第7章 The Old Mans Victory[第6页/共16页]

The old man was sweating now but from something else besides the sun.On each calm placid turn the fish made he was gaining line and he was sure that in two turns more he would have a chance to get the harpoon in.

“He is making the far part of his circle now,”he said. I must hold all I can,he thought.The strain will shorten his circle each time.Perhaps in an hour I will see him.Now I must convince him and then I must kill him.

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.

“I have no cramps.”he said.“ He'll be up soon and I can last.You have to last.Don't even speak of it.”

“It is not bad.”he said.“And pain does not matter to a man.”

On this circle the old man could see the fish's eye and the two gray sucking fish that swam around him.Sometimes they attached themselves to him.Sometimes they darted off. Sometimes they would swim easily in his shadow.They were each over three feet long and when they swam fast they lashed their whole bodies like eels.

The old man dropped the line and put his foot on it and lifted the harpoon as high as he could and drove it down with all his strength,and more strength he had just summoned, into the fish's side just behind the great chest fin that rose high in the air to the altitude of the man's chest.He felt the iron go in and he leaned on it and drove it further and then pushed all his weight after it.