book.txt

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.