第3章 The Old Man on the Sea (1/2)

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    Sometimes someone would speak in a boat.But most of the boats were silent except for the dip of the oars.They spread apart after they were out of the mouth of the harbor and each one headed for the part of the ocean where he hoped to find fish.The old man knew he was going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean. He saw the phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in the water as he rowed over the part of the ocean that the fishermen called the great well because there was a sudden deep of seven hundred fathoms where all sorts of fish congregated because of the swirl the current made against the steep walls of the floor of the ocean.Here there were concentrations of shrimp and bait and sometimes schools of squid in the deepest holes and these rose close to the surface at night where all the wandering fish fed on them.

    In the dark the old man could feel the morning coming and as he rowed he heard the trembling sound as flying fish left the water and the hissing that their stiff set wings made as they soared away in the darkness.He was very fond of flying fish as they were his principal friends on the ocean.He was sorry for the birds,especially the small delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding,and he thought,“The birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds and the heavy strong ones.Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?She is kind and very beautiful.But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly,dipping and hunting,with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea.”

    He always thought of the sea as la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her.Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen,those who used buoys as floats for their lines and had motorboats,bought when the shark livers had brought much money,spoke of her as el mar which is masculine.They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favors,and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman,he thought.

    He was rowing steadily and it was no effort for him since he kept well within his speed and the surface of the ocean was flat except for the occasional swirls of the current.He was letting the current do a third of the work and as it started to be light he saw he was already further out than he had hoped to be at this hour.

    I worked the deep wells for a week and did nothing,he thought.Today I'll work out where the schools of bonita and albacore are and maybe there will be a big one with them.

    Before it was really light he had his baits out and was drifting with the current.One bait was down forty fathoms. The second was at seventy-five and the third and fourth were down in the blue water at one hundred and one hundred and twenty-five fathoms.Each bait hung head down with the shank of the hook inside the bait fish,tied and sewed solid and all the projecting part of the hook,the curve and the point,was covered with fresh sardines.Each sardine was hooked through both eyes so that they made a half-garland on the projecting steel.There was no part of the hook that a great fish could feel which was not sweet smelling and good tasting.

    The boy had given him two fresh small tunas, or albacores,which hung on the two deepest lines like plummets and,on the others,he had a big blue runner and a yellow jack that had been used before;but they were in good condition still and had the excellent sardines to give them scent and attractiveness.Each line,as thick around as a big pencil,was looped onto a green-sapped stick so that any pull or touch on the bait would make the stick dip and each line had two forty-fathom coils which could be made fast to the other spare coils so that,if it were necessary,a fish could take out over three hundred fathoms of line.

    Now the man watched the dip of the three sticks over the side of the skiff and rowed gently to keep the lines straight up and down and at their proper depths.It was quite light and any moment now the sun would rise.

    The sun rose thinly from the sea and the old man could see the other boats,low on the water and well in toward the shore,spread out across the current.Then the sun was brighter and the glare came on the water and then,as it rose clear,the flat sea sent it back at his eyes so that it hurt sharply and he rowed without looking into it.He looked down into the water and watched the lines that went straight down into the dark of the water.He kept them straighter than anyone did,so that at each level in the darkness of the stream there would be a bait waiting exactly where he wished it to be for any fish that swam there.Others let them drift with the current and sometimes they were at sixty fathoms when the fishermen thought they were at a hundred.

    But,he thought,I keep them with precision.Only I have no luck any more.But who knows?Maybe to day.Every day is a new day.It is better to be lucky.But I would rather be exact.Then when luck comes you are ready.

    The sun was two hours higher now and it did not hurt his eyes so much to look into the east.There were only three boats in sight now and they showed very low and far inshore.

    All my life the early sun has hurt my eyes,he thought. Yet they are still good. In the evening I can look straight into it without getting the blackness.It has more force in the evening too.But in the morning it is painful.

    Just then he saw a man-of-war bird with his long black wings circling in the sky ahead of him. He made a quick drop,slanting down on his backswept wings,and then circled again.

    “He's got something,”the old man said aloud.“He's not just looking.”

    He rowed slowly and steadily toward where the bird was circling.He did not hurry and he kept his lines straight up and down.But he crowded the current a little so that he was still fishing correctly though faster than he would have fished if he was not trying to use the bird.

    The bird went higher in the air and circled again,his wings motionless.Then he dove suddenly and the old man saw flying fish spurt out of the water and sail desperately over the surface.

    “Dolphin,”the old man said aloud.“ Big dolphin.”

    He shipped his oars and brought a small line from under the bow.It had a wire leader and a medium-sized hook and he baited it with one of the sardines.He let it go over the side and then made it fast to a ring bolt in the stern.Then he baited another line and left it coiled in the shade of the bow. He went back to rowing and to watching the long winged black bird who was working,now,low over the water.

    As he watched the bird dipped again slanting his wings for the dive and then swinging them wildly and ineffectually as he followed the flying fish. The old man could see the slight bulge in the water that the big dolphin raised as they followed the escaping fish.The dolphin were cutting through the water below the flight of the fish and would be in the water,driving at speed,when the fish dropped.It is a big school of dolphin,he thought.They are wide spread and the flying fish have little chance.The bird has no chance.The flying fish are ... -->>

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