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and he will jump, he thought. Now that it is daylight
let him jump so that he’ll fill the sacks along his backbone with air and then
he cannot go deep to die.
       He tried to increase the tension, but the
line had been taut up to the very edge of the breaking point since he had hooked
the fish and he felt the harshness as he leaned back to pull and knew he could
put no more strain on it. I must not jerk it ever, he thought. Each jerk widens
the cut the hook makes and then when he does jump he might throw it. Anyway I
feel better with the sun and for once I do not have to look into it.
       There was yellow weed on the line but the
old man knew that only made an added drag and he was pleased. It was the yellow
Gulf weed that had made so much phosphorescence in the night.
       “Fish,” he said, “I love you and respect you
very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.”
       Let us hope so, he thought.
       A small bird came toward the skiff from the
north. He was a warbler and flying very low over the water. The old man could
see that he was very tired.
       The bird made the stern of the boat and
rested there. Then he flew around the old man’s head and rested on the line
where he was more comfortable.
       “How old are you?” the old man asked the
bird. “Is this your first trip?”
       The bird looked at him when he spoke. He was
too tired even to examine the line and he teetered on it as his delicate feet
gripped it fast.
       “It’s steady,” the old man told him. “It’s
too steady. You shouldn’t be that tired after a windless night. What are birds
coming to?”
       The hawks, he thought, that come out to sea
to meet them. But he said nothing of this to the bird who could not understand
him anyway and who would learn about the hawks soon enough.
       “Take a good rest, small bird,” he said. “Then
go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.”
       It encouraged him to talk because his back
had stiffened in the night and it hurt truly now.
       “Stay at my house if you like, bird,” he
said. “I am sorry I cannot hoist the sail and take you in with the small breeze
that is rising. But I am with a friend.”
       Just then the fish gave a sudden lurch that
pulled the old man down onto the bow and would have pulled him overboard if he
had not braced himself and given some line.
       The bird had flown up when the line jerked
and the old man had not even seen him go. He felt the line carefully with his
right hand and noticed his hand was bleeding.
       “Something hurt him then,” he said aloud and
pulled back on the line to see if he could turn the fish. But when he was
touching the breaking point he held steady and settled back against the strain
of the line.
       “You’re feeling it now, fish,” he said. “And
so, God knows, am I.”
       He looked around for the bird now because he
would have liked him for company. The bird was gone.
       You did not stay long, the man thought. But
it is rougher where you are going until you make the shore. How did I let the
fish cut me with that one quick pull he made? I must be getting very stupid. Or
perhaps I was looking at the small bird and thinking of him. Now I will pay
attention to my work and then I must eat the tuna so that I will not have a
failure of strength.
       “I wish the boy were here and that I had
some salt,” he said aloud.
       Shifting the weight of the line to his left
shoulder and kneeling carefully he washed his hand in the ocean and held it
there, submerged, for more than a minute watching the blood trail away and the
steady movement of the water against his hand as the boat moved.
       “He has slowed much,” he said.
       The old man would have liked to keep his
hand in the salt water longer but he was afraid of another sudden lurch by the
fish and he stood up and braced himself and held his hand up against the sun.
It was only a line burn that had cut his flesh. But