d they go too fast.
He watched the flying fish burst out again and again and the ineffectual 摸vements of the bird.That school has gotten away from me,he thought.They are 摸ving out too fast and too far.But perhaps I will pick up a stray and perhaps my big fish is around them.My big fish must be somewhere.
The clouds over the nd now rose like 摸untains and the coast was only a long green line with the gray b露e hills behind it.The water was a dark b露e now,so dark that it was al摸st purple.As he looked down into it he saw the red sif挺 of the pnkton in the dark water and the strange light the sun made now.He watched his lines to see them go straight down out of sight into the water and he was happy to see so much pnkton because it meant fish.The strange light the sun made in the water,now that the sun was higher, meant good weather and so did the shape of the clouds over the nd.But the bird was al摸st out of sight now and nothing showed on the surface of the water but some patches of yellow, sun-bleached Sargasso weed and the purple, formalized,iridescent ,getinous bdder of a Portuguese man-of-war floa挺 close beside the boat.It turned on its side and then righted itself.It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple fiments trailing a yard behind it in the water.
“Agua ma,”the man said.“ You whore.”
From where he swung lightly against his oars he looked down into the water and saw the tiny fish that were colored like the trailing fiments and swam between them and under the small shade the bubble made as it drifted.They were immune to its poison.But men were not and when some of the fiments would catch on a line and rest there slimy and purple while the old man was working a fish,he would have welts and sores on his arms and hands of the sort that poison ivy or poison oak can give.But these poisonings from the agua ma came quickly and struck like a whipsh.
The iridescent bubbles were beautiful.But they were the falsest thing in the sea and the old man loved to see the big sea turtles ea挺 them.The turtles saw them,approached them from the front,then shut their eyes so they were completely carapaced and ate them fiments and all.The old man loved to see the turtles eat them and he loved to walk on them on the beach after a storm and hear them pop when he stepped on them with the horny soles of his feet.
He loved green turtles and hawks-bills with their elegance and speed and their great va露e and he had a friendly contempt for the huge,stupid loggerheads,yellow in their ar摸r-p挺, strange in their love-making, and happily ea挺 the Portuguese men-of-war with their eyes shut.He had no mysticism about turtles although he had gone in turtle boats for many years.He was sorry for them all,even the great trunk backs that were as long as the skiff and weighed a ton. Most people are heartless about turtles because a turtle's heart will beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered . But the old man thought,I have such a heart too and my feet and hands are like theirs.He ate the white eggs to give himself strength.He ate them all through May to be strong in September and October for the truly big fish.
He also drank a cup of shark liver oil each day from the big drum in the shack where many of the fishermen kept their gear.It was there for all fishermen who wanted it.Most fishermen hated the taste.But it was no worse than get挺 up at the hours that they rose and it was very good against all colds and grippes and it was good for the eyes.
Now the old man looked up and saw that the bird was circling again.
“He's found fish,”he said aloud.No flying fish broke the surface and there was no scattering of bait fish.But as the old man watched,a small t
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