第3章 The Old Man on the Sea[第1页/共12页]

“Dolphin,”the old man said aloud.“ Big dolphin.”

“He's got something,”the old man said aloud.“He's not just looking.”

“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.

“Agua mala,”the man said.“ You whore.”

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.

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.