第8章 The Sharks Attack[第5页/共14页]

“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.”

“Galanos.”he said aloud.He had seen the second fin now coming up behind the first and had identified them as shovel-nosed sharks by the brown, triangular fin and the sweeping movements of the tail.They had the scent and were excited and in the stupidity of their great hunger they were losing and finding the scent in their excitement.But they were closing all the time.

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.

What can I think of now?He thought.Nothing.I must think of nothing and wait for the next ones.I wish it had really been a dream,he thought.But who knows?It might have turned out well.

“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.