Old Man and the Sea (7 page)

  
The old man unhooked the fish, re-baited 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 band, 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 he 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.