第8章 The Sharks Attack[第1页/共14页]

“I killed him in self-defense,”the old man said aloud.“And I killed him well.”

“Now,”he said.“I am still an old man.But I am not unarmed.”

He did not need a compass to tell him where southwest was. He only needed the feel of the trade wind and the drawing of the sail.I better put a small line out with a spoon on it and try and get something to eat and drink for the moisture .But he could not find a spoon and his sardines were rotten.So he hooked a patch of yellow gulf weed with the gaff as they passed and shook it so that the small shrimps that were in it fell onto the planking of the skiff.There were more than a dozen of them and they jumped and kicked like sand fleas.The old man pinched their heads off with his thumb and forefinger and ate them chewing up the shells and the tails. They were very tiny but he knew they were nourishing and they tasted good.

The next shark that came was a single shovel-nose.He came like a pig to the trough if a pig had a mouth so wide that you could put your head in it.The old man let him hit the fish and then drove the knife on the oar down into his brain. But the shark jerked backwards as he rolled and the knife blade snapped.

The shark was not an accident .He had come up from deep down in the water as the dark cloud of blood had settled and dispersed in the mile deep sea.He had come up so fast and absolutely without caution that he broke the surface of the blue water and was in the sun.Then he fell back into the sea and picked up the scent and started swimming on the course the skiff and the fish had taken.