第8章 The Sharks Attack[第2页/共14页]

“They must have taken a quarter of him and of the best meat,”he said aloud.“I wish it were a dream and that I had never hooked him.I'm sorry about it,fish.It makes everything wrong.”He stopped and he did not want to look at the fish now.Drained of blood and awash he looked the color of the silver backing of a mirror and his stripes still showed.

The old man's head was clear and good now and he was full of resolution but he had little hope.It was too good to last, he thought. He took one look at the great fish as he watched the shark close in.It might as well have been a dream,he thought.I cannot keep him from hitting me but maybe I can get him.Dentuso,he thought.Bad luck to your mother.

“No?”the old man said and he drove the blade between the vertebrae and the brain.It was an easy shot now and he felt the cartilage sever.The old man reversed the oar and put the blade between the shark's jaws to open them.He twisted the blade and as the shark slid loose he said,“Go on,galano. Slide down a mile deep.Go see your friend,or maybe it's your mother.”

The skiff was still shaking with the destruction the other shark was doing to the fish and the old man let go the sheet so that the skiff would swing broadside and bring the shark out from under.When he saw the shark he leaned over the side and punched at him.He hit only meat and the hide was set hard and he barely got the knife in.The blow hurt not only his hands but his shoulder too.But the shark came up fast and his head out and the old man hit him squarely in the center of his flat-topped head as his nose came out of water and lay against the fish.The old man withdrew the blade and punched the shark exactly in the same spot again.He still hung to the fish with his jaws hooked and the old man stabbed him in his left eye.The shark still hung there.