第5章 The Old Man and the Big Fish[第1页/共15页]

After it is light,he thought,I will work back to the forty-fathom bait and cut it away too and link up the reserve coils. I will have lost two hundred fathoms of good Catalan cordel and the hooks and leaders.That can be replaced .But who replaces this fish if I hook some fish and it cuts him off?I don't know what that fish was that took the bait just now.It could have been a marlin or a broadbill or a shark.I never felt him.I had to get rid of him too fast.

The sun was hot now although the breeze was rising gently.

“It is a strong full-blooded fish,”he thought.“I was lucky to get him instead of dolphin.Dolphin is too sweet. This is hardly sweet at all and all the strength is still in it.”

Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman,he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for. I must surely remember to eat the tuna after it gets light.

“I don't think I can eat an entire one,”he said and drew his knife across one of the strips.He could feel the steady hard pull of the line and his left hand was cramped.It drew up tight on the heavy cord and he looked at it in disgust.

“Something hurt him then,”he said aloud and pulled back on the line to see if he could turn the fish.But when he was touching the breaking point he held steady and settled back against the strain of the line.