第8章 The Sharks Attack[第1页/共14页]

“You think too much,old man,”he said aloud.

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 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.

“You give me much good counsel ,”he said aloud.“ I'm tired of it.”

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 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, 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.