第8章 The Sharks Attack[第3页/共14页]

The breeze was steady.It had backed a little further into the northeast and he knew that meant that it would not fall off.The old man looked ahead of him but he could see no sails nor could he see the hull nor the smoke of any ship. There were only the flying fish that went up from his bow sailing away to either side and the yellow patches of gulf-weed.He could not even see a bird.

He did not like to look at the fish anymore since he had been mutilated.When the fish had been hit it was as though he himself were hit.

Sometimes he lost the scent.But he would pick it up again,or have just a trace of it and he swam fast and hard on the course.He was a very big Mako shark built to swim as fast as the fastest fish in the sea and everything about him was beautiful except his jaws.

He held the tiller under his arm and soaked both his hands in the water as the skiff drove forward.

“But man is not made for defeat,”he said.“A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”I am sorry that I killed the fish though,he thought.Now the bad time is coming and I do not even have the harpoon.The dentuso is cruel and able and strong and intelligent.But I was more intelligent than he was. Perhaps not,he thought.Perhaps I was only better armed.

He was a fish to keep a man all winter,he thought.Don't think of that.Just rest and try to get your hands in shape to defend what is left of him.The blood smell from my hands means nothing now with all that scent in the water.Besides they do not bleed much.There is nothing cut that means anything.The bleeding may keep the left from cramping.