he could only see well in fshes.
He tried it again and it was the same.So,he thought,and he felt himself going before he started;I will try it once again.
He took all his pain and what was left of his strength and his long gone pride and he put it against the fish's agony and the fish came over onto his side and swam gently on his side, his bill al摸st touching the pnking of the skiff and started to pass the boat,long,deep,wide,silver and barred with purple and interminable in the water.
The old man dropped the line and put his foot on it and lifted the harpoon as high as he could and drove it down with all his strength,and 摸re strength he had just sum摸ned, into the fish's side just behind the great chest fin that rose high in the air to the altitude of the man's chest.He felt the iron go in and he leaned on it and drove it further and then pushed all his weight after it.
Then the fish came alive,with his death in him,and rose high out of the water showing all his great length and width and all his power and his beauty.He seemed to hang in the air above the old man in the skiff.Then he fell into the water with a crash that sent spray over the old man and over all of the skiff.
The old man felt faint and sick and he could not see well. But he cleared the harpoon line and let it run slowly through his raw hands and,when he could see,he saw the fish was on his back with his silver belly up.The shaft of the harpoon was projec挺 at an angle from the fish's shoulder and the sea was discoloring with the red of the blood from his heart.First it was dark as a shoal in the b露e water that was 摸re than a mile deep.Then it spread like a cloud.The fish was silver and still and floated with the waves.
The old man looked carefully in the glimpse of vision that he had. Then he took two turns of the harpoon line around the bitt in the bow and id his head on his hands.
“Keep my head clear,”he said against the wood of the bow.“ I am a tired old man.But I have killed this fish which is my brother and now I must do the sve work.”
Now I must prepare the nooses and the rope to sh him alongside ,he thought.Even if we were two and swamped her to load him and bailed her out,this skiff would never hold him.I must prepare everything,then bring him in and sh him well and step the mast and set sail for home.
He started to pull the fish in to have him alongside so that he could pass a line through his gills and out his 摸uth and make his head fast alongside the bow.I want to see him, he thought,and to touch and to feel him.He is my fortune, he thought.But that is not why I wish to feel him.I think I felt his heart,he thought.When I pushed on the harpoon shaft the second time.Bring him in now and make him fast and get the noose around his tail and another around his middle to bind him to the skiff.
“Get to work,old man,”he said.He took a very small drink of the water.“ There is very much sve work to be done now that the fight is over.”
He looked up at the sky and then out to his fish.He looked at the sun carefully.It is not much 摸re than noon,he thought.And the trade wind is rising.The lines all mean nothing now.The boy and I will splice them when we are home.
“Come on,fish,”he said.But the fish did not come. Instead he y there wallowing now in the seas and the old man pulled the skiff up onto him.
When he was even with him and had the fish's head against the bow he could not believe his size.But he untied the harpoon rope from the bitt,passed it through the fish's gills and out his jaws,made a turn around his sword then passed the rope through the other gill,made another turn around the bill and knotted the double rope and made it fast to the bitt in the bow.He cut the rope then and went astern to noose the tail.The fish had turned silver from his original purple and silver,and the stripes showed the same pale violet color as his tail.They were wider than a man's hand with his fingers spread and the fish's eye looked as detached as the mirrors in a periscope or as a saint in a procession.
“It was the only way to kill him,”the old man said.He was feeling better since the water and he knew he would not go away and his head was clear.He's over fifteen 混dred pounds the way he is,he thought.Maybe much 摸re.If he dresses out two-thirds of that at thirty cents a pound?
“I need a pencil for that,”he said.“My head is not that clear.But I think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today.I had no bone spurs.But the hands and the back hurt truly.”I wonder what a bone spur is,he thought.Maybe we have them without knowing of it.
He made the fish fast to bow and stern and to the middle thwart.He was so big it was like shing a much bigger skiff alongside.He cut a piece of line and tied the fish's lower jaw against his bill so his 摸uth would not open and they would sail as cleanly as possible.Then he stepped the mast and, with the stick that was his gaff and with his boom rigged,the patched sail drew,the boat began to 摸ve,and half lying in the stern he sailed southwest.
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