Old Man and the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

once, through my
treachery, it had been necessary to him to make a choice, the old man thought.
       His choice had been to stay in the deep dark
water far out beyond all snares and traps and treacheries. My choice was to go
there to find him beyond all people. Beyond all people in the world. Now we are
joined together and have been since noon. And no one to help
either one of us.
       Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman,
he thought. But that was the thing that I was born for. I must surely remember
to eat the tuna after it gets light.
       Some time before daylight something took one
of the baits that were behind him. He heard the stick break and the line begin
to rush out over the gunwale of the skiff. In the darkness he loosened his
sheath knife and taking all the strain of the fish on his left shoulder he
leaned back and cut the line against the wood of the gunwale. Then he cut the
other line closest to him and in the dark made the loose ends of the reserve
coils fast. He worked skillfully with the one hand and put his foot on the
coils to hold them as he drew his knots tight. Now he had six reserve coils of
line. There were two from each bait he had severed and
the two from the bait the fish had taken and they were all connected.
       After it is light, he thought, I will work
back to the forty-fathom bait and cut it away too and link up the reserve
coils. I will have lost two hundred fathoms of good Catalan cardel and the
hooks and leaders. That can be replaced. But who replaces this fish if I hook
some fish and it cuts him off? I don’t know what that fish was that took the
bait just now. It could have been a marlin or a broadbill or a shark. I never
felt him. I had to get rid of him too fast.
       Aloud he said, “I wish I had the boy.”
       But you haven’t got the boy, he thought. You
have only yourself and you had better work back to the
last line now, in the dark or not in the dark, and cut it away and hook up the
two reserve coils.
       So he did it. It was difficult in the dark
and once the fish made a surge that pulled him down on his face and made a cut
below his eye. The blood ran down his cheek a little way. But it coagulated and
dried before it reached his chin and he worked his way back to the bow and
rested against the wood. He adjusted the sack and carefully worked the line so
that it came across a new part of his shoulders and, holding it anchored with his
shoulders, he carefully felt the pull of the fish and then felt with his hand
the progress of the skiff through the water.
       I wonder what he made that lurch for, he
thought. The wire must have slipped on the great hill of his back. Certainly
his back cannot feel as badly as mine does. But he cannot pull this skiff
forever, no matter how great he is. Now everything is cleared away that might
make trouble and I have a big reserve of line; all that a man can ask.
       “Fish,” he said softly, aloud, “I’ll stay
with you until I am dead.”
       He’ll stay with me too, I suppose, the old
man thought and he waited for it to be light. It was cold now in the time
before daylight and he pushed against the wood to be warm. I can do it as long
as he can, he thought. And in the first light the line extended out and down
into the water. The boat moved steadily and when the first edge of the sun rose
it was on the old man’s right shoulder.
       “He’s headed north,” the old man said. The
current will have set us far to the eastward, he thought. I wish he would turn
with the current. That would show that he was tiring.
       When the sun had risen further the old man
realized that the fish was not tiring. There was only one favorable sign. The
slant of the line showed he was swimming at a lesser depth. That did not
necessarily mean that he would jump. But he might.
       “God let him jump,” the old man said. “I
have enough line to handle him.”
       Maybe if I can increase the tension just a
little it will hurt him