hand and arm, he
+took the tuna off the gaff hook and put the gaff back in place.  He put
+one knee on the fish and cut strips of dark red meat longitudinally
+from the back of the head to the tail.  They were wedge-shaped strips
+and he cut them from next to the back bone down to the edge of the
+belly.  When he had cut six strips he spread them out on the wood of
+the bow, wiped his knife on his trousers, and lifted the carcass of the
+bonito by the tail and dropped it overboard.
+
+"I don't think I can eat an entire one," he said and drew his knife
+across one of the strips.  He could feel the steady hard pull of the
+line and his left hand was cramped.  It drew up tight on the heavy cord
+and he looked at it in disgust.
+
+"What kind of a hand is that," he said.  "Cramp then if you want.  Make
+yourself into a claw.  It will do you no good."
+
+Come on, he thought and looked down into the dark water at the slant of
+the line.  Eat it now and it will strengthen the hand.  It is not the
+hand's fault and you have been many hours with the fish.  But you can
+stay with him forever.  Eat the bonito now.
+
+He picked up a piece and put it in his mouth and chewed it slowly.  It
+was not unpleasant.
+
+Chew it well, he thought, and get all the juices.  It would not be bad
+to eat with a little lime or with lemon or with salt.
+
+"How do you feel, hand?" he asked the cramped hand that was almost as
+stiff as rigor mortis.  "I'll eat some more for you."
+
+
+He ate the other part of the piece that he had cut in two.  He chewed
+it carefully and then spat out the skin.
+
+"How does it go, hand?  Or is it too early to know?"
+
+He took another full piece and chewed it.
+
+"It is a strong full-blooded fish," he thought.  "I was lucky to get
+him instead of dolphin.  Dolphin is too sweet.  This is hardly sweet at
+all and all the strength is still in it."
+
+There is no sense in being anything but practical though, he thought.
+I wish I had some salt.  And I do not know whether the sun will rot or
+dry what is left, so I had better eat it all although I am not hungry.
+The fish is calm and steady.  I will eat it all and then I will be
+ready.
+
+"Be patient, hand," he said.  "I do this for you."
+
+I wish I could feed the fish, he thought.  He is my brother.  But I
+must kill him and keep strong to do it.  Slowly and conscientiously he
+ate all of the wedge-shaped strips of fish.
+
+He straightened up, wiping his hand on his trousers.
+
+"Now," he said.  "You can let the cord go, hand, and I will handle him
+with the right arm alone until you stop that nonsense."  He put his
+left foot on the heavy line that the left hand had held and lay back
+against the pull against his back.
+
+"God help me to have the cramp go," he said.  "Because I do not know
+what the fish is going to do."
+
+But he seems calm, he thought, and following his plan.  But what is his
+plan, he thought.  And what is mine?  Mine I must improvise to his
+because of his great size.  If he will jump I can kill him.  But he
+stays down forever.  Then I will stay down with him forever.
+
+He rubbed the cramped hand against his trousers and tried to gentle the
+fingers.  But it would not open.  Maybe it will open with the sun, he
+thought.  Maybe it will open when the strong raw tuna is digested.  If
+I have to have it, I will open it, cost whatever it costs.  But I do
+not want to open it now by force.  Let it open by itself and come back
+of its own accord.  After all I abused it much in the night when it was
+necessary to free and unite the various lines.
+
+He looked across the sea and knew how alone he was now.  But he could
+see the prisms in the deep dark water and the line stretching ahead and
+the strange undulation of the calm.  The clouds were building up now
+for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks
+etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then
+etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.
+
+He thought of how some men feared being out of sight of land in a small
+boat and knew they were right in the months of sudden bad weather.  But
+now they were in hurricane months and, when there are no hurricanes,
+the weather of hurricane months is the best of all the year.
+
+If there is a hurricane you always see the signs of it in the sky for
+days ahead, if you are at sea.  They do not see it ashore because they
+do not know what to look for, he thought.  The land must make a
+difference too, in the shape of the clouds.  But we have no hurricane
+coming now.
+
+He looked at the sky and saw the white cumulus built like friendly
+piles of ice cream and high above were the thin feathers of the cirrus
+against the high September sky.
+
+"Light brisa," he said.  "Better weather for me than for you, fish."
+
+His left hand was still cramped, but he was unknotting it slowly.
+
+I hate a cramp, he thought.  It is a treachery of one's own body.  It
+is humiliating before others to have a diarrhoea from ptomaine
+poisoning or to vomit from it.  But a cramp, he thought of it as a
+calambre, humiliates oneself especially when one is alone.
+
+If the boy were here he could rub it for me and loosen it down from the
+forearm, he thought.  But it will loosen up.
+
+Then, with his right hand he felt the difference in the pull of the
+line before he saw the slant change in the water.  Then, as he leaned
+against the line and slapped his left hand hard and fast against his
+thigh he saw the line slanting slowly upward.
+
+"He's coming up," he said.  "Come on hand.  Please come on."
+
+The line rose slowly and steadily and then the surface of the ocean
+bulged ahead of the boat and the fish came out.  He came out unendingly
+and water poured from his sides.  He was bright in the sun and his head
+and back were dark purple and in the sun the stripes on his sides
+showed wide and a light lavender.  His sword was as long as a baseball
+bat and tapered like a rapier and he rose his full length from the
+water and then re-entered it, smoothly, like a diver and the old man
+saw the great scythe-blade of his tail go under and the line commenced
+to race out.
+
+"He is two feet longer than the skiff," the old man said.  The line was
+going out fast but steadily and the fish was not panicked.  The old man
+was trying with both hands to keep the line just inside of breaking
+strength.  He knew that if he could not slow the fish with a steady
+pressure the fish could take out all the line and break it.
+
+He is a great fish and I must convince him, he thought.  I must never
+let him learn his strength nor what he could do if he made his run.  If
+I were him I would put in everything now and go until something broke.
+But, thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill them;
+although they are more noble and more able.
+
+The old man had seen many great fish.  He had seen many that weighed
+more than a thousand pounds and he had caught two of that size in his
+life, but never alone.  Now alone, and out of sight of land, he was
+fast to the biggest fish that he had ever seen and bigger than he had
+ever heard of, and his left hand was still as tight as the gripped
+claws of an eagle.
+
+It will uncramp though, he thought.  Surely it will uncramp to help my
+right hand.  There are three things that are brothers: the fish and my
+two hands.  It must uncramp.  It is unworthy of it to be cramped.  The
+fish had slowed again and was going at his usual pace.
+
+I wonder why he jumped, the old man thought.  He jumped almost as
+though to show me how big he was.  I know now, anyway, he thought.  I
+wish I could show him what sort of man I am.  But then he would see the
+cramped hand.  Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so.
+I wish I was the fish, he thought, with everything he has against only
+my will and my intelligence.
+
+He settled comfortably against the wood and took his suffering as it
+came and the fish swam steadily and the boat moved slowly through the
+dark water.  There was a small sea rising with the wind coming up from
+the east and at noon the old man's left hand was uncramped.
+
+"Bad news for you, fish," he said and shifted the line over the sacks
+that covered his shoulders.
+
+He was comfortable but suffering, although he did not admit the
+suffering at all.
+
+"I am not religious," he said.  "But I will say ten Our Fathers and ten
+Hail Marys that I should catch this fish, and I promise to make a
+pilgrimage to the Virgen de Cobre if I catch him.  That is a promise."
+
+He commenced to say his prayers mechanically.  Sometimes he would be so
+tired that he could not remember the prayer and then he would say them
+fast so that they would come automatically.  Hail Marys are easier to
+say than Our Fathers, he thought.
+
+"Hail Mary full of Grace the Lord is with thee.  Blessed art thou among
+women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.  Holy Mary, Mother
+of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.  Amen."
+Then he added, "Blessed Virgin, pray for the death of this fish.
+Wonderful though he is."
+
+With his prayers said, and feeling much better, but suffering exactly
+as much, and perhaps a little more, he leaned against the wood of the
+bow and began, mechanically, to work the fingers of his left hand.
+
+The sun was hot now although the breeze was rising gently.
+
+"I had better re-bait that little line out over the stern," he said.
+"If the fish decides to stay another night I will need to eat again and
+the water is low in the bottle.  I don't think I can get anything but a
+dolphin here.  But if I eat him fresh enough he won't be bad.  I wish a
+flying fish would come on board tonight.  But I have no light to
+attract them.  A flying fish is excellent to eat raw and I would not
+have to cut him up.  I must save all my strength now.  Christ, I did
+not know he was so big."
+
+"I'll kill him though," he said.  "In all his greatness and his glory."
+
+Although it is unjust, he thought.  But I will show him what a man can
+do and what a man endures.
+
+"I told the boy I was a strange old man," he said.  "Now is when I must
+prove it."
+
+The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing.  Now he was
+proving it again.  Each time was a new time and he never thought about
+the past when he was doing it.
+
+I wish he'd sleep and I could sleep and dream about the lions, he
+thought.  Why are the lions the main thing that is left?  Don't think,
+old man, he said to himself.  Rest gently now against the wood and
+think of nothing.  He is working.  Work as little as you can.
+
+It was getting into the afternoon and the boat still moved slowly and
+steadily.  But there was an added drag now from the easterly breeze and
+the old man rode gently with the small sea and the hurt of the cord
+across his back came to him easily and smoothly.
+
+Once in the afternoon the line started to rise again.  But the fish
+only continued to swim at a slightly higher level.  The sun was on the
+old man's left arm and shoulder and on his back.  So he knew the fish
+had turned east of north.
+
+Now that he had seen him once, he could picture the fish swimming in
+the water with his purple pectoral fins set wide as wings and the great
+erect tail slicing through the dark.  I wonder how much he sees at that
+depth, the old man thought.  His eye is huge and a horse, with much
+less eye, can see in the dark.  Once I could see quite well in the
+dark.  Not in the absolute dark.  But almost as a cat sees.
+
+The sun and his steady movement of his fingers had uncramped his left
+hand now completely and he began to shift more of the strain to it and
+he shrugged the muscles of his back to shift the hurt of the cord a
+little.
+
+"If you're not tired, fish," he said aloud, "you must be very strange."
+
+He felt very tired now and he knew the night would come soon and he
+tried to think of other things.  He thought of the Big Leagues, to him
+they were the Gran Ligas, and he knew that the Yankees of New York
+were playing the Tigres of Detroit.
+
+This is the second day now that I do not know the result of the
+juegos, he thought.  But I must have confidence and I must be worthy
+of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain
+of the bone spur in his heel.  What is a bone spur? he asked himself.
+Un espuela de hueso.  We do not have them.  Can it be as painful as
+the spur of a fighting cock in one's heel?  I do not think I could
+endure that or the loss of the eye and of both eyes and continue to
+fight as the fighting cocks do.  Man is not much beside the great birds
+and beasts.  Still I would rather be that beast down there in the
+darkness of the sea.
+
+"Unless sharks come," he said aloud.  "If sharks come, God pity him and
+me."
+
+Do you believe the great DiMaggio would stay with a fish as long as I
+will stay with this one? he thought.  I am sure he would and more since
+he is young and strong.  Also his father was a fisherman.  But would
+the bone spur hurt him too much?
+
+"I do not know," he said aloud.  "I never had a bone spur."
+
+As the sun set he remembered, to give himself more confidence, the time
+in the tavern at Casablanca when he had played the hand game with the
+great negro from Cienfuegos who was the strongest man on the docks.
+They had gone one day and one night with their elbows on a chalk line
+on the table and their forearms straight up and their hands gripped
+tight.  Each one was trying to force the other's hand down onto the
+table.  There was much betting and people went in and out of the room
+under the kerosene lights and he had looked at the arm and hand of the
+negro and at the negro's face.  They changed the referees every four
+hours after the first eight so that the referees could sleep.  Blood
+came out from under the fingernails of both his and the negro's hands
+and they looked each other in the eye and at their hands and forearms
+and the bettors went in and out of the room and sat on high chairs
+against the wall and watched.  The walls were painted bright blue and
+were of wood and the lamps threw their shadows against them.  The
+negro's shadow was huge and it moved on the wall as the breeze moved
+the lamps.
+
+The odds would change back and forth all night and they fed the negro
+rum and lighted cigarettes for him.  Then the negro, after the rum,
+would try for a tremendous effort and once he had the old man, who was
+not an old man then but was Santiago El Campeon, nearly three inches
+off balance.  But the old man had raised his hand up to dead even
+again.  He was sure then that he had the negro, who was a fine man and
+a great athlete, beaten.  And at daylight when the bettors were asking
+that it be called a draw and the referee was shaking his head, he had
+unleashed his effort and forced the hand of the negro down and down
+until it rested on the wood.  The match had started on a Sunday morning
+and ended on a Monday morning.  Many of the bettors had asked for a
+draw because they had to go to work on the docks loading sacks of sugar
+or at the Havana Coal Company.  Otherwise everyone would have wanted it
+to go to a finish.  But he had finished it anyway and before anyone had
+to go to work.
+
+For a long time after that everyone had called him The Champion and
+there had been a return match in the spring.  But not much money was
+bet and he had won it quite easily since he had broken the confidence
+of the negro from Cienfuegos in the first match.  After that he had a
+few matches and then no more.  He decided that he could beat anyone if
+he wanted to badly enough and he decided that it was bad for his right
+hand for fishing.  He had tried a few practice matches with his left
+hand.  But his left hand had always been a traitor and would not do
+what he called on it to do and he did not trust it.
+
+The sun will bake it out well now, he thought.  It should not cramp on
+me again unless it gets too cold in the night.  I wonder what this
+night will bring.
+
+An airplane passed over head on its course to Miami and he watched its
+shadow scaring up the schools of flying fish.
+
+"With so much flying fish there should be dolphin," he said, and leaned
+back on the line to see if it was possible to gain any on his fish.
+But he could not and it stayed at the hardness and water-drop shivering
+that preceded breaking.  The boat moved ahead slowly and he watched the
+airplane until he could no longer see it.
+
+It must be very strange in an airplane, he thought.  I wonder what the
+sea looks like from that height?  They should be able to see the fish
+well if they do not fly too high.  I would like to fly very slowly at
+two hundred fathoms high and see the fish from above.  In the turtle
+boats I was in the cross-trees of the mast-head and even at that height
+I saw much.  The dolphin look greener from there and you can see their
+stripes and their purple spots and you can see all of the school as
+they swim.  Why is it that all the fast-moving fish of the dark current
+have purple backs and usually purple stripes or spots?  The dolphin
+looks green of course because he is really golden.  But when he comes
+to feed, truly hungry, purple stripes show on his sides as on a marlin.
+Can it be anger, or the greater speed he makes that brings them out?
+
+Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed
+that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making
+love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by
+a dolphin.  He saw it first when it jumped in the air, true gold in the
+last of the sun and bending and flapping wildly in the air.  It jumped
+again and again in the acrobatics of its fear and he worked his way
+back to the stern and crouching and holding the big line with his right
+hand and arm, he pulled the dolphin in with his left hand, stepping on
+the gained line each time with his bare left foot.  When the fish was
+at the stern, plunging and cutting from side to side in desperation,
+the old man leaned over the stern and lifted the burnished gold fish
+with its purple spots over the stern.  Its jaws were working
+convulsively in quick bites against the hook and it pounded the bottom
+of the skiff with its long flat body, its tail and its head until he
+clubbed it across the shining golden head until it shivered and was
+still.
+
+The old man unhooked the fish, rebaited the line with another sardine
+and tossed it over.  Then he worked his way slowly back to the bow.  He
+washed his left hand and wiped it on his trousers.  Then he shifted the
+heavy line from his right hand to his left and washed his right hand in
+the sea while he watched the sun go into the ocean and the slant of the
+big cord.
+
+"He hasn't changed at all," he said.  But watching the movement of the
+water against his hand he noted that it was perceptibly slower.
+
+"I'll lash the two oars together across the stern and that will slow
+him in the night," he said.  "He's good for the night and so am I."
+
+It would be better to gut the dolphin a little later to save the blood
+in the meat, he thought.  I can do that a little later and lash the
+oars to make a drag at the same time.  I had better keep the fish quiet
+now and not disturb him too much at sunset.  The setting of the sun is
+a difficult time for all fish.
+
+He let his hand dry in the air then grasped the line with it and eased
+himself as much as he could and allowed himself to be pulled forward
+against the wood so that the boat took the strain as much, or more,
+than he did.
+
+I'm learning how to do it, he thought.  This part of it anyway.  Then
+too, remember he hasn't eaten since he took the bait and he is huge and
+needs much food.  I have eaten the whole bonito.  Tomorrow I will eat
+the dolphin.  He called it dorado.  Perhaps I should eat some of it
+when I clean it.  It will be harder to eat than the bonito.  But, then,
+nothing is easy.
+
+"How do you feel, fish?" he asked aloud.  "I feel good and my left hand
+is better and I have food for a night and a day.  Pull the boat, fish."
+
+He did not truly feel good because the pain from the cord across his
+back had almost passed pain and gone into a dullness that he
+mistrusted.  But I have had worse things than that, he thought.  My
+hand is only cut a little and the cramp is gone from the other.  My
+legs are all right.  Also now I have gained on him in the question of
+sustenance.
+
+It was dark now as it becomes dark quickly after the sun sets in
+September.  He lay against the worn wood of the bow and rested all that
+he could.  The first stars were out.  He did not know the name of Rigel
+but he saw it and knew soon they would all be out and he would have all
+his distant friends.
+
+"The fish is my friend too," he said aloud.  "I have never seen or
+heard of such a fish.  But I must kill him.  I am glad we do not have
+to try to kill the stars."
+
+Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought.  The
+moon runs away.  But imagine if a man each day should have to try to
+kill the sun?  We were born lucky, he thought.
+
+Then he was sorry for the great fish that had nothing to eat and his
+determination to kill him never relaxed in his sorrow for him.  How
+many people will he feed, he thought.  But are they worthy to eat him?
+No, of course not.  There is no one worthy of eating him from the
+manner of his behaviour and his great dignity.
+
+I do not understand these things, he thought.  But it is good that we
+do not have to try to kill the sun or the moon or the stars.  It is
+enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.
+
+Now, he thought, I must think about the drag.  It has its perils and
+its merits.  I may lose so much line that I will lose him, if he makes
+his effort and the drag made by the oars is in place and the boat loses
+all her lightness.  Her lightness prolongs both our suffering but it is
+my safety since he has great speed that he has never yet employed.  No
+matter what passes I must gut the dolphin so he does not spoil and eat
+some of him to be strong.
+
+Now I will rest an hour more and feel that he is solid and steady
+before I move back to the stern to do the work and make the decision.
+In the meantime I can see how he acts and if he shows any changes.  The
+oars are a good trick; but it has reached the time to play for safety.
+He is much fish still and I saw that the hook was in the corner of his
+mouth and he has kept his mouth tight shut.  The punishment of the hook
+is nothing.  The punishment of hunger, and that he is against something
+that he does not comprehend, is everything.  Rest now, old man, and let
+him work until your next duty comes.
+
+He rested for what he believed to be two hours.  The moon did not rise
+now until late and he had no way of judging the time.  Nor was he
+really resting except comparatively.  He was still bearing the pull of
+the fish across his shoulders but he placed his left hand on the
+gunwale of the bow and confided more and more of the resistance to the
+fish to the skiff itself.
+
+How simple it would be if I could make the line fast, he thought.  But
+with one small lurch he could break it.  I must cushion the pull of the
+line with my body and at all times be ready to give line with both
+hands.
+
+"But you have not slept yet, old man," he said aloud.  "It is half a
+day and a night and now another day and you have not slept.  You must
+devise a way so that you sleep a little if he is quiet and steady.  If
+you do not sleep you might become unclear in the head."
+
+I'm clear enough in the head, he thought.  Too clear.  I am as clear as
+the stars that are my brothers.  Still I must sleep.  They sleep and
+the moon and the sun sleep and even the ocean sleeps sometimes on
+certain days when there is no current and a flat calm.
+
+But remember to sleep, he thought.  Make yourself do it and devise some
+simple and sure way about the lines.  Now go back and prepare the
+dolphin.  It is too dangerous to rig the oars as a drag if you must
+sleep.
+
+I could go without sleeping, he told himself.  But it would be too
+dangerous.
+
+He started to work his way back to the stern on his hands and knees,
+being careful not to jerk against the fish.  He may be half asleep
+himself, he thought.  But I do not want him to rest.  He must pull
+until he dies.
+
+Back in the stern he turned so that his left hand held the strain of
+the line across his shoulders and drew his knife from its sheath with
+his right hand.  The stars were bright now and he saw the dolphin
+clearly and he pushed the blade of his knife into his head and drew him
+
+out from under the stern.  He put one of his feet on the fish and slit
+him quickly from the vent up to the tip of his lower jaw.  Then he put
+his knife down and gutted him with his right hand, scooping him clean
+and pulling the gills clear.  He felt the maw heavy and slippery in his
+hands and he slit it open.  There were two flying fish inside.  They
+were fresh and hard and he laid them side by side and dropped the guts
+and the gills over the stern.  They sank leaving a trail of
+phosphorescence in the water.  The dolphin was cold and a leprous
+gray-white now in the starlight and the old man skinned one side of him
+while he held his right foot on the fish's head.  Then he turned him
+over and skinned the other side and cut each side off from the head
+down to the tail.
+
+He slid the carcass overboard and looked to see if there was any swirl
+in the water.  But there was only the light of its slow descent.  He
+turned then and placed the two flying fish inside the two fillets of
+fish and putting his knife back in its sheath, he worked his way slowly
+back to the bow.  His back was bent with the weight of the line across
+it and he carried the fish in his right hand.
+
+Back in the bow he laid the two fillets of fish out on the wood with
+the flying fish beside them.  After that he settled the line across his
+shoulders in a new place and held it again with his left hand resting
+on the gunwale.  Then he leaned over the side and washed the flying
+fish in the water, noting the speed of the water against his hand.  His
+hand was phosphorescent from skinning the fish and he watched the flow
+of the water against it.  The flow was less strong and as he rubbed the
+side of his hand against the planking of the skiff, particles of
+phosphorus floated off and drifted slowly astern.
+
+"He is tiring or he is resting," the old man said.  "Now let me get
+through the eating of this dolphin and get some rest and a little
+sleep."
+
+Under the stars and with the night colder all the time he ate half of
+one of the dolphin fillets and one of the flying fish, gutted and with
+its head cut off.
+
+"What an excellent fish dolphin is to eat cooked," he said.  "And what
+a miserable fish raw.  I will never go in a boat again without salt or
+limes."
+
+If I had brains I would have splashed water on the bow all day and
+drying, it would have made salt, he thought.  But then I did not hook
+the dolphin until almost sunset.  Still it was a lack of preparation.
+But I have chewed it all well and I am not nauseated.
+
+The sky was clouding over to the east and one after another the stars
+he knew were gone.  It looked now as though he were moving into a great
+canyon of clouds and the wind had dropped.
+
+"There will be bad weather in three or four days," he said.  "But not
+tonight and not tomorrow.  Rig now to get some sleep, old man, while
+the fish is calm and steady."
+
+He held the line tight in his right hand and then pushed his thigh
+against his right hand as he leaned all his weight against the wood of
+the bow.  Then he passed the line a little lower on his shoulders and
+braced his left hand on it.
+
+My right hand can hold it as long as it is braced, he thought.  If it
+relaxes in sleep my left hand will wake me as the line goes out.  It is
+hard on the right hand.  But he is used to punishment.  Even if I sleep
+twenty minutes or a half an hour it is good.  He lay forward cramping
+himself against the line with all of his body, putting all his weight
+onto his right hand, and he was asleep.
+
+He did not dream of the lions but instead of a vast school of porpoises
+that stretched for eight or ten miles and it was in the time of their
+mating and they would leap high into the air and return into the same
+hole they had made in the water when they leaped.
+
+Then he dreamed that he was in the village on his bed and there was a
+norther and he was very cold and his right arm was asleep because his
+head had rested on it instead of a pillow.
+
+After that he began to dream of the long yellow beach and he saw the
+first of the lions come down onto it in the early dark and then the
+other lions came and he rested his chin on the wood of the bows where
+the ship lay anchored with the evening off-shore breeze and he waited
+to see if there would be more lions and he was happy.
+
+The moon had been up for a long time but he slept on and the fish
+pulled on steadily and the boat moved into the tunnel of clouds.
+
+He woke with the jerk of his right fist coming up against his face and
+the line burning out through his right hand.  He had no feeling of his
+left hand but he braked all he could with his right and the line rushed
+out.  Finally his left hand found the line and he leaned back against
+the line and now it burned his back and his left hand, and his left
+hand was taking all the strain and cutting badly.  He looked back at
+the coils of line and they were feeding smoothly.  Just then the fish
+jumped making a great bursting of the ocean and then a heavy fall.
+Then he jumped again and again and the boat was going fast although
+line was still racing out and the old man was raising the strain to
+breaking point and raising it to breaking point again and again.  He
+had been pulled down tight onto the bow and his face was in the cut
+slice of dolphin and he could not move.
+
+This is what we waited for, he thought.  So now let us take it.
+
+Make him pay for the line, he thought.  Make him pay for it.
+
+He could not see the fish's jumps but only heard the breaking of the
+ocean and the heavy splash as he fell.  The speed of the line was
+cutting his hands badly but he had always known this would happen and
+he tried to keep the cutting across the calloused parts and not let the
+line slip into the palm nor cut the fingers.
+
+If the boy was here he would wet the coils of line, he thought.  Yes.
+If the boy were here.  If the boy were here.
+
+The line went out and out and out but it was slowing now and he was
+making the fish earn each inch of it.  Now he got his head up from the
+wood and out of the slice of fish that his cheek had crushed.  Then he
+was on his knees and then he rose slowly to his feet.  He was ceding
+line but more slowly all the time.  He worked back to where he could
+feel with his foot the coils of line that he could not see.  There was
+plenty of line still and now the fish had to pull the friction of all
+that new line through the water.
+
+Yes, he thought.  And now he has jumped more than a dozen times and
+filled the sacks along his back with air and he cannot go down deep to
+die where I cannot bring him up.  He will start circling soon and then
+I must work on him.  I wonder what started him so suddenly?  Could it
+have been hunger that made him desperate, or was he frightened by
+something in the night?  Maybe he suddenly felt fear.  But he was such
+a calm, strong fish and he seemed so fearless and so confident.  It is
+strange.
+
+"You better be fearless and confident yourself, old man," he said.
+"You're holding him again but you cannot get line.  But soon he has to
+circle."
+
+The old man held him with his left hand and his shoulders now and
+stooped down and scooped up water in his right hand to get the crushed
+dolphin flesh off of his face.  He was afraid that it might nauseate
+him and he would vomit and lose his strength.  When his face was
+cleaned he washed his right hand in the water over the side and then
+let it stay in the salt water while he watched the first light come
+before the sunrise.  He's headed almost east, he thought.  That means
+he is tired and going with the current.  Soon he will have to circle.
+Then our true work begins.
+
+After he judged that his right hand had been in the water long enough
+he took it out and looked at it.  "It is not bad," he said.  "And pain
+does not matter to a man."
+
+He took hold of the line carefully so that it did not fit into any of
+the fresh line cuts and shifted his weight so that he could put his
+left hand into the sea on the other side of the skiff.
+
+"You did not do so badly for something worthless," he said to his left
+hand.  "But there was a moment when I could not find you."
+
+Why was I not born with two good hands? he thought.  Perhaps it was my
+fault in not training that one properly.  But God knows he has had
+enough chances to learn.  He did not do so badly in the night, though,
+and he has only cramped once.  If he cramps again let the line cut him
+off.
+
+When he thought that he knew that he was not being clear-headed and he
+thought he should chew some more of the dolphin.  But I can't, he told
+himself.  It is better to be light-headed than to lose your strength
+from nausea.  And I know I cannot keep it if I eat it since my face was
+in it.  I will keep it for an emergency until it goes bad.  But it is
+too late to try for strength now through nourishment.  You're stupid,
+he told himself.  Eat the other flying fish.
+
+It was there, cleaned and ready, and he picked it up with his left hand
+and ate it chewing the bones carefully and eating all of it down to the
+tail.
+
+It has more nourishment than almost any fish, he thought.  At least the
+kind of strength that I need.  Now I have done what I can, he thought.
+Let him begin to circle and let the fight come.
+
+The sun was rising for the third time since he had put to sea when the
+fish started to circle.
+
+He could not see by the slant of the line that the fish was circling.
+It was too early for that.  He just felt a faint slackening of the
+pressure of the line and he commenced to pull on it gently with his
+right hand.  It tightened, as always, but just when he reached the
+point where it would break, line began to come in.  He slipped his
+shoulders and head from under the line and began to pull in line
+steadily and gently.  He used both of his hands in a swinging motion
+and tried to do the pulling as much as he could with his body and his
+legs.  His old legs and shoulders pivoted with the swinging of the
+pulling.
+
+"It is a very big circle," he said.  "But he is circling."
+
+Then the line would not come in any more and he held it until he saw
+the drops jumping from it in the sun.  Then it started out and the old
+man knelt down and let it go grudgingly back into the dark water.
+
+"He is making the far part of his circle now," he said.  I must hold
+all I can, he thought.  The strain will shorten his circle each time.
+Perhaps in an hour I will see him.  Now I must convince him and then I
+must kill him.
+
+But the fish kept on circling slowly and the old man was wet with sweat
+and tired deep into his bones two hours later.  But the circles were
+much shorter now and from the way the line slanted he could tell the
+fish had risen steadily while he swam.
+
+For an hour the old man had been seeing black spots before his eyes and
+the sweat salted his eyes and salted the cut over his eye and on his
+forehead.  He was not afraid of the black spots.  They were normal at
+the tension that he was pulling on the line.  Twice, though, he had
+felt faint and dizzy and that had worried him.
+
+"I could not fail myself and die on a fish like this," he said.  "Now
+that I have him coming so beautifully, God help me endure.  I'll say a
+hundred Our Fathers and a hundred Hail Marys.  But I cannot say them
+now."
+
+Consider them said, he thought.  I'll say them later.
+
+Just then he felt a sudden banging and jerking on the line he held with
+his two hands.  It was sharp and hard-feeling and heavy.
+
+He is hitting the wire leader with his spear, he thought.  That was
+bound to come.  He had to do that.  It may make him jump though and I
+would rather he stayed circling now.  The jumps were necessary for him
+to take air.  But after that each one can widen the opening of the hook
+wound and he can throw the hook.
+
+"Don't jump, fish," he said.  "Don't jump."
+
+The fish hit the wire several times more and each time he shook his
+head the old man gave up a little line.
+
+I must hold his pain where it is, he thought.  Mine does not matter.  I
+can control mine.  But his pain could drive him mad.
+
+After a while the fish stopped beating at the wire and started circling
+slowly again.  The old man was gaining line steadily now.  But he felt
+faint again.  He lifted some sea water with his left hand and put it on
+his head.  Then he put more on and rubbed the back of his neck.
+
+"I have no cramps," he said.  "He'll be up soon and I can last.  You
+have to last.  Don't even speak of it."
+
+He kneeled against the bow and, for a moment, slipped the line over his
+back again.  I'll rest now while he goes out on the circle and then
+stand up and work on him when he comes in, he decided.
+
+It was a great temptation to rest in the bow and let the fish make one
+circle by himself without recovering any line.  But when the strain
+showed the fish had turned to come toward the boat, the old man rose to
+his feet and started the pivoting and the weaving pulling that brought
+in all the line he gained.
+
+I'm tireder than I have ever been, he thought, and now the trade wind
+is rising.  But that will be good to take him in with.  I need that
+badly.
+
+"I'll rest on the next turn as he goes out," he said.  "I feel much
+better.  Then in two or three turns more I will have him."
+
+His straw hat was far on the back of his head and he sank down into the
+bow with the pull of the line as he felt the fish turn.
+
+You work now, fish, he thought.  I'll take you at the turn.
+
+The sea had risen considerably.  But it was a fair-weather breeze and
+he had to have it to get home.
+
+"I'll just steer south and west," he said.  "A man is never lost at sea
+and it is a long island."
+
+It was on the third turn that he saw the fish first.
+
+He saw him first as a dark shadow that took so long to pass under the
+boat that he could not believe its length.
+
+"No," he said.  "He can't be that big."
+
+But he was that big and at the end of this circle he came to the
+surface only thirty yards away and the man saw his tail out of water.
+It was higher than a big scythe blade and a very pale lavender above
+the dark blue water.  It raked back and as the fish swam just below the
+surface the old man could see his huge bulk and the purple stripes that
+banded him.  His dorsal fin was down and his huge pectorals were spread
+wide.
+
+On this circle the old man could see the fish's eye and the two gray
+sucking fish that swam around him.  Sometimes they attached themselves
+to him.  Sometimes they darted off.  Sometimes they would swim easily
+in his shadow.  They were each over three feet long and when they swam
+fast they lashed their whole bodies like eels.
+
+The old man was sweating now but from something else besides the sun.
+On each calm placid turn the fish made he was gaining line and he was
+sure that in two turns more he would have a chance to get the harpoon
+in.
+
+But I must get him close, close, close, he thought.  I mustn't try for
+the head.  I must get the heart.
+
+"Be calm and strong, old man," he said.
+
+On the next circle the fish's back was out but he was a little too far
+from the boat.  On the next circle he was still too far away but he was
+higher out of water and the old man was sure that by gaining some more
+line he could have him alongside.
+
+He had rigged his harpoon long before and its coil of light rope was in
+a round basket and the end was made fast to the bitt in the bow.
+
+The fish was coming in on his circle now calm and beautiful looking and
+only his great tail moving.  The old man pulled on him all that he
+could to bring him closer.  For just a moment the fish turned a little
+on his side.  Then he straightened himself and began another circle.
+
+"I moved him," the old man said.  "I moved him then."
+
+He felt faint again now but he held on the great fish all the strain
+that he could.  I moved him, he thought.  Maybe this time I can get him
+over.  Pull, hands, he thought.  Hold up, legs.  Last for me, head.
+Last for me.  You never went.  This time I'll pull him over.
+
+But when he put all of his effort on, starting it well out before the
+fish came alongside and pulling with all his strength, the fish pulled
+part way over and then righted himself and swam away.
+
+"Fish," the old man said.  "Fish, you are going to have to die anyway.
+Do you have to kill me too?"
+
+That way nothing is accomplished, he thought.  His mouth was too dry to
+speak but he could not reach for the water now.  I must get him
+alongside this time, he thought.  I am not good for many more turns.
+Yes you are, he told himself.  You're good for ever.
+
+On the next turn, he nearly had him.  But again the fish righted
+himself and swam slowly away.
+
+You are killing me, fish, the old man thought.  But you have a right
+to.  Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or
+more noble thing than you, brother.  Come on and kill me.  I do not
+care who kills who.
+
+Now you are getting confused in the head, he thought.  You must keep
+your head clear.  Keep your head clear and know how to suffer like a
+man.  Or a fish, he thought.
+
+"Clear up, head," he said in a voice he could hardly hear.  "Clear up."
+
+Twice more it was the same on the turns.
+
+I do not know, the old man thought.  He had been on the point of
+feeling himself go each time.  I do not know.  But I will try it once
+more.
+
+He tried it once more and he felt himself going when he turned the
+fish.  The fish righted himself and swam off again slowly with the
+great tail weaving in the air.
+
+I'll try it again, the old man promised, although his hands were mushy
+now and he could only see well in flashes.
+
+He tried it again and it was the same.  So, he thought, and he felt
+himself going before he started; I will try it once again.
+
+He took all his pain and what was left of his strength and his long
+gone pride and he put it against the fish's agony and the fish came
+over onto his side and swam gently on his side, his bill almost
+touching the planking of the skiff and started to pass the boat, long,
+deep, wide, silver and barred with purple and interminable in the water.
+
+The old man dropped the line and put his foot on it and lifted the
+harpoon as high as he could and drove it down with all his strength,
+and more strength he had just summoned, into the fish's side just
+behind the great chest fin that rose high in the air to the altitude of
+the man's chest.  He felt the iron go in and he leaned on it and drove
+it further and then pushed all his weight after it.
+
+Then the fish came alive, with his death in him, and rose high out of
+the water showing all his great length and width and all his power and
+his beauty.  He seemed to hang in the air above the old man in the
+skiff.  Then he fell into the water with a crash that sent spray over
+the old man and over all of the skiff.
+
+The old man felt faint and sick and he could not see well.  But he
+cleared the harpoon line and let it run slowly through his raw hands
+and, when he could see, he saw the fish was on his back with his silver
+belly up.  The shaft of the harpoon was projecting at an angle from the
+fish's shoulder and the sea was discolouring with the red of the blood
+from his heart.  First it was dark as a shoal in the blue water that
+was more than a mile deep.  Then it spread like a cloud.  The fish was
+silvery and still and floated with the waves.
+
+The old man looked carefully in the glimpse of vision that he had.
+Then he took two turns of the harpoon line around the bitt in the bow
+and laid his head on his hands.
+
+"Keep my head clear," he said against the wood of the bow.  "I am a
+tired old man.  But I have killed this fish which is my brother and now
+I must do the slave work."
+
+Now I must prepare the nooses and the rope to lash him alongside, he
+thought.  Even if we were two and swamped her to load him and bailed
+her out, this skiff would never hold him.  I must prepare everything,
+then bring him in and lash him well and step the mast and set sail for
+home.
+
+He started to pull the fish in to have him alongside so that he could
+pass a line through his gills and out his mouth and make his head fast
+alongside the bow.  I want to see him, he thought, and to touch and to
+feel him.  He is my fortune, he thought.  But that is not why I wish to
+feel him.  I think I felt his heart, he thought.  When I pushed on the
+harpoon shaft the second time.  Bring him in now and make him fast and
+get the noose around his tail and another around his middle to bind him
+to the skiff.
+
+"Get to work, old man," he said.  He took a very small drink of the
+water.  "There is very much slave work to be done now that the fight is
+over."
+
+He looked up at the sky and then out to his fish.  He looked at the sun
+carefully.  It is not much more than noon, he thought.  And the trade
+wind is rising.  The lines all mean nothing now.  The boy and I will
+splice them when we are home.
+
+"Come on, fish," he said.  But the fish did not come.  Instead he lay
+there wallowing now in the seas and the old man pulled the skiff up
+onto him.
+
+When he was even with him and had the fish's head against the bow he
+could not believe his size.  But he untied the harpoon rope from the
+bitt, passed it through the fish's gills and out his jaws, made a turn
+around his sword then passed the rope through the other gill, made
+another turn around the bill and knotted the double rope and made it
+fast to the bitt in the bow.  He cut the rope then and went astern to
+noose the tail.  The fish had turned silver from his original purple
+and silver, and the stripes showed the same pale violet colour as his
+tail.  They were wider than a man's hand with his fingers spread and
+the fish's eye looked as detached as the mirrors in a periscope or as a
+saint in a procession.
+
+"It was the only way to kill him," the old man said.  He was feeling
+better since the water and he knew he would not go away and his head
+was clear.  He's over fifteen hundred pounds the way he is, he thought.
+Maybe much more.  If he dresses out two-thirds of that at thirty cents
+a pound?
+
+"I need a pencil for that," he said.  "My head is not that clear.  But
+I think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today.  I had no bone
+spurs.  But the hands and the back hurt truly."  I wonder what a bone
+spur is, he thought.  Maybe we have them without knowing of it.
+
+He made the fish fast to bow and stern and to the middle thwart.  He
+was so big it was like lashing a much bigger skiff alongside.  He cut a
+piece of line and tied the fish's lower jaw against his bill so his
+mouth would not open and they would sail as cleanly as possible.  Then
+he stepped the mast and, with the stick that was his gaff and with his
+boom rigged, the patched sail drew, the boat began to move, and half
+lying in the stern he sailed south-west.
+
+He did not need a compass to tell him where south-west was.  He only
+needed the feel of the trade wind and the drawing of the sail.  I
+better put a small line out with a spoon on it and try and get
+something to eat and drink for the moisture.  But he could not find a
+spoon and his sardines were rotten.  So he hooked a patch of yellow
+gulf weed with the gaff as they passed and shook it so that the small
+shrimps that were in it fell onto the planking of the skiff.  There
+were more than a dozen of them and they jumped and kicked like sand
+fleas.  The old man pinched their heads off with his thumb and
+forefinger and ate them chewing up the shells and the tails.  They were
+very tiny but he knew they were nourishing and they tasted good.
+
+The old man still had two drinks of water in the bottle and he used
+half of one after he had eaten the shrimps.  The skiff was sailing well
+considering the handicaps and he steered with the tiller under his arm.
+He could see the fish and he had only to look at his hands and feel his
+back against the stern to know that this had truly happened and was not
+a dream.  At one time when he was feeling so badly toward the end, he
+had thought perhaps it was a dream.  Then when he had seen the fish
+come out of the water and hang motionless in the sky before he fell, he
+was sure there was some great strangeness and he could not believe it.
+Then he could not see well, although now he saw as well as ever.
+
+Now he knew there was the fish and his hands and back were no dream.
+The hands cure quickly, he thought.  I bled them clean and the salt
+water will heal them.  The dark water of the true gulf is the greatest
+healer that there is.  All I must do is keep the head clear.  The hands
+have done their work and we sail well.  With his mouth shut and his
+tail straight up and down we sail like brothers.  Then his head started
+to become a little unclear and he thought, is he bringing me in or am I
+bringing him in?  If I were towing him behind there would be no
+question.  Nor if the fish were in the skiff, with all dignity gone,
+there would be no question either.  But they were sailing together
+lashed side by side and the old man thought, let him bring me in if it
+pleases him.  I am only better than him through trickery and he meant
+me no harm.
+
+They sailed well and the old man soaked his hands in the salt water and
+tried to keep his head clear.  There were high cumulus clouds and
+enough cirrus above them so that the old man knew the breeze would last
+all night.  The old man looked at the fish constantly to make sure it
+was true.  It was an hour before the first shark hit him.
+
+The shark was not an accident.  He had come up from deep down in the
+water as the dark cloud of blood had settled and dispersed in the mile
+deep sea.  He had come up so fast and absolutely without caution that
+he broke the surface of the blue water and was in the sun.  Then he
+fell back into the sea and picked up the scent and started swimming on
+the course the skiff and the fish had taken.
+
+Sometimes he lost the scent.  But he would pick it up again, or have
+just a trace of it, and he swam fast and hard on the course.  He was a
+very big Mako shark built to swim as fast as the fastest fish in the
+sea and everything about him was beautiful except his jaws.
+
+His back was as blue as a sword fish's and his belly was silver and his
+hide was smooth and handsome.  He was built as a sword fish except for
+his huge jaws which were tight shut now as he swam fast, just under the
+surface with his high dorsal fin knifing through the water without
+wavering.  Inside the closed double lip of his jaws all of his eight
+rows of teeth were slanted inwards.  They were not the ordinary
+pyramid-shaped teeth of most sharks.  They were shaped like a man's
+fingers when they are crisped like claws.  They were nearly as long as
+the fingers of the old man and they had razor-sharp cutting edges on
+both sides.  This was a fish built to feed on all the fishes in the
+sea, that were so fast and strong and well armed that they had no other
+enemy.  Now he speeded up as he smelled the fresher scent and his blue
+dorsal fin cut the water.
+
+When the old man saw him coming he knew that this was a shark that had
+no fear at all and would do exactly what he wished.  He prepared the
+harpoon and made the rope fast while he watched the shark come on.  The
+rope was short as it lacked what he had cut away to lash the fish.
+
+The old man's head was clear and good now and he was full of resolution
+but he had little hope.  It was too good to last, he thought.  He took
+one look at the great fish as he watched the shark close in.  It might
+as well have been a dream, he thought.  I cannot keep him from hitting
+me but maybe I can get him.  Dentuso, he thought.  Bad luck to your
+mother.
+
+The shark closed fast astern and when he hit the fish the old man saw
+his mouth open and his strange eyes and the clicking chop of the teeth
+as he drove forward in the meat just above the tail.  The shark's head
+was out of water and his back was coming out and the old man could hear
+the noise of skin and flesh ripping on the big fish when he rammed the
+harpoon down onto the shark's head at a spot where the line between his
+eyes intersected with the line that ran straight back from his nose.
+There were no such lines.  There was only the heavy sharp blue head and
+the big eyes and the clicking, thrusting all-swallowing jaws.  But that
+was the location of the brain and the old man hit it.  He hit it with
+his blood mushed hands driving a good harpoon with all his strength.
+He hit it without hope but with resolution and complete malignancy.
+
+The shark swung over and the old man saw his eye was not alive and then
+he swung over once again, wrapping himself in two loops of the rope.
+The old man knew that he was dead but the shark would not accept it.
+Then, on his back, with his tail lashing and his jaws clicking, the
+shark plowed over the water as a speed-boat does.  The water was white
+where his tail beat it and three-quarters of his body was clear above
+the water when the rope came taut, shivered, and then snapped.  The
+shark lay quietly for a little while on the surface and the old man
+watched him.  Then he went down very slowly.
+
+"He took about forty pounds," the old man said aloud.  He took my
+harpoon too and all the rope, he thought, and now my fish bleeds again
+and there will be others.
+
+He did not like to look at the fish anymore since he had been
+mutilated.  When the fish had been hit it was as though he himself were
+hit.
+
+But I killed the shark that hit my fish, he thought.  And he was the
+biggest dentuso that I have ever seen.  And God knows that I have
+seen big ones.
+
+It was too good to last, he thought.  I wish it had been a dream now
+and that I had never hooked the fish and was alone in bed on the
+newspapers.
+
+"But man is not made for defeat," he said.  "A man can be destroyed but
+not defeated."  I am sorry that I killed the fish though, he thought.
+Now the bad time is coming and I do not even have the harpoon.  The
+dentuso is cruel and able and strong and intelligent.  But I was more
+intelligent that he was.  Perhaps not, he thought.  Perhaps I was only
+better armed.
+
+"Don't think, old man," he said aloud.  "Sail on this course and take
+it when it comes."
+
+But I must think, he thought.  Because it is all I have left.  That and
+baseball.  I wonder how the great DiMaggio would have liked the way I
+hit him in the brain?  It was no great thing, he thought.  Any man
+could do it.  But do you think my hands were as great a handicap as the
+bone spurs?  I cannot know.  I never had anything wrong with my heel
+except the time the sting ray stung it when I stepped on him when
+swimming and paralyzed the lower leg and made the unbearable pain.
+
+"Think about something cheerful, old man," he said.  "Every minute now
+you are closer to home.  You sail lighter for the loss of forty pounds."
+
+He knew quite well the pattern of what could happen when he reached the
+inner part of the current.  But there was nothing to be done now.
+
+"Yes there is," he said aloud.  "I can lash my knife to the butt of one
+of the oars."
+
+So he did that with the tiller under his arm and the sheet of the sail
+under his foot.
+
+"Now," he said.  "I am still an old man.  But I am not unarmed."
+
+The breeze was fresh now and he sailed on well.  He watched only the
+forward part of the fish and some of his hope returned.
+
+It is silly not to hope, he thought.  Besides I believe it is a sin.
+Do not think about sin, he thought.  There are enough problems now
+without sin.  Also I have no understanding of it.
+
+I have no understanding of it and I am not sure that I believe in it.
+Perhaps it was a sin to kill the fish.  I suppose it was even though I
+did it to keep me alive and feed many people.  But then everything is a
+sin.  Do not think about sin.  It is much too late for that and there
+are people who are paid to do it.  Let them think about it.  You were
+born to be a fisherman as the fish was born to be a fish.  San Pedro
+was a fisherman as was the father of the great DiMaggio.
+
+But he liked to think about all things that he was involved in and
+since there was nothing to read and he did not have a radio, he thought
+much and he kept on thinking about sin.  You did not kill the fish only
+to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought.  You killed him for
+pride and because you are a fisherman.  You loved him when he was alive
+and you loved him after.  It you love him, it is not a sin to kill him.
+Or is it more?
+
+"You think too much, old man," he said aloud.
+
+But you enjoyed killing the dentuso, he thought.  He lives on the
+live fish as you do.  He is not a scavenger nor just a moving appetite
+as some sharks are.  He is beautiful and noble and knows no fear of
+anything.
+
+"I killed him in self-defense," the old man said aloud.  "And I killed
+him well."
+
+Besides, he thought, everything kills everything else in some way.
+Fishing kills me exactly as it keeps me alive.  The boy keeps me alive,
+he thought.  I must not deceive myself too much.
+
+He leaned over the side and pulled loose a piece of the meat of the
+fish where the shark had cut him.  He chewed it and noted its quality
+and its good taste.  It was firm and juicy, like meat, but it was not
+red.  There was no stringiness in it and he knew that it would bring
+the highest price in the market.  But there was no way to keep its
+scent out of the water and the old man knew that a very bad time was
+coming.
+
+The breeze was steady.  It had backed a little further into the
+north-east and he knew that meant that it would not fall off.  The old
+man looked ahead of him but he could see no sails nor could he see the
+hull nor the smoke of any ship.  There were only the flying fish that
+went up from his bow sailing away to either side and the yellow patches
+of gulf-weed.  He could not even see a bird.
+
+He had sailed for two hours, resting in the stern and sometimes chewing
+a bit of the meat from the marlin, trying to rest and to be strong,
+when he saw the first of the two sharks.
+
+"Ay," he said aloud.  There is no translation for this word and
+perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily,
+feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.
+
+"Galanos," he said aloud.  He had seen the second fin now coming up
+behind the first and had identified them as shovel-nosed sharks by the
+brown, triangular fin and the sweeping movements of the tail.  They had
+the scent and were excited and in the stupidity of their great hunger
+they were losing and finding the scent in their excitement.  But they
+were closing all the time.
+
+The old man made the sheet fast and jammed the tiller.  Then he took up
+the oar with the knife lashed to it.  He lifted it as lightly as he
+could because his hands rebelled at the pain.  Then he opened and
+closed them on it lightly to loosen them.  He closed them firmly so
+they would take the pain now and would not flinch and watched the
+sharks come.  He could see their wide, flattened, shovel-pointed heads
+now and their white-tipped wide pectoral fins.  They were hateful
+sharks, bad smelling, scavengers as well as killers, and when they were
+hungry they would bite at an oar or the rudder of a boat.  It was these
+sharks that would cut the turtles' legs and flippers off when the
+turtles were asleep on the surface, and they would hit a man in the
+water, if they were hungry, even if the man had no smell of fish blood
+nor of fish slime on him.
+
+"Ay," the old man said.  "Galanos.  Come on, Galanos."
+
+They came.  But they did not come as the Mako had come.  One turned and
+went out of sight under the skiff and the old man could feel the skiff
+shake as he jerked and pulled on the fish.  The other watched the old
+man with his slitted yellow eyes and then came in fast with his half
+circle of jaws wide to hit the fish where he had already been bitten.
+The line showed clearly on the top of his brown head and back where the
+brain joined the spinal cord and the old man drove the knife on the oar
+into the juncture, withdrew it, and drove it in again into the shark's
+yellow cat-like eyes.  The shark let go of the fish and slid down,
+swallowing what he had taken as he died.
+
+The skiff was still shaking with the destruction the other shark was
+doing to the fish and the old man let go the sheet so that the skiff
+would swing broadside and bring the shark out from under.  When he saw
+the shark he leaned over the side and punched at him.  He hit only meat
+and the hide was set hard and he barely got the knife in.  The blow
+hurt not only his hands but his shoulder too.  But the shark came up
+fast with his head out and the old man hit him squarely in the center
+of his flat-topped head as his nose came out of water and lay against
+the fish.  The old man withdrew the blade and punched the shark exactly
+in the same spot again.  He still hung to the fish with his jaws hooked
+and the old man stabbed him in his left eye.  The shark still hung
+there.
+
+"No?" the old man said and he drove the blade between the vertebrae and
+the brain.  It was an easy shot now and he felt the cartilage sever.
+The old man reversed the oar and put the blade between the shark's jaws
+to open them.  He twisted the blade and as the shark slid loose he
+said, "Go on, galano.  Slide down a mile deep.  Go see your friend,
+or maybe it's your mother."
+
+The old man wiped the blade of his knife and laid down the oar.  Then
+he found the sheet and the sail filled and he brought the skiff onto
+her course.
+
+"They must have taken a quarter of him and of the best meat," he said
+aloud.  "I wish it were a dream and that I had never hooked him.  I'm
+sorry about it, fish.  It makes everything wrong."  He stopped and he
+did not want to look at the fish now.  Drained of blood and awash he
+looked the colour of the silver backing of a mirror and his stripes
+still showed.
+
+"I shouldn't have gone out so far, fish," he said.  "Neither for you
+nor for me.  I'm sorry, fish."
+
+Now, he said to himself.  Look to the lashing on the knife and see if
+it has been cut.  Then get your hand in order because there still is
+more to come.
+
+"I wish I had a stone for the knife," the old man said after he had
+checked the lashing on the oar butt.  "I should have brought a stone."
+You should have brought many things, he thought.  But you did not bring
+them, old man.  Now is no time to think of what you do not have.  Think
+of what you can do with what there is.
+
+"You give me much good counsel," he said aloud.  "I'm tired of it."
+
+He held the tiller under his arm and soaked both his hands in the water
+as the skiff drove forward.
+
+"God knows how much that last one took," he said.  "But she's much
+lighter now."  He did not want to think of the mutilated under-side of
+the fish.  He knew that each of the jerking bumps of the shark had been
+meat torn away and that the fish now made a trail for all sharks as
+wide as a highway through the sea.
+
+He was a fish to keep a man all winter, he thought.  Don't think of
+that.  Just rest and try to get your hands in shape to defend what is
+left of him.  The blood smell from my hands means nothing now with all
+that scent in the water.  Besides they do not bleed much.  There is
+nothing cut that means anything.  The bleeding may keep the left from
+cramping.
+
+What can I think of now? he thought.  Nothing.  I must think of nothing
+and wait for the next ones.  I wish it had really been a dream, he
+thought.  But who knows?  It might have turned out well.
+
+The next shark that came was a single shovel-nose.  He came like a pig
+to the trough if a pig had a mouth so wide that you could put your head
+in it.  The old man let him hit the fish and then drove the knife on
+the oar down into his brain.  But the shark jerked backwards as he
+rolled and the knife blade snapped.
+
+The old man settled himself to steer.  He did not even watch the big
+shark sinking slowly in the water, showing first life-size, then small,
+then tiny.  That always fascinated the old man.  But he did not even
+watch it now.
+
+"I have the gaff now," he said.  "But it will do no good.  I have the
+two oars and the tiller and the short club."
+
+Now they have beaten me, he thought.  I am too old to club sharks to
+death.  But I will try it as long as I have the oars and the short club
+and the tiller.
+
+He put his hands in the water again to soak them.  It was getting late
+in the afternoon and he saw nothing but the sea and the sky.  There was
+more wind in the sky than there had been, and soon he hoped that he
+would see land.
+
+"You're tired, old man," he said.  "You're tired inside."
+
+The sharks did not hit him again until just before sunset.
+
+The old man saw the brown fins coming along the wide trail the fish
+must make in the water.  They were not even quartering on the scent.
+They were headed straight for the skiff swimming side by side.
+
+He jammed the tiller, made the sheet fast and reached under the stern
+for the club.  It was an oar handle from a broken oar sawed off to
+about two and a half feet in length.  He could only use it effectively
+with one hand because of the grip of the handle and he took good hold
+of it with his right hand, flexing his hand on it, as he watched the
+sharks come.  They were both galanos.
+
+I must let the first one get a good hold and hit him on the point of
+the nose or straight across the top of the head, he thought.
+
+The two sharks closed together and as he saw the one nearest him open
+his jaws and sink them into the silver side of the fish, he raised the
+club high and brought it down heavy and slamming onto the top of the
+shark's broad head.  He felt the rubbery solidity as the club came
+down.  But he felt the rigidity of bone too and he struck the shark
+once more hard across the point of the nose as he slid down from the
+fish.
+
+The other shark had been in and out and now came in again with his jaws
+wide.  The old man could see pieces of the meat of the fish spilling
+white from the corner of his jaws as he bumped the fish and closed his
+jaws.  He swung at him and hit only the head and the shark looked at
+him and wrenched the meat loose.  The old man swung the club down on
+him again as he slipped away to swallow and hit only the heavy solid
+rubberiness.
+
+"Come on, galano," the old man said.  "Come in again."
+
+The shark came in a rush and the old man hit him as he shut his jaws.
+He hit him solidly and from as high up as he could raise the club.
+This time he felt the bone at the base of the brain and he hit him
+again in the same place while the shark tore the meat loose sluggishly
+and slid down from the fish.
+
+The old man watched for him to come again but neither shark showed.
+Then he saw one on the surface swimming in circles.  He did not see the
+fin of the other.
+
+I could not expect to kill them, he thought.  I could have in my time.
+But I have hurt them both badly and neither one can feel very good.  If
+I could have used a bat with two hands I could have killed the first
+one surely.  Even now, he thought.
+
+He did not want to look at the fish.  He knew that half of him had been
+destroyed.  The sun had gone down while he had been in the fight with
+the sharks.
+
+"It will be dark soon," he said.  "Then I should see the glow of
+Havana.  If I am too far to the eastward I will see the lights of one
+of the new beaches."
+
+I cannot be too far out now, he thought.  I hope no one has been too
+worried.  There is only the boy to worry, of course.  But I am sure he
+would have confidence.  Many of the older fishermen will worry.  Many
+others too, he thought.  I live in a good town.
+
+He could not talk to the fish anymore because the fish had been ruined
+too badly.  Then something came into his head.
+
+"Half fish," he said.  "Fish that you were.  I am sorry that I went too
+far out.  I ruined us both.  But we have killed many sharks, you and I,
+and ruined many others.  How many did you ever kill, old fish?  You do
+not have that spear on your head for nothing."
+
+He liked to think of the fish and what he could do to a shark if he
+were swimming free.  I should have chopped the bill off to fight them
+with, he thought.  But there was no hatchet and then there was no knife.
+
+But if I had, and could have lashed it to an oar butt, what a weapon.
+Then we might have fought them together.  What will you do now if they
+come in the night?  What can you do?
+
+"Fight them," he said.  "I'll fight them until I die."
+
+But in the dark now and no glow showing and no lights and only the wind
+and the steady pull of the sail he felt that perhaps he was already
+dead.  He put his two hands together and felt the palms.  They were not
+dead and he could bring the pain of life by simply opening and closing
+them.  He leaned his back against the stern and knew he was not dead.
+His shoulders told him.
+
+I have all those prayers I promised if I caught the fish, he thought.
+But I am too tired to say them now.  I better get the sack and put it
+over my shoulders.
+
+He lay in the stern and steered and watched for the glow to come in the
+sky.  I have half of him, he thought.  Maybe I'll have the luck to
+bring the forward half in.  I should have some luck.  No, he said.  You
+violated your luck when you went too far outside.
+
+"Don't be silly," he said aloud.  "And keep awake and steer.  You may
+have much luck yet."
+
+"I'd like to buy some if there's any place they sell it," he said.
+
+What could I buy it with? he asked himself.  Could I buy it with a lost
+harpoon and a broken knife and two bad hands?
+
+"You might," he said.  "You tried to buy it with eighty-four days at
+sea.  They nearly sold it to you too."
+
+I must not think nonsense, he thought.  Luck is a thing that comes in
+many forms and who can recognize her?  I would take some though in any
+form and pay what they asked.  I wish I could see the glow from the
+lights, he thought.  I wish too many things.  But that is the thing I
+wish for now.  He tried to settle more comfortably to steer and from
+his pain he knew he was not dead.
+
+He saw the reflected glare of the lights of the city at what must have
+been around ten o'clock at night.  They were only perceptible at first
+as the light is in the sky before the moon rises.  Then they were
+steady to see across the ocean which was rough now with the increasing
+breeze.  He steered inside of the glow and he thought that now, soon,
+he must hit the edge of the stream.
+
+Now it is over, he thought.  They will probably hit me again.  But what
+can a man do against them in the dark without a weapon?
+
+He was stiff and sore now and his wounds and all of the strained parts
+of his body hurt with the cold of the night.  I hope I do not have to
+fight again, he thought.  I hope so much I do not have to fight again.
+
+But by midnight he fought and this time he knew the fight was useless.
+They came in a pack and he could only see the lines in the water that
+their fins made and their phosphorescence as they threw themselves on
+the fish.  He clubbed at heads and heard the jaws chop and the shaking
+of the skiff as they took hold below.  He clubbed desperately at what
+he could only feel and hear and he felt something seize the club and it
+was gone.
+
+He jerked the tiller free from the rudder and beat and chopped with it,
+holding it in both hands and driving it down again and again.  But they
+were up to the bow now and driving in one after the other and together,
+tearing off the pieces of meat that showed glowing below the sea as
+they turned to come once more.
+
+One came, finally, against the head itself and he knew that it was
+over.  He swung the tiller across the shark's head where the jaws were
+caught in the heaviness of the fish's head which would not tear.  He
+swung it once and twice and again.  He heard the tiller break and he
+lunged at the shark with the splintered butt.  He felt it go in and
+knowing it was sharp he drove it in again.  The shark let go and rolled
+away.  That was the last shark of the pack that came.  There was
+nothing more for them to eat.
+
+The old man could hardly breathe now and he felt a strange taste in his
+mouth.  It was coppery and sweet and he was afraid of it for a moment.
+But there was not much of it.
+
+He spat into the ocean and said, "Eat that, Galanos.  And make a
+dream you've killed a man."
+
+He knew he was beaten now finally and without remedy and he went back
+to the stern and found the jagged end of the tiller would fit in the
+slot of the rudder well enough for him to steer.  He settled the sack
+around his shoulders and put the skiff on her course.  He sailed
+lightly now and he had no thoughts nor any feelings of any kind.  He
+was past everything now and he sailed the skiff to make his home port
+as well and as intelligently as he could.  In the night sharks hit the
+carcass as someone might pick up crumbs from the table.  The old man
+paid no attention to them and did not pay any attention to anything
+except steering.  He only noticed how lightly and how well the skiff
+sailed now there was no great weight beside her.
+
+She's good, he thought.  She is sound and not harmed in any way except
+for the tiller.  That is easily replaced.
+
+He could feel he was inside the current now and he could see the lights
+of the beach colonies along the shore.  He knew where he was now and it
+was nothing to get home.
+
+The wind is our friend, anyway, he thought.  Then he added, sometimes.
+And the great sea with our friends and our enemies.  And bed, he
+thought.  Bed is my friend.  Just bed, he thought.  Bed will be a great
+thing.  It is easy when you are beaten, he thought.  I never knew how
+easy it was.  And what beat you, he thought.
+
+"Nothing," he said aloud.  "I went out too far."
+
+When he sailed into the little harbour the lights of the Terrace were
+out and he knew everyone was in bed.  The breeze had risen steadily and
+was blowing strongly now.  It was quiet in the harbour though and he
+sailed up onto the little patch of shingle below the rocks.  There was
+no one to help him so he pulled the boat up as far as he could.  Then
+he stepped out and made her fast to a rock.
+
+He unstepped the mast and furled the sail and tied it.  Then he
+shouldered the mast and started to climb.  It was then he knew the
+depth of his tiredness.  He stopped for a moment and looked back and
+saw in the reflection from the street light the great tail of the fish
+standing up well behind the skiff's stern.  He saw the white naked line
+of his backbone and the dark mass of the head with the projecting bill
+and all the nakedness between.
+
+He started to climb again and at the top he fell and lay for some time
+with the mast across his shoulder.  He tried to get up.  But it was too
+difficult and he sat there with the mast on his shoulder and looked at
+the road.  A cat passed on the far side going about its business and
+the old man watched it.  Then he just watched the road.
+
+Finally he put the mast down and stood up.  He picked the mast up and
+put it on his shoulder and started up the road.  He had to sit down
+five times before he reached his shack.
+
+Inside the shack he leaned the mast against the wall.  In the dark he
+found a water bottle and took a drink.  Then he lay down on the bed.
+He pulled the blanket over his shoulders and then over his back and
+legs and he slept face down on the newspapers with his arms out
+straight and the palms of his hands up.
+
+He was asleep when the boy looked in the door in the morning.  It was
+blowing so hard that the drifting-boats would not be going out and the
+boy had slept late and then come to the old man's shack as he had come
+each morning.  The boy saw that the old man was breathing and then he
+saw the old man's hands and he started to cry.  He went out very
+quietly to go to bring some coffee and all the way down the road he was
+crying.
+
+Many fishermen were around the skiff looking at what was lashed beside
+it and one was in the water, his trousers rolled up, measuring the
+skeleton with a length of line.
+
+The boy did not go down.  He had been there before and one of the
+fishermen was looking after the skiff for him.
+
+"How is he?" one of the fishermen shouted.
+
+"Sleeping," the boy called.  He did not care that they saw him crying.
+"Let no one disturb him."
+
+"He was eighteen feet from nose to tail," the fisherman who was
+measuring him called.
+
+"I believe it," the boy said.
+
+He went into the Terrace and asked for a can of coffee.
+
+"Hot and with plenty of milk and sugar in it."
+
+"Anything more?"
+
+"No.  Afterwards I will see what he can eat."
+
+"What a fish it was," the proprietor said.  "There has never been such
+a fish.  Those were two fine fish you took yesterday too."
+
+"Damn my fish," the boy said and he started to cry again.
+
+"Do you want a drink of any kind?" the proprietor asked.
+
+"No," the boy said.  "Tell them not to bother Santiago.  I'll be back."
+
+"Tell him how sorry I am."
+
+"Thanks," the boy said.
+
+The boy carried the hot can of coffee up to the old man's shack and sat
+by him until he woke.  Once it looked as though he were waking.  But he
+had gone back into heavy sleep and the boy had gone across the road to
+borrow some wood to heat the coffee.
+
+Finally the old man woke.
+
+"Don't sit up," the boy said.  "Drink this."  He poured some of the
+coffee in a glass.
+
+The old man took it and drank it.
+
+"They beat me, Manolin," he said.  "They truly beat me."
+
+"He didn't beat you.  Not the fish."
+
+"No.  Truly.  It was afterwards."
+
+"Pedrico is looking after the skiff and the gear.  What do you want
+done with the head?"
+
+"Let Pedrico chop it up to use in fish traps."
+
+"And the spear?"
+
+"You keep it if you want it."
+
+"I want it," the boy said.  "Now we must make our plans about the other
+things."
+
+"Did they search for me?"
+
+"Of course.  With coast guard and with planes."
+
+"The ocean is very big and a skiff is small and hard to see," the old
+man said.  He noticed how pleasant it was to have someone to talk to
+instead of speaking only to himself and to the sea.  "I missed you," he
+said.  "What did you catch?"
+
+"One the first day.  One the second and two the third."
+
+"Very good."
+
+"Now we fish together again."
+
+"No.  I am not lucky.  I am not lucky anymore."
+
+"The hell with luck," the boy said.  "I'll bring the luck with me."
+
+"What will your family say?"
+
+"I do not care.  I caught two yesterday.  But we will fish together now
+for I still have much to learn."
+
+"We must get a good killing lance and always have it on board.  You can
+make the blade from a spring leaf from an old Ford.  We can grind it in
+Guanabacoa.  It should be sharp and not tempered so it will break.  My
+knife broke."
+
+"I'll get another knife and have the spring ground.  How many days of
+heavy brisa have we?"
+
+"Maybe three.  Maybe more."
+
+"I will have everything in order," the boy said.  "You get your hands
+well old man."
+
+"I know how to care for them.  In the night I spat something strange
+and felt something in my chest was broken."
+
+"Get that well too," the boy said.  "Lie down, old man, and I will
+bring you your clean shirt.  And something to eat."
+
+"Bring any of the papers of the time that I was gone," the old man said.
+
+"You must get well fast for there is much that I can learn and you can
+teach me everything.  How much did you suffer?"
+
+"Plenty," the old man said.
+
+"I'll bring the food and the papers," the boy said.  "Rest well, old
+man.  I will bring stuff from the drug-store for your hands."
+
+"Don't forget to tell Pedrico the head is his."
+
+"No.  I will remember."
+
+As the boy went out the door and down the worn coral rock road he was
+crying again.
+
+That afternoon there was a party of tourists at the Terrace and looking
+down in the water among the empty beer cans and dead barracudas a woman
+saw a great long white spine with a huge tail at the end that lifted
+and swung with the tide while the east wind blew a heavy steady sea
+outside the entrance to the harbour.
+
+"What's that?" she asked a waiter and pointed to the long backbone of
+the great fish that was now just garbage waiting to go out with the
+tide.
+
+"Tiburon," the waiter said, "Eshark."  He was meaning to explain what
+had happened.
+
+"I didn't know sharks had such handsome, beautifully formed tails."
+
+"I didn't either," her male companion said.
+
+Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again.  He was
+still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him.
+The old man was dreaming about the lions.