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I abused it much in the night when it was necessary to
free and untie the various lines.
       He looked across the sea and knew how alone
he was now. But he could see the prisms in the deep dark water and the line
stretching ahead and the strange undulation of the calm. The clouds were
building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild
ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then
etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea.
       He thought of how some men feared being out
of sight of land in a small boar and knew they were right in the months of
sudden bad weather. But now they were in hurricane months and, when there are
no hurricanes, the weather of hurricane months is the best of all the year.
       If there is a hurricane you always see the
signs of it in the sky for days ahead, if you are at sea. They do not see it
ashore because they do not know what to look for, he thought. The land must
make a difference too, in the shape of the clouds. But we have no hurricane
coming now.
       He looked at the sky and saw the white
cumulus built like friendly piles of ice cream and high above were the thin
feathers of the cirrus against the high September sky.
       “Light brisa,” he said. “Better weather for
me than for you, fish.”
       His left hand was still cramped, but he was
unknotting it slowly.
       I hate a cramp, he thought. It is a
treachery of one’s own body. It is humiliating before others to have a diarrhoea from ptomaine poisoning or to vomit from it. But
a cramp, he thought of it as a calambre, humiliates oneself especially when one
is alone.
       If the boy were here he could rub it for me
and loosen it down from the forearm, he thought. But it will loosen up.
       Then, with his right hand he felt the
difference in the pull of the line before he saw the slant change in the water.
Then, as he leaned against the line and slapped his left hand hard and fast
against his thigh he saw the line slanting slowly upward.
       “He’s coming up,” he said. “Come on hand.
Please come on.”
       The line rose slowly and steadily and then
the surface of the ocean bulged ahead of the boat and the fish came out. He
came out unendingly and water poured from his sides. He was bright in the sun
and his head and back were dark purple and in the sun
the stripes on his sides showed wide and a light lavender. His sword was as
long as a baseball bat and tapered like a rapier and
he rose his full length from the water and then re-entered it, smoothly, like a
diver and the old man saw the great scythe-blade of his tail go under and the
line commenced to race out.
       “He is two feet longer than the skiff,” the
old man said. The line was going out fast but steadily and the fish was not
panicked. The old man was trying with both hands to keep the line just inside
of breaking strength. He knew that if he could not slow the fish with a steady
pressure the fish could take out all the line and break it.
       He is a great fish and I must convince him,
he thought. I must never let him learn his strength nor what he could do if he
made his run. If I were him I would put in everything now and go until
something broke. But, thank God, they are not as intelligent as we who kill
them; although they are more noble and more able.
       The old man had seen many great fish. He had
seen many that weighed more than a thousand pounds and he had caught two of
that size in his life, but never alone. Now alone, and out of sight of land, he
was fast to the biggest fish that he had ever seen and bigger than he had ever
heard of, and his left hand was still as tight as the gripped claws of an
eagle.
       It will uncramp though, he thought. Surely
it will uncramp to help my right hand. There are three things that are
brothers: the fish and my two hands. It must uncramp. It is unworthy of it to
be cramped. The fish had slowed again and was going at his usual