第6章 Tired of the Old Man[第4页/共13页]

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 behavior and his great dignity.

The odds would change back and forth all night and they fed the negro rum and lighted cigarettes for him.Then the Negro,after the rum,would try for a tremendous effort and once he had the old man, who was not an old man then but was Santiago El Campeon,nearly three inches off balance.But the old man had raised his hand up to dead even again.He was sure then that he had the negro,who was a fine man and a great athlete,beaten.And at daylight when the bettors were asking that it be called a draw and the referee was shaking his head,he had unleashed his effort and forced the hand of the negro down and down until it rested on the wood.The match had started on a Sunday morning and ended on a Monday morning.Many of the bettors had asked for a draw because they had to go to work on the docks loading sacks of sugar or at the Havana Coal Company. Otherwise everyone would have wanted it to go to a finish.But he had finished it anyway and before anyone had to go to work.