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 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 porpoise 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 or 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 sacs 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.'
