THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

Episode 5

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 [95] 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 upon

to 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.

[96] “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 southwest was. He only needed the feel of the trade wind and the drawing of the sail. I better put a small line [97] 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.

[98] 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

[99] 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 Make 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 [100] 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 [101] 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 speedboat 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.

[102] “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 than 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 [103] 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 [104] 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. If 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 [105] 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 had 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.

[106] 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, [107] 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 [108] 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.

[109] “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 minor 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.

[110] “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 shovelnose. 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 don 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, [111] 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

stem for the club. It was an oar handle [112] 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 [113] old man swung the club down on him again as he slipped away to swallow and hit only the heavy solid

rubberiness.