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- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 1
- The Old Man and the Sea
- By Ernest Hemingway
- To Charlie Shribner
- And
- To Max Perkins
- He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four
- days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days
- without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao,
- which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which
- caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with
- his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and
- harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and,
- furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.
- The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown
- blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its [9] reflection on the tropic sea were
- on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased
- scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as
- erosions in a fishless desert.
- Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were
- cheerful and undefeated.
- “Santiago,” the boy said to him as they climbed the bank from where the skiff was hauled up. “I
- could go with you again. We’ve made some money.”
- The old man had taught the boy to fish and the boy loved him.
- “No,” the old man said. “You’re with a lucky boat. Stay with them.”
- “But remember how you went eighty-seven days without fish and then we caught big ones
- every day for three weeks.”
- “I remember,” the old man said. “I know you did not leave me because you doubted.”
- “It was papa made me leave. I am a boy and I must obey him.”
- “I know,” the old man said. “It is quite normal.”
- “He hasn’t much faith.”
- [10] “No,” the old man said. “But we have. Haven’t we?”
- ‘Yes,” the boy said. “Can I offer you a beer on the Terrace and then we’ll take the stuff home.”
- “Why not?” the old man said. “Between fishermen.”
- They sat on the Terrace and many of the fishermen made fun of the old man and he was not
- angry. Others, of the older fishermen, looked at him and were sad. But they did not show it and they
- spoke politely about the current and the depths they had drifted their lines at and the steady good
- weather and of what they had seen. The successful fishermen of that day were already in and had
- butchered their marlin out and carried them laid full length across two planks, with two men
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 2
- staggering at the end of each plank, to the fish house where they waited for the ice truck to carry
- them to the market in Havana. Those who had caught sharks had taken them to the shark factory on
- the other side of the cove where they were hoisted on a block and tackle, their livers removed, their
- fins cut off and their hides skinned out and their flesh cut into strips for salting.
- When the wind was in the east a smell came across the harbour from the shark factory; but
- today there [11] was only the faint edge of the odour because the wind had backed into the north
- and then dropped off and it was pleasant and sunny on the Terrace.
- “Santiago,” the boy said.
- “Yes,” the old man said. He was holding his glass and thinking of many years ago.
- “Can I go out to get sardines for you for tomorrow?”
- “No. Go and play baseball. I can still row and Rogelio will throw the net.”
- “I would like to go. If I cannot fish with you. I would like to serve in some way.”
- “You bought me a beer,” the old man said. “You are already a man.”
- “How old was I when you first took me in a boat?”
- “Five and you nearly were killed when I brought the fish in too green and he nearly tore the
- boat to pieces. Can you remember?”
- “I can remember the tail slapping and banging and the thwart breaking and the noise of the
- clubbing. I can remember you throwing me into the bow where the wet coiled lines were and feeling
- the whole boat shiver and the noise of you clubbing him like chopping a tree down and the sweet
- blood smell all over me.”
- [12] “Can you really remember that or did I just tell it to you?”
- “I remember everything from when we first went together.”
- The old man looked at him with his sun-burned, confident loving eyes.
- “If you were my boy I’d take you out and gamble,” he said. “But you are your father’s and your
- mother’s and you are in a lucky boat.”
- “May I get the sardines? I know where I can get four baits too.”
- “I have mine left from today. I put them in salt in the box.”
- “Let me get four fresh ones.”
- “One,” the old man said. His hope and his confidence had never gone. But now they were
- freshening as when the breeze rises.
- “Two,” the boy said.
- “Two,” the old man agreed. “You didn’t steal them?”
- “I would,” the boy said. “But I bought these.”
- “Thank you,” the old man said. He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility.
- But he [13] knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true
- pride.
- “Tomorrow is going to be a good day with this current,” he said.
- “Where are you going?” the boy asked.
- “Far out to come in when the wind shifts. I want to be out before it is light.”
- “I’ll try to get him to work far out,” the boy said. “Then if you hook something truly big we can
- come to your aid.”
- “He does not like to work too far out.”
- “No,” the boy said. “But I will see something that he cannot see such as a bird working and get
- him to come out after dolphin.”
- “Are his eyes that bad?”
- “He is almost blind.”
- “It is strange,” the old man said. “He never went turtle-ing. That is what kills the eyes.”
- “But you went turtle-ing for years off the Mosquito Coast and your eyes are good.”
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 3
- “I am a strange old man”
- “But are you strong enough now for a truly big fish?”
- “I think so. And there are many tricks.”
- [14] “Let us take the stuff home,” the boy said. “So I can get the cast net and go after the
- sardines.”
- They picked up the gear from the boat. The old man carried the mast on his shoulder and the
- boy carried the wooden boat with the coiled, hard-braided brown lines, the gaff and the harpoon
- with its shaft. The box with the baits was under the stern of the skiff along with the club that was
- used to subdue the big fish when they were brought alongside. No one would steal from the old
- man but it was better to take the sail and the heavy lines home as the dew was bad for them and,
- though he was quite sure no local people would steal from him, the old man thought that a gaff and
- a harpoon were needless temptations to leave in a boat.
- They walked up the road together to the old man’s shack and went in through its open door.
- The old man leaned the mast with its wrapped sail against the wall and the boy put the box and the
- other gear beside it. The mast was nearly as long as the one room of the shack. The shack was made
- of the tough budshields of the royal palm which are called guano and in it there was a bed, a table,
- one chair, and a place on the dirt floor to cook with charcoal. On the brown walls of the flattened,
- overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered [15] guano there was a picture in color of the Sacred Heart
- of Jesus and another of the Virgin of Cobre. These were relics of his wife. Once there had been a
- tinted photograph of his wife on the wall but he had taken it down because it made him too lonely
- to see it and it was on the shelf in the corner under his clean shirt.
- “What do you have to eat?” the boy asked.
- “A pot of yellow rice with fish. Do you want some?”
- “No. I will eat at home. Do you want me to make the fire?”
- “No. I will make it later on. Or I may eat the rice cold.”
- “May I take the cast net?”
- “Of course.”
- There was no cast net and the boy remembered when they had sold it. But they went through
- this fiction every day. There was no pot of yellow rice and fish and the boy knew this too.
- “Eighty-five is a lucky number,” the old man said. “How would you like to see me bring one in
- that dressed out over a thousand pounds?”
- “I’ll get the cast net and go for sardines. Will you sit in the sun in the doorway?”
- [16] “Yes. I have yesterday’s paper and I will read the baseball.”
- The boy did not know whether yesterday’s paper was a fiction too. But the old man brought it
- out from under the bed.
- “Perico gave it to me at the bodega,” he explained. “I’ll be back when I have the sardines. I’ll
- keep yours and mine together on ice and we can share them in the morning. When I come back you
- can tell me about the baseball.”
- “The Yankees cannot lose.”
- “But I fear the Indians of Cleveland.”
- “Have faith in the Yankees my son. Think of the great DiMaggio.”
- “I fear both the Tigers of Detroit and the Indians of Cleveland.”
- “Be careful or you will fear even the Reds of Cincinnati and the White Sax of Chicago.”
- “You study it and tell me when I come back.”
- “Do you think we should buy a terminal of the lottery with an eighty-five? Tomorrow is the
- eighty-fifth day.”
- “We can do that,” the boy said. “But what about the eighty-seven of your great record?”
- [17] “It could not happen twice. Do you think you can find an eighty-five?”
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 4
- “I can order one.
- “One sheet. That’s two dollars and a half. Who can we borrow that from?”
- “That’s easy. I can always borrow two dollars and a half.”
- “I think perhaps I can too. But I try not to borrow. First you borrow. Then you beg.”
- “Keep warm old man,” the boy said. “Remember we are in September.”
- “The month when the great fish come,” the old man said. “Anyone can be a fisherman in
- May.”
- “I go now for the sardines,” the boy said.
- When the boy came back the old man was asleep in the chair and the sun was down. The boy
- took the old army blanket off the bed and spread it over the back of the chair and over the old
- man’s shoulders. They were strange shoulders, still powerful although very old, and the neck was still
- strong too and the creases did not show so much when the old man was asleep and his head fallen
- forward. His shirt had been patched so many times that it was like the sail and the patches were
- faded to many different shades by the sun. The [18] old man’s head was very old though and with
- his eyes closed there was no life in his face. The newspaper lay across his knees and the weight of his
- arm held it there in the evening breeze. He was barefooted.
- The boy left him there and when he came back the old man was still asleep.
- “Wake up old man,” the boy said and put his hand on one of the old man’s knees.
- The old man opened his eyes and for a moment he was coming back from a long way away.
- Then he smiled.
- “What have you got?” he asked.
- “Supper,” said the boy. “We’re going to have supper.”
- “I’m not very hungry.”
- “Come on and eat. You can’t fish and not eat.”
- “I have,” the old man said getting up and taking the newspaper and folding it. Then he started
- to fold the blanket.
- “Keep the blanket around you,” the boy said. “You’ll not fish without eating while I’m alive.”
- “Then live a long time and take care of yourself,” the old man said. “What are we eating?”
- “Black beans and rice, fried bananas, and some stew.”
- [19] The boy had brought them in a two-decker metal container from the Terrace. The two sets
- of knives and forks and spoons were in his pocket with a paper napkin wrapped around each set.
- “Who gave this to you?”
- “Martin. The owner.”
- “I must thank him.”
- “I thanked him already,” the boy said. “You don’t need to thank him.”
- “I’ll give him the belly meat of a big fish,” the old man said. “Has he done this for us more than
- once?”
- “I think so.”
- “I must give him something more than the belly meat then. He is very thoughtful for us.”
- “He sent two beers.”
- “I like the beer in cans best.”
- “I know. But this is in bottles, Hatuey beer, and I take back the bottles.”
- “That’s very kind of you,” the old man said. “Should we eat?”
- “I’ve been asking you to,” the boy told him gently. “I have not wished to open the container
- until you were ready.”
- [20] “I’m ready now,” the old man said. “I only needed time to wash.”
- Where did you wash? the boy thought. The village water supply was two streets down the road.
- I must have water here for him, the boy thought, and soap and a good towel. Why am I so
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 5
- thoughtless? I must get him another shirt and a jacket for the winter and some sort of shoes and
- another blanket.
- “Your stew is excellent,” the old man said.
- “Tell me about the baseball,” the boy asked him.
- “In the American League it is the Yankees as I said,” the old man said happily.”
- “They lost today,” the boy told him.
- “That means nothing. The great DiMaggio is himself again.”
- “They have other men on the team.”
- “Naturally. But he makes the difference. In the other league, between Brooklyn and
- Philadelphia I must take Brooklyn. But then I think of Dick Sisler and those great drives In the old
- park.”
- “There was nothing ever like them. He hits the longest ball I have ever seen.”
- “Do you remember when he used to come to the Terrace?”
- [21] “I wanted to take him fishing but I was too timid to ask him. Then I asked you to ask him
- and you were too timid.”
- “I know. It was a great mistake. He might have gone with us. Then we would have that for all
- of our lives.”
- “I would like to take the great DiMaggio fishing,” the old man said. “They say his father was a
- fisherman. Maybe he was as poor as we are and would understand.”
- “The great Sisler’s father was never poor and he, the father, was playing in the Big Leagues
- when he was my age.”
- “When I was your age I was before the mast on a square rigged ship that ran to Africa and I
- have seen lions on the beaches in the evening.”
- “I know. You told me.”
- “Should we talk about Africa or about baseball?”
- “Baseball I think,” the boy said. “Tell me about the great John J. McGraw.” He said Jota for J.
- “He used to come to the Terrace sometimes too in the older days. But he was rough and harshspoken
- and difficult when he was drinking. His mind was on horses as well as baseball. At least he
- carried lists of [22] horses at all times in his pocket and frequently spoke the names of horses on the
- telephone.”
- “He was a great manager,” the boy said. “My father thinks he was the greatest.”
- “Because he came here the most times,” the old man said. “If Durocher had continued to come
- here each year your father would think him the greatest manager.”
- “Who is the greatest manager, really, Luque or Mike Gonzalez?”
- “I think they are equal.”
- “And the best fisherman is you.”
- “No. I know others better.”
- “Que Va,” the boy said. “There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is
- only you.”
- “Thank you. You make me happy. I hope no fish will come along so great that he will prove us
- wrong.”
- “There is no such fish if you are still strong as you say.”
- “I may not be as strong as I think,” the old man said. “But I know many tricks and I have
- resolution.”
- “You ought to go to bed now so that you will be fresh in the morning. I will take the things
- back to the Terrace.”
- [23] “Good night then. I will wake you in the morning.”
- “You’re my alarm clock,” the boy said.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 6
- “Age is my alarm clock,” the old man said. “Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one
- longer day?”
- “I don’t know,” the boy said. “All I know is that young boys sleep late and hard.”
- “I can remember it,” the old man said. “I’ll waken you in time.”
- “I do not like for him to waken me. It is as though I were inferior.”
- “I know.”
- “Sleep well old man.”
- The boy went out. They had eaten with no light on the table and the old man took off his
- trousers and went to bed in the dark. He rolled his trousers up to make a pillow, putting the
- newspaper inside them. He rolled himself in the blanket and slept on the other old newspapers that
- covered the springs of the bed.
- He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a boy and the long golden
- beaches and the white beaches, so white they hurt your eyes, and the high capes and the great brown
- mountains. He lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the surf roar and
- saw the native boats [24] come riding through it. He smelled the tar and oakum of the deck as he
- slept and he smelled the smell of Africa that the land breeze brought at morning.
- Usually when he smelled the land breeze he woke up and dressed to go and wake the boy. But
- tonight the smell of the land breeze came very early and he knew it was too early in his dream and
- went on dreaming to see the white peaks of the Islands rising from the sea and then he dreamed of
- the different harbours and roadsteads of the Canary Islands.
- He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish,
- nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions
- on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He
- never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled
- his trousers and put them on. He urinated outside the shack and then went up the road to wake the
- boy. He was shivering with the morning cold. But he knew he would shiver himself warm and that
- soon he would be rowing.
- The door of the house where the boy lived was unlocked and he opened it and walked in quietly
- with his [25] bare feet. The boy was asleep on a cot in the first room and the old man could see him
- clearly with the light that came in from the dying moon. He took hold of one foot gently and held it
- until the boy woke and turned and looked at him. The old man nodded and the boy took his
- trousers from the chair by the bed and, sitting on the bed, pulled them on.
- The old man went out the door and the boy came after him. He was sleepy and the old man put
- his arm across his shoulders and said, “I am sorry.”
- “Qua Va,” the boy said. “It is what a man must do.”
- They walked down the road to the old man’s shack and all along the road, in the dark, barefoot
- men were moving, carrying the masts of their boats.
- When they reached the old man’s shack the boy took the rolls of line in the basket and the
- harpoon and gaff and the old man carried the mast with the furled sail on his shoulder.
- “Do you want coffee?” the boy asked.
- “We’ll put the gear in the boat and then get some.”
- They had coffee from condensed milk cans at an early morning place that served fishermen.
- “How did you sleep old man?” the boy asked. He [26] was waking up now although it was still
- hard for him to leave his sleep.
- “Very well, Manolin,” the old man said. “I feel confident today.”
- “So do I,” the boy said. “Now I must get your sardines and mine and your fresh baits. He
- brings our gear himself. He never wants anyone to carry anything.”
- “We’re different,” the old man said. “I let you carry things when you were five years old.”
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 7
- “I know it,” the boy said. “I’ll be right back. Have another coffee. We have credit here.”
- He walked off, bare-footed on the coral rocks, to the ice house where the baits were stored.
- The old man drank his coffee slowly. It was all he would have all day and he knew that he
- should take it. For a long time now eating had bored him and he never carried a lunch. He had a
- bottle of water in the bow of the skiff and that was all he needed for the day.
- The boy was back now with the sardines and the two baits wrapped in a newspaper and they
- went down the trail to the skiff, feeling the pebbled sand under their feet, and lifted the skiff and slid
- her into the water.
- [27] “Good luck old man.”
- “Good luck,” the old man said. He fitted the rope lashings of the oars onto the thole pins and,
- leaning forward against the thrust of the blades in the water, he began to row out of the harbour in
- the dark. There were other boats from the other beaches going out to sea and the old man heard the
- dip and push of their oars even though he could not see them now the moon was below the hills.
- Sometimes someone would speak in a boat. But most of the boats were silent except for the dip
- of the oars. They spread apart after they were out of the mouth of the harbour and each one headed
- for the part of the ocean where he hoped to find fish. The old man knew he was going far out and
- he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean.
- He saw the phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in the water as he rowed over the part of the ocean
- that the fishermen called the great well because there was a sudden deep of seven hundred fathoms
- where all sorts of fish congregated because of the swirl the current made against the steep walls of
- the floor of the ocean. Here there were concentrations of shrimp and bait fish and sometimes
- schools of squid in the deepest holes and these rose close to the surface at night where all the
- wandering fish fed on them.
- In the dark the old man could feel the morning coming and as he rowed he heard the trembling
- sound as flying fish left the water and the hissing that their stiff set wings made as they soared away
- in the darkness. He was very fond of flying fish as they were his principal friends on the ocean. He
- was sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate dark terns that were always flying and looking
- and almost never finding, and he thought, the birds have a harder life than we do except for the
- robber birds and the heavy strong ones. Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea
- swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and
- it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are
- made too delicately for the sea.
- He always thought of the sea as la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love
- her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were
- a woman. Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats for their lines and had
- motorboats, bought [29] when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her as el mar
- which is masculine. They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man
- always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she
- did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a
- woman, he thought.
- He was rowing steadily and it was no effort for him since he kept well within his speed and the
- surface of the ocean was flat except for the occasional swirls of the current. He was letting the
- current do a third of the work and as it started to be light he saw he was already further out than he
- had hoped to be at this hour.
- I worked the deep wells for a week and did nothing, he thought. Today I’ll work out where the
- schools of bonito and albacore are and maybe there will be a big one with them.
- Before it was really light he had his baits out and was drifting with the current. One bait was
- down forty fathoms. The second was at seventy-five and the third and fourth were down in the blue
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 8
- water at one [30] hundred and one hundred and twenty-five fathoms. Each bait hung head down
- with the shank of the hook inside the bait fish, tied and sewed solid and all the projecting part of the
- hook, the curve and the point, was covered with fresh sardines. Each sardine was hooked through
- both eyes so that they made a half-garland on the projecting steel. There was no part of the hook
- that a great fish could feel which was not sweet smelling and good tasting.
- The boy had given him two fresh small tunas, or albacores, which hung on the two deepest
- lines like plummets and, on the others, he had a big blue runner and a yellow jack that had been used
- before; but they were in good condition still and had the excellent sardines to give them scent and
- attractiveness. Each line, as thick around as a big pencil, was looped onto a green-sapped stick so
- that any pull or touch on the bait would make the stick dip and each line had two forty-fathom coils
- which could be made fast to the other spare coils so that, if it were necessary, a fish could take out
- over three hundred fathoms of line.
- Now the man watched the dip of the three sticks over the side of the skiff and rowed gently to
- keep the [31] lines straight up and down and at their proper depths. It was quite light and any
- moment now the sun would rise.
- The sun rose thinly from the sea and the old man could see the other boats, low on the water
- and well in toward the shore, spread out across the current. Then the sun was brighter and the glare
- came on the water and then, as it rose clear, the flat sea sent it back at his eyes so that it hurt sharply
- and he rowed without looking into it. He looked down into the water and watched the lines that
- went straight down into the dark of the water. He kept them straighter than anyone did, so that at
- each level in the darkness of the stream there would be a bait waiting exactly where he wished it to
- be for any fish that swam there. Others let them drift with the current and sometimes they were at
- sixty fathoms when the fishermen thought they were at a hundred.
- But, he thought, I keep them with precision. Only I have no luck any more. But who knows?
- Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then
- when luck comes you are ready.
- The sun was two hours higher now and it did not [32] hurt his eyes so much to look into the
- east. There were only three boats in sight now and they showed very low and far inshore.
- All my life the early sun has hurt my eyes, he thought. Yet they are still good. In the evening I
- can look straight into it without getting the blackness. It has more force in the evening too. But in
- the morning it is painful.
- Just then he saw a man-of-war bird with his long black wings circling in the sky ahead of him.
- He made a quick drop, slanting down on his back-swept wings, and then circled again.
- “He’s got something,” the old man said aloud. “He’s not just looking.”
- He rowed slowly and steadily toward where the bird was circling. He did not hurry and he kept
- his lines straight up and down. But he crowded the current a little so that he was still fishing
- correctly though faster than he would have fished if he was not trying to use the bird.
- The bird went higher in the air and circled again, his wings motionless. Then he dove suddenly
- and the old man saw flying fish spurt out of the water and sail desperately over the surface.
- [33] “Dolphin,” the old man said aloud. “Big dolphin.”
- He shipped his oars and brought a small line from under the bow. It had a wire leader and a
- medium-sized hook and he baited it with one of the sardines. He let it go over the side and then
- made it fast to a ring bolt in the stern. Then he baited another line and left it coiled in the shade of
- the bow. He went back to rowing and to watching the long-winged black bird who was working,
- now, low over the water.
- As he watched the bird dipped again slanting his wings for the dive and then swinging them
- wildly and ineffectually as he followed the flying fish. The old man could see the slight bulge in the
- water that the big dolphin raised as they followed the escaping fish. The dolphin were cutting
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 9
- through the water below the flight of the fish and would be in the water, driving at speed, when the
- fish dropped. It is a big school of dolphin, he thought. They are widespread and the flying fish have
- little chance. The bird has no chance. The flying fish are too big for him and they go too fast.
- He watched the flying fish burst out again and again and the ineffectual movements of the bird.
- That school has gotten away from me, he thought. They are moving out too fast and too far. But
- perhaps I will pick up [34] a stray and perhaps my big fish is around them. My big fish must be
- somewhere.
- The clouds over the land now rose like mountains and the coast was only a long green line with
- the gray blue hills behind it. The water was a dark blue now, so dark that it was almost purple. As he
- looked down into it he saw the red sifting of the plankton 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 plankton 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
- land. But the bird was almost 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,
- gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war floating dose beside the boat. It turned on its side
- and then righted itself. It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple filaments trailing
- a yard behind it in the water.
- “Agua mala,” 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 [35] were coloured like the trailing filaments 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
- same of the filaments 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 mala came quickly and struck like a
- whiplash.
- 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 eating them. The turtles saw them, approached them from the front,
- then shut their eyes so they were completely carapaced and ate them filaments 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 hawk-bills with their elegance and speed and their great value and he
- had a friendly contempt for the huge, stupid loggerheads, yellow in their armour-plating, strange in
- their [36] love-making, and happily eating 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 getting 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 [37] fish. But as the old man watched, a small tuna rose in the air, turned and dropped head first
- into the water. The tuna shone silver in the sun and after he had dropped back into the water
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 10
- another and another rose and they were jumping in all directions, churning the water and leaping in
- long jumps after the bait. They were circling it and driving it.
- If they don’t travel too fast I will get into them, the old man thought, and he watched the
- school working the water white and the bird now dropping and dipping into the bait fish that were
- forced to the surface in their panic.
- “The bird is a great help,” the old man said. Just then the stern line came taut under his foot,
- where he had kept a loop of the line, and he dropped his oars and felt tile weight of the small tuna’s
- shivering pull as he held the line firm and commenced to haul it in. The shivering increased as he
- pulled in and he could see the blue back of the fish in the water and the gold of his sides before he
- swung him over the side and into the boat. He lay in the stern in the sun, compact and bullet
- shaped, his big, unintelligent eyes staring as he thumped his life out against the planking of the boat
- with the quick shivering strokes of his neat, fast-moving [38] tail. The old man hit him on the head
- for kindness and kicked him, his body still shuddering, under the shade of the stern.
- “Albacore,” he said aloud. “He’ll make a beautiful bait. He’ll weigh ten pounds.”
- He did not remember when he had first started to talk aloud when he was by himself. He had
- sung when he was by himself in the old days and he had sung at night sometimes when he was alone
- steering on his watch in the smacks or in the turtle boats. He had probably started to talk aloud,
- when alone, when the boy had left. But he did not remember. When he and the boy fished together
- they usually spoke only when it was necessary. They talked at night or when they were storm-bound
- by bad weather. It was considered a virtue not to talk unnecessarily at sea and the old man had
- always considered it so and respected it. But now he said his thoughts aloud many times since there
- was no one that they could annoy.
- “If the others heard me talking out loud they would think that I am crazy,” he said aloud. “But
- since I am not crazy, I do not care. And the rich have radios to talk to them in their boats and to
- bring them the baseball.”
- [39] Now is no time to think of baseball, he thought. Now is the time to think of only one
- thing. That which I was born for. There might be a big one around that school, he thought. I picked
- up only a straggler from the albacore that were feeding. But they are working far out and fast.
- Everything that shows on the surface today travels very fast and to the north-east. Can that be the
- time of day? Or is it some sign of weather that I do not know?
- He could not see the green of the shore now but only the tops of the blue hills that showed
- white as though they were snow-capped and the clouds that looked like high snow mountains above
- them. The sea was very dark and the light made prisms in the water. The myriad flecks of the
- plankton were annulled now by the high sun and it was only the great deep prisms in the blue water
- that the old man saw now with his lines going straight down into the water that was a mile deep.
- The tuna, the fishermen called all the fish of that species tuna and only distinguished among
- them by their proper names when they came to sell them or to trade them for baits, were down
- again. The sun was [40] hot now and the old man felt it on the back of his neck and felt the sweat
- trickle down his back as he rowed.
- I could just drift, he thought, and sleep and put a bight of line around my toe to wake me. But
- today is eighty-five days and I should fish the day well.
- Just then, watching his lines, he saw one of the projecting green sticks dip sharply.
- “Yes,” he said. “Yes,” and shipped his oars without bumping the boat. He reached out for the
- line and held it softly between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He felt no strain nor
- weight and he held the line lightly. Then it came again. This time it was a tentative pull, not solid nor
- heavy, and he knew exactly what it was. One hundred fathoms down a marlin was eating the
- sardines that covered the point and the shank of the hook where the hand-forged hook projected
- from the head of the small tuna.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 11
- The old man held the line delicately, and softly, with his left hand, unleashed it from the stick.
- Now he could let it run through his fingers without the fish feeling any tension.
- This far out, he must be huge in this month, he thought. Eat them, fish. Eat them. Please eat
- them.
- [41] How fresh they are and you down there six hundred feet in that cold water in the dark.
- Make another turn in the dark and come back and eat them.
- He felt the light delicate pulling and then a harder pull when a sardine’s head must have been
- more difficult to break from the hook. Then there was nothing.
- “Come on,” the old man said aloud. “Make another turn. Just smell them. Aren’t they lovely?
- Eat them good now and then there is the tuna. Hard and cold and lovely. Don’t be shy, fish. Eat
- them.”
- He waited with the line between his thumb and his finger, watching it and the other lines at the
- same time for the fish might have swum up or down. Then came the same delicate pulling touch
- again.
- “He’ll take it,” the old man said aloud. “God help him to take it.”
- He did not take it though. He was gone and the old man felt nothing.
- “He can’t have gone,” he said. “Christ knows he can’t have gone. He’s making a turn. Maybe he
- has been hooked before and he remembers something of it.
- [42] Then he felt the gentle touch on the line and he was happy.
- “It was only his turn,” he said. “He’ll take it.”
- He was happy feeling the gentle pulling and then he felt something hard and unbelievably
- heavy. It was the weight of the fish and he let the line slip down, down, down, unrolling off the first
- of the two reserve coils. As it went down, slipping lightly through the old man’s fingers, he still
- could feel the great weight, though the pressure of his thumb and finger were almost imperceptible.
- “What a fish,” he said. “He has it sideways in his mouth now and he is moving off with it.”
- Then he will turn and swallow it, he thought. He did not say that because he knew that if you
- said a good thing it might not happen. He knew what a huge fish this was and he thought of him
- moving away in the darkness with the tuna held crosswise in his mouth. At that moment he felt him
- stop moving but the weight was still there. Then the weight increased and he gave more line. He
- tightened the pressure of his thumb and finger for a moment and the weight increased and was
- going straight down.
- [43] “He’s taken it,” he said. “Now I’ll let him eat it well.”
- He let the line slip through his fingers while he reached down with his left hand and made fast
- the free end of the two reserve coils to the loop of the two reserve coils of the next line. Now he
- was ready. He had three forty-fathom coils of line in reserve now, as well as the coil he was using.
- “Eat it a little more,” he said. “Eat it well.”
- Eat it so that the point of the hook goes into your heart and kills you, he thought. Come up
- easy and let me put the harpoon into you. All right. Are you ready? Have you been long enough at
- table?
- “Now!” he said aloud and struck hard with both hands, gained a yard of line and then struck
- again and again, swinging with each arm alternately on the cord with all the strength of his arms and
- the pivoted weight of his body.
- Nothing happened. The fish just moved away slowly and the old man could not raise him an
- inch. His line was strong and made for heavy fish and he held it against his hack until it was so taut
- that beads of water were jumping from it. Then it began to make a slow hissing sound in the water
- and he still held it, bracing [44] himself against the thwart and leaning back against the pull. The boat
- began to move slowly off toward the north-west.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 12
- The fish moved steadily and they travelled slowly on the calm water. The other baits were still
- in the water but there was nothing to be done.
- “I wish I had the boy” the old man said aloud. “I’m being towed by a fish and I’m the towing
- bitt. I could make the line fast. But then he could break it. I must hold him all I can and give him
- line when he must have it. Thank God he is travelling and not going down.”
- What I will do if he decides to go down, I don’t know. What I’ll do if he sounds and dies I
- don’t know. But I’ll do something. There are plenty of things I can do.
- He held the line against his back and watched its slant in the water and the skiff moving steadily
- to the north-west.
- This will kill him, the old man thought. He can’t do this forever. But four hours later the fish
- was still swimming steadily out to sea, towing the skiff, and the old man was still braced solidly with
- the line across his back.
- [45] “It was noon when I hooked him,” he said. “And I have never seen him.”
- He had pushed his straw hat hard down on his head before he hooked the fish and it was
- cutting his forehead. He was thirsty too and he got down on his knees and, being careful not to jerk
- on the line, moved as far into the bow as he could get and reached the water bottle with one hand.
- He opened it and drank a little. Then he rested against the bow. He rested sitting on the un-stepped
- mast and sail and tried not to think but only to endure.
- Then he looked behind him and saw that no land was visible. That makes no difference, he
- thought. I can always come in on the glow from Havana. There are two more hours before the sun
- sets and maybe he will come up before that. If he doesn’t maybe he will come up with the moon. If
- he does not do that maybe he will come up with the sunrise. I have no cramps and I feel strong. It is
- he that has the hook in his mouth. But what a fish to pull like that. He must have his mouth shut
- tight on the wire. I wish I could see him. I wish I could see him only once to know what I have
- against me.
- The fish never changed his course nor his direction [46] all that night as far as the man could
- tell from watching the stars. It was cold after the sun went down and the old man’s sweat dried cold
- on his back and his arms and his old legs. During the day he had taken the sack that covered the bait
- box and spread it in the sun to dry. After the sun went down he tied it around his neck so that it
- hung down over his back and he cautiously worked it down under the line that was across his
- shoulders now. The sack cushioned the line and he had found a way of leaning forward against the
- bow so that he was almost comfortable. The position actually was only somewhat less intolerable;
- but he thought of it as almost comfortable.
- I can do nothing with him and he can do nothing with me, he thought. Not as long as he keeps
- this up.
- Once he stood up and urinated over the side of the skiff and looked at the stars and checked his
- course. The line showed like a phosphorescent streak in the water straight out from his shoulders.
- They were moving more slowly now and the glow of Havana was not so strong, so that he knew the
- current must be carrying them to the eastward. If I lose the glare of Havana we must be going more
- to the eastward, he thought. For if the fish’s course held true I must see it for many more [47] hours.
- I wonder how the baseball came out in the grand leagues today, he thought. It would be wonderful
- to do this with a radio. Then he thought, think of it always. Think of what you are doing. You must
- do nothing stupid.
- Then he said aloud, “I wish I had the boy. To help me and to see this.”
- No one should be alone in their old age, he thought. But it is unavoidable. I must remember to
- eat the tuna before he spoils in order to keep strong. Remember, no matter how little you want to,
- that you must eat him in the morning. Remember, he said to himself.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 13
- During the night two porpoises came around the boat and he could hear them rolling and
- blowing. He could tell the difference between the blowing noise the male made and the sighing blow
- of the female.
- “They are good,” he said. “They play and make jokes and love one another. They are our
- brothers like the flying fish.”
- Then he began to pity the great fish that he had hooked. He is wonderful and strange and who
- knows how old he is, he thought. Never have I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so
- strangely. Perhaps he is too wise to jump. He could ruin me by jumping or [48] by a wild rush. But
- perhaps he has been hooked many times before and he knows that this is how he should make his
- fight. He cannot know that it is only one man against him, nor that it is an old man. But what a great
- fish he is and what will he bring in the market if the flesh is good. He took the bait like a male and
- he pulls like a male and his fight has no panic in it. I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as
- desperate as I am?
- He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the
- female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the female, made a wild, panic-stricken, despairing fight
- that soon exhausted her, and all the time the male had stayed with her, crossing the line and circling
- with her on the surface. He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line
- with his tail which was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape. When the old man had
- gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and dubbing her across
- the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then,
- with the boy’s aid, hoisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat. Then, while
- the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, [49] the male fish jumped high into
- the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings,
- that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful,
- the old man remembered, and he had stayed.
- That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them, the old man thought. The boy was sad too
- and we begged her pardon and butchered her promptly.
- “I wish the boy was here,” he said aloud and settled himself against the rounded planks of the
- bow and felt the strength of the great fish through the line he held across his shoulders moving
- steadily toward whatever he had chosen.
- When 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.
- [50] 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?
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 14
- 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.”
- [51] 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.”
- [52] 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 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.
- [53] 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?”
- [54] 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.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 15
- “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 [55] 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 [56] 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 it was in the working part of his hand. He
- knew he would need his hands before this was over and he did not like to be cut before it started.
- “Now,” he said, when his hand had dried, “I must eat the small tuna. I can reach him with the
- gaff and eat him here in comfort.”
- He knelt down and found the tuna under the stem with the gaff and drew it toward him
- keeping it clear of the coiled lines. Holding the line with his left shoulder again, and bracing on his
- left hand and arm, he took the tuna off the gaff hook and put the gaff back in place. He put one
- knee on the fish and cut strips of dark red meat longitudinally from the back of the head to the tail.
- They were wedge-shaped strips and he cut [57] them from next to the back bone down to the edge
- of the belly. When he had cut six strips he spread them out on the wood of the bow, wiped his knife
- on his trousers, and lifted the carcass of the bonito by the tail and dropped it overboard.
- “I don’t think I can eat an entire one,” he said and drew his knife across one of the strips. He
- could feel the steady hard pull of the line and his left hand was cramped. It drew up tight on the
- heavy cord and he looked at it in disgust.
- “What kind of a hand is that,” he said. “Cramp then if you want. Make yourself into a claw. It
- will do you no good.”
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 16
- Come on, he thought and looked down into the dark water at the slant of the line. Eat it now
- and it will strengthen the hand. It is not the hand’s fault and you have been many hours with the
- fish. But you can stay with him forever. Eat the bonito now.
- He picked up a piece and put it in his mouth and chewed it slowly. It was not unpleasant.
- Chew it well, he thought, and get all the juices. It would not be had to eat with a little lime or
- with lemon or with salt.
- “How do you feel, hand?” he asked the cramped [58] hand that was almost as stiff as rigor
- mortis. “I’ll eat some more for you.”
- He ate the other part of the piece that he had cut in two. He chewed it carefully and then spat
- out the skin.
- “How does it go, hand? Or is it too early to know?”
- He took another full piece and chewed it.
- “It is a strong full-blooded fish,” he thought. “I was lucky to get him instead of dolphin.
- Dolphin is too sweet. This is hardly sweet at all and all the strength is still in it.”
- There is no sense in being anything but practical though, he thought. I wish I had some salt.
- And I do not know whether the sun will rot or dry what is left, so I had better eat it all although I
- am not hungry. The fish is calm and steady. I will eat it all and then I will be ready.
- “Be patient, hand,” he said. “I do this for you.”
- I wish I could feed the fish, he thought. He is my brother. But I must kill him and keep strong
- to do it. Slowly and conscientiously he ate all of the wedge-shaped strips of fish.
- He straightened up, wiping his hand on his trousers. “Now,” he said. “You can let the cord go,
- hand, and I will handle him with the right arm alone until you [59] stop that nonsense.” He put his
- left foot on the heavy line that the left hand had held and lay back against the pull against his back.
- “God help me to have the cramp go,” he said. “Because I do not know what the fish is going to
- do.”
- But he seems calm, he thought, and following his plan. But what is his plan, he thought. And
- what is mine? Mine I must improvise to his because of his great size. If he will jump I can kill him.
- But he stays down forever. Then I will stay down with him forever.
- He rubbed the cramped hand against his trousers and tried to gentle the fingers. But it would
- not open. Maybe it will open with the sun, he thought. Maybe it will open when the strong raw tuna
- is digested. If I have to have it, I will open it, cost whatever it costs. But I do not want to open it
- now by force. Let it open by itself and come back of its own accord. After all 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 [60] 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.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 17
- I hate a cramp, he thought. It is a treachery of one’s [61] 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 [62] 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.
- [63] 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 pace.
- I wonder why he jumped, the old man thought. He jumped almost as though to show me how
- big he was. I know now, anyway, he thought. I wish I could show him what sort of man I am. But
- then he would see the cramped hand. Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so. I
- wish I was the fish, he thought, with everything he has against only my will and my intelligence.
- He settled comfortably against the wood and took his suffering as it came and the fish swam
- steadily and the boat moved slowly through the dark water. There was a small sea rising with the
- wind coming up from the east and at noon the old man’s left hand was uncramped.
- “Bad news for you, fish,” he said and shifted the line over the sacks that covered his shoulders.
- He was comfortable but suffering, although he did not admit the suffering at all.
- “I am not religious,” he said. “But I will say ten Our [64] Fathers and ten Hail Marys that I
- should catch this fish, and I promise to make a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Cobre if I catch him.
- That is a promise.”
- He commenced to say his prayers mechanically. Sometimes he would be so tired that he could
- not remember the prayer and then he would say them fast so that they would come automatically.
- Hail Marys are easier to say than Our Fathers, he thought.
- “Hail Mary full of Grace the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is
- the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 18
- our death. Amen.” Then he added, “Blessed Virgin, pray for the death of this fish. Wonderful
- though he is.”
- With his prayers said, and feeling much better, but suffering exactly as much, and perhaps a
- little more, he leaned against the wood of the bow and began, mechanically, to work the fingers of
- his left hand.
- The sun was hot now although the breeze was rising gently.
- “I had better re-bait that little line out over the stern,” he said. “If the fish decides to stay
- another night I will need to eat again and the water is low in the bottle. I don’t think I can get
- anything but a dolphin [65] here. But if I eat him fresh enough he won’t be bad. I wish a flying fish
- would come on board tonight. But I have no light to attract them. A flying fish is excellent to eat
- raw and I would not have to cut him up. I must save all my strength now. Christ, I did not know he
- was so big.”
- “I’ll kill him though,” he said. “In all his greatness and his glory.”
- Although it is unjust, he thought. But I will show him what a man can do and what a man
- endures.
- “I told the boy I was a strange old man,” he said.
- “Now is when I must prove it.”
- The thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each
- time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it.
- I wish he’d sleep and I could sleep and dream about the lions, he thought. Why are the lions the
- main thing that is left? Don’t think, old man, he said to himself, Rest gently now against the wood
- and think of nothing. He is working. Work as little as you can.
- It was getting into the afternoon and the boat still moved slowly and steadily. But there was an
- added drag now from the easterly breeze and the old man [66] rode gently with the small sea and the
- hurt of the cord across his back came to him easily and smoothly.
- Once in the afternoon the line started to rise again. But the fish only continued to swim at a
- slightly higher level. The sun was on the old man’s left arm and shoulder and on his back. So he
- knew the fish had turned east of north.
- Now that he had seen him once, he could picture the fish swimming in the water with his
- purple pectoral fins set wide as wings and the great erect tail slicing through the dark. I wonder how
- much he sees at that depth, the old man thought. His eye is huge and a horse, with much less eye,
- can see in the dark. Once I could see quite well in the dark. Not in the absolute dark. But almost as a
- cat sees.
- The sun and his steady movement of his fingers had uncramped his left hand now completely
- and he began to shift more of the strain to it and he shrugged the muscles of his back to shift the
- hurt of the cord a little.
- “If you’re not tired, fish,” he said aloud, “you must be very strange.”
- He felt very tired now and he knew the night would come soon and he tried to think of other
- things. He thought of the Big Leagues, to him they were the Gran [67] Ligas, and he knew that the
- Yankees of New York were playing the Tigres of Detroit.
- This is the second day now that I do not know the result of the juegos, he thought. But I must
- have confidence and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even
- with the pain of the bone spur in his heel. What is a bone spur? he asked himself. Un espuela de hueso.
- We do not have them. Can it be as painful as the spur of a fighting cock in one’s heel? I do not think
- I could endure that or the loss of the eye and of both eyes and continue to fight as the fighting cocks
- do. Man is not much beside the great birds and beasts. Still I would rather be that beast down there
- in the darkness of the sea.
- “Unless sharks come,” he said aloud. “If sharks come, God pity him and me.”
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 19
- Do you believe the great DiMaggio would stay with a fish as long as I will stay with this one? he
- thought. I am sure he would and more since he is young and strong. Also his father was a fisherman.
- But would the bone spur hurt him too much?
- “I do not know,” he said aloud. “I never had a bone spur.”
- As the sun set he remembered, to give himself more [68] confidence, the time in the tavern at
- Casablanca when he had played the hand game with the great negro from Cienfuegos who was the
- strongest man on the docks. They had gone one day and one night with their elbows on a chalk line
- on the table and their forearms straight up and their hands gripped tight. Each one was trying to
- force the other’s hand down onto the table. There was much betting and people went in and out of
- the room under the kerosene lights and he had looked at the arm and hand of the negro and at the
- negro’s face. They changed the referees every four hours after the first eight so that the referees
- could sleep. Blood came out from under the fingernails of both his and the negro’s hands and they
- looked each other in the eye and at their hands and forearms and the bettors went in and out of the
- room and sat on high chairs against the wall and watched. The walls were painted bright blue and
- were of wood and the lamps threw their shadows against them. The negro’s shadow was huge and it
- moved on the wall as the breeze moved the lamps.
- The odds would change back and forth all night and they fed the negro rum and lighted
- cigarettes for him.
- Then the negro, after the rum, would try for a tremendous [69] effort and once he had the old
- man, who was not an old man then but was Santiago El Campeon, nearly three inches off balance.
- But the old man had raised his hand up to dead even again. He was sure then that he had the negro,
- who was a fine man and a great athlete, beaten. And at daylight when the bettors were asking that it
- be called a draw and the referee was shaking his head, he had unleashed his effort and forced the
- hand of the negro down and down until it rested on the wood. The match had started on a Sunday
- morning and ended on a Monday morning. Many of the bettors had asked for a draw because they
- had to go to work on the docks loading sacks of sugar or at the Havana Coal Company. Otherwise
- everyone would have wanted it to go to a finish. But he had finished it anyway and before anyone
- had to go to work.
- For a long time after that everyone had called him The Champion and there had been a return
- match in the spring. But not much money was bet and he had won it quite easily since he had
- broken the confidence of the negro from Cienfuegos in the first match. After that he had a few
- matches and then no more. He decided that he could beat anyone if he wanted to badly enough and
- he decided that it was bad for his right [70] hand for fishing. He had tried a few practice matches
- with his left hand. But his left hand had always been a traitor and would not do what he called on it
- to do and he did not trust it.
- The sun will bake it out well now, he thought. It should not cramp on me again unless it gets
- too cold in the night. I wonder what this night will bring.
- An airplane passed overhead on its course to Miami and he watched its shadow scaring up the
- schools of flying fish.
- “With so much flying fish there should be dolphin,” he said, and leaned back on the line to see
- if it was possible to gain any on his fish. But he could not and it stayed at the hardness and waterdrop
- shivering that preceded breaking. The boat moved ahead slowly and he watched the airplane
- until he could no longer see it.
- It must be very strange in an airplane, he thought. I wonder what the sea looks like from that
- height? They should be able to see the fish well if they do not fly too high. I would like to fly very
- slowly at two hundred fathoms high and see the fish from above. In the turtle boats I was in the
- cross-trees of the mast-head and even at that height I saw much. The dolphin look greener from
- there and you can see their stripes and their purple [71] spots and you can see all of the school as
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 20
- they swim. Why is it that all the fast-moving fish of the dark current have purple backs and usually
- purple stripes or spots? The dolphin looks green of course because he is really golden. But when he
- comes to feed, truly hungry, purple stripes show on his sides as on a marlin. Can it be anger, or the
- greater speed he makes that brings them out?
- Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in
- the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small
- line was taken by a dolphin. He saw it first when it jumped in the air, true gold in the last of the sun
- and bending and flapping wildly in the air. It jumped again and again in the acrobatics of its fear and
- he worked his way back to the stern and crouching and holding the big line with his right hand and
- arm, he pulled the dolphin in with his left hand, stepping on the gained line each time with his bare
- left foot. When the fish was at the stem, plunging and cutting from side to side in desperation, the
- old man leaned over the stern and lifted the burnished gold fish with its purple spots over the stem.
- Its jaws were working convulsively in quick bites against [72] the hook and it pounded the bottom of
- the skiff with its long flat body, its tail and its head until he clubbed it across the shining golden head
- until it shivered and was still.
- The old man unhooked the fish, re-baited the line with another sardine and tossed it over. Then
- he worked his way slowly back to the bow. He washed his left hand and wiped it on his trousers.
- Then he shifted the heavy line from his right hand to his left and washed his right hand in the sea
- while he watched the sun go into the ocean and the slant of the big cord.
- “He hasn’t changed at all,” he said. But watching the movement of the water against his hand
- he noted that it was perceptibly slower.
- “I’ll lash the two oars together across the stern and that will slow him in the night,” he said.
- “He’s good for the night and so am I.”
- It would be better to gut the dolphin a little later to save the blood in the meat, he thought. I
- can do that a little later and lash the oars to make a drag at the same time. I had better keep the fish
- quiet now and not disturb him too much at sunset. The setting of the sun is a difficult time for all
- fish. He let his hand dry in the air then grasped the line [73] with it and eased himself as much as he
- could and allowed himself to be pulled forward against the wood so that the boat took the strain as
- much, or more, than he did.
- I’m learning how to do it, he thought. This part of it anyway. Then too, remember he hasn’t
- eaten since he took the bait and he is huge and needs much food. I have eaten the whole bonito.
- Tomorrow I will eat the dolphin. He called it dorado. Perhaps I should eat some of it when I clean
- it. It will be harder to eat than the bonito. But, then, nothing is easy.
- “How do you feel, fish?” he asked aloud. “I feel good and my left hand is better and I have
- food for a night and a day. Pull the boat, fish.”
- He did not truly feel good because the pain from the cord across his back had almost passed
- pain and gone into a dullness that he mistrusted. But I have had worse things than that, he thought.
- My hand is only cut a little and the cramp is gone from the other. My legs are all right. Also now I
- have gained on him in the question of sustenance.
- It was dark now as it becomes dark quickly after the sun sets in September. He lay against the
- worn wood of the bow and rested all that he could. The first stars [74] were out. He did not know
- the name of Rigel but he saw it and knew soon they would all be out and he would have all his
- distant friends.
- “The fish is my friend too,” he said aloud. “I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I
- must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars.”
- Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away. But
- imagine if a man each day should have to try to kill the sun? We were born lucky, he thought.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 21
- Then he was sorry for the great fish that had nothing to eat and his determination to kill him
- never relaxed in his sorrow for him. How many people will he feed, he thought. But are they worthy
- to eat him? No, of course not. There is no one worthy of eating him from the manner of his
- behaviour and his great dignity.
- I do not understand these things, he thought. But it is good that we do not have to try to kill
- the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers.
- Now, he thought, I must think about the drag. It has its perils and its merits. I may lose so
- much line that I will lose him, if he makes his effort and the drag [75] made by the oars is in place
- and the boat loses all her lightness. Her lightness prolongs both our suffering but it is my safety
- since he has great speed that he has never yet employed. No matter what passes I must gut the
- dolphin so he does not spoil and eat some of him to be strong.
- Now I will rest an hour more and feel that he is solid and steady before I move back to the
- stern to do the work and make the decision. In the meantime I can see how he acts and if he shows
- any changes. The oars are a good trick; but it has reached the time to play for safety. He is much fish
- still and I saw that the hook was in the corner of his mouth and he has kept his mouth tight shut.
- The punishment of the hook is nothing. The punishment of hunger, and that he is against
- something that he does not comprehend, is everything. Rest now, old man, and let him work until
- your next duty comes.
- He rested for what he believed to be two hours. The moon did not rise now until late and he
- had no way of judging the time. Nor was he really resting except comparatively. He was still bearing
- the pull of the fish across his shoulders but he placed his left hand on the [76] gunwale of the bow
- and confided more and more of the resistance to the fish to the skiff itself.
- How simple it would be if I could make the line fast, he thought. But with one small lurch he
- could break it. I must cushion the pull of the line with my body and at all times be ready to give line
- with both hands.
- “But you have not slept yet, old man,” he said aloud. “It is half a day and a night and now
- another day and you have not slept. You must devise a way so that you sleep a little if he is quiet and
- steady. If you do not sleep you might become unclear in the head.”
- I’m clear enough in the head, he thought. Too clear. I am as clear as the stars that are my
- brothers. Still I must sleep. They sleep and the moon and the sun sleep and even the ocean sleeps
- sometimes on certain days when there is no current and a flat calm.
- But remember to sleep, he thought. Make yourself do it and devise some simple and sure way
- about the lines. Now go back and prepare the dolphin. It is too dangerous to rig the oars as a drag if
- you must sleep.
- I could go without sleeping, he told himself. But it would be too dangerous.
- [77] He started to work his way back to the stern on his hands and knees, being careful not to
- jerk against the fish. He may be half asleep himself, he thought. But I do not want him to rest. He
- must pull until he dies.
- Back in the stern he turned so that his left hand held the strain of the line across his shoulders
- and drew his knife from its sheath with his right hand. The stars were bright now and he saw the
- dolphin clearly and he pushed the blade of his knife into his head and drew him out from under the
- stern. He put one of his feet on the fish and slit him quickly from the vent up to the tip of his lower
- jaw. Then he put his knife down and gutted him with his right hand, scooping him clean and pulling
- the gills clear.
- He felt the maw heavy and slippery in his hands and he slit it open. There were two flying fish
- inside. They were fresh and hard and he laid them side by side and dropped the guts and the gills
- over the stern. They sank leaving a trail of phosphorescence in the water. The dolphin was cold and
- a leprous gray-white now in the starlight and the old man skinned one side of him while he held his
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 22
- right foot on the fish’s head. Then he turned him over and skinned the other side and cut each side
- off from the head down to the tail.
- [78] He slid the carcass overboard and looked to see if there was any swirl in the water. But
- there was only the light of its slow descent. He turned then and placed the two flying fish inside the
- two fillets of fish and putting his knife back in its sheath, he worked his way slowly back to the bow.
- His back was bent with the weight of the line across it and he carried the fish in his right hand.
- Back in the bow he laid the two fillets of fish out on the wood with the flying fish beside them.
- After that he settled the line across his shoulders in a new place and held it again with his left hand
- resting on the gunwale. Then he leaned over the side and washed the flying fish in the water, noting
- the speed of the water against his hand. His hand was phosphorescent from skinning the fish and he
- watched the flow of the water against it. The flow was less strong and as he rubbed the side of his
- hand against the planking of the skiff, particles of phosphorus floated off and drifted slowly astern.
- “He is tiring or he is resting,” the old man said. “Now let me get through the eating of this
- dolphin and get some rest and a little sleep.”
- Under the stars and with the night colder all the [79] time he ate half of one of the dolphin
- fillets and one of the flying fish, gutted and with its head cut off.
- “What an excellent fish dolphin is to eat cooked,” he said. “And what a miserable fish raw. I
- will never go in a boat again without salt or limes.”
- If I had brains I would have splashed water on the bow all day and drying, it would have made
- salt, he thought. But then I did not hook the dolphin until almost sunset. Still it was a lack of
- preparation. But I have chewed it all well and I am not nauseated.
- The sky was clouding over to the east and one after another the stars he knew were gone. It
- looked now as though he were moving into a great canyon of clouds and the wind had dropped.
- “There will be bad weather in three or four days,” he said. “But not tonight and not tomorrow.
- Rig now to get some sleep, old man, while the fish is calm and steady.”
- He held the line tight in his right hand and then pushed his thigh against his right hand as he
- leaned all his weight against the wood of the bow. Then he passed the line a little lower on his
- shoulders and braced his left hand on it.
- My right hand can hold it as long as it is braced, he [80] thought If it relaxes in sleep my left
- hand will wake me as the line goes out. It is hard on the right hand. But he is used to punishment
- Even if I sleep twenty minutes or a half an hour it is good. He lay forward cramping himself against
- the line with all of his body, putting all his weight onto his right band, and he was asleep.
- He did not dream of the lions but instead of a vast school of porpoises that stretched for eight
- or ten miles and it was in the time of their mating and they would leap high into the air and return
- into the same hole they had made in the water when they leaped.
- Then he dreamed that he was in the village on his bed and there was a norther and he was very
- cold and his right arm was asleep because his head had rested on it instead of a pillow.
- After that he began to dream of the long yellow beach and he saw the first of the lions come
- down onto it in the early dark and then the other lions came and he rested his chin on the wood of
- the bows where the ship lay anchored with the evening off-shore breeze and he waited to see if
- there would be more lions and he was happy.
- The moon had been up for a long time but he slept [81] on and the fish pulled on steadily and
- the boat moved into the tunnel of clouds.
- He woke with the jerk of his right fist coming up against his face and the line burning out
- through his right hand. He had no feeling of his left hand but he braked all he could with his right
- and the line rushed out. Finally his left hand found the line and he leaned back against the line and
- now it burned his back and his left hand, and his left hand was taking all the strain and cutting badly.
- He looked back at the coils of line and they were feeding smoothly. Just then the fish jumped
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 23
- making a great bursting of the ocean and then a heavy fall. Then he jumped again and again and the
- boat was going fast although line was still racing out and the old man was raising the strain to
- breaking point and raising it to breaking point again and again. He had been pulled down tight onto
- the bow and his face was in the cut slice of dolphin and he could not move.
- This is what we waited for, he thought. So now let us take it. Make him pay for the line, he
- thought. Make him pay for it.
- He could not see the fish’s jumps but only heard the [82] breaking of the ocean and the heavy
- splash as he fell. The speed of the line was cutting his hands badly but he had always known this
- would happen and he tried to keep the cutting across the calloused parts and not let the line slip into
- the palm nor cut the fingers.
- If the boy was here he would wet the coils of line, he thought. Yes. If the boy were here. If the
- boy were here.
- The line went out and out and out but it was slowing now and he was making the fish earn each
- inch of it. Now he got his head up from the wood and out of the slice of fish that his cheek had
- crushed. Then he was on his knees and then he rose slowly to his feet. He was ceding line but more
- slowly all he time. He worked back to where he could feel with his foot the coils of line that he
- could not see. There was plenty of line still and now the fish had to pull the friction of all that new
- line through the water.
- Yes, he thought. And now he has jumped more than a dozen times and filled the sacks along
- his back with air and he cannot go down deep to die where I cannot bring him up. He will start
- circling soon and then I must work on him. I wonder what started him so suddenly? Could it have
- been hunger that made him desperate, [83] or was he frightened by something in the night? Maybe
- he suddenly felt fear. But he was such a calm, strong fish and he seemed so fearless and so
- confident. It is strange.
- “You better be fearless and confident yourself, old man,” he said. “You’re holding him again
- but you cannot get line. But soon he has to circle.”
- The old man held him with his left hand and his shoulders now and stooped down and scooped
- up water in his right hand to get the crushed dolphin flesh off of his face. He was afraid that it might
- nauseate him and he would vomit and lose his strength. When his face was cleaned he washed his
- right hand in the water over the side and then let it stay in the salt water while he watched the first
- light come before the sunrise. He’s headed almost east, he thought. That means he is tired and going
- with the current. Soon he will have to circle. Then our true work begins.
- After he judged that his right hand had been in the water long enough he took it out and looked
- at it.
- “It is not bad,” he said. “And pain does not matter to a man.”
- He took hold of the line carefully so that it did not fit into any of the fresh line cuts and shifted
- his weight [84] so that he could put his left hand into the sea on the other side of the skiff.
- “You did not do so badly for something worthless,” he said to his left hand. “But there was a
- moment when I could not find you.”
- Why was I not born with two good hands? he thought. Perhaps it was my fault in not training
- that one properly. But God knows he has had enough chances to learn. He did not do so badly in
- the night, though, and he has only cramped once. If he cramps again let the line cut him off.
- When he thought that he knew that he was not being clear-headed and he thought he should
- chew some more of the dolphin. But I can’t, he told himself. It is better to be light-headed than to
- lose your strength from nausea. And I know I cannot keep it if I eat it since my face was in it. I will
- keep it for an emergency until it goes bad. But it is too late to try for strength now through
- nourishment. You’re stupid, he told himself. Eat the other flying fish.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 24
- It was there, cleaned and ready, and he picked it up with his left hand and ate it chewing the
- bones carefully and eating all of it down to the tail.
- It has more nourishment than almost any fish, he [85] thought. At least the kind of strength that
- I need. Now I have done what I can, he thought. Let him begin to circle and let the fight come.
- The sun was rising for the third time since he had put to sea when the fish started to circle.
- He could not see by the slant of the line that the fish was circling. It was too early for that. He
- just felt a faint slackening of the pressure of the line and he commenced to pull on it gently with his
- right hand. It tightened, as always, but just when he reached the point where it would break, line
- began to come in. He slipped his shoulders and head from under the line and began to pull in line
- steadily and gently. He used both of his hands in a swinging motion and tried to do the pulling as
- much as he could with his body and his legs. His old legs and shoulders pivoted with the swinging of
- the pulling.
- “It is a very big circle,” he said. “But he is circling.” Then the line would not come in any more
- and he held it until he saw the drops jumping from it in the sun. Then it started out and the old man
- knelt down and let it go grudgingly back into the dark water.
- “He is making the far part of his circle now,” he said. I must hold all I can, he thought. The
- strain will [86] shorten his circle each time. Perhaps in an hour I will see him. Now I must convince
- him and then I must kill him.
- But the fish kept on circling slowly and the old man was wet with sweat and tired deep into his
- bones two hours later. But the circles were much shorter now and from the way the line slanted he
- could tell the fish had risen steadily while he swam.
- For an hour the old man had been seeing black spots before his eyes and the sweat salted his
- eyes and salted the cut over his eye and on his forehead. He was not afraid of the black spots. They
- were normal at the tension that he was pulling on the line. Twice, though, he had felt faint and dizzy
- and that had worried him.
- “I could not fail myself and die on a fish like this,” he said. “Now that I have him coming so
- beautifully, God help me endure. I’ll say a hundred Our Fathers and a hundred Hail Marys. But I
- cannot say them now.
- Consider them said, he thought. I’ll say them later. Just then he felt a sudden banging and
- jerking on the line he held with his two hands. It was sharp and hard-feeling and heavy.
- He is hitting the wire leader with his spear, he [87] thought. That was bound to come. He had
- to do that. It may make him jump though and I would rather he stayed circling now. The jumps
- were necessary for him to take air. But after that each one can widen the opening of the hook
- wound and he can throw the hook.
- “Don’t jump, fish,” he said. “Don’t jump.”
- The fish hit the wire several times more and each time he shook his head the old man gave up a
- little line.
- I must hold his pain where it is, he thought. Mine does not matter. I can control mine. But his
- pain could drive him mad.
- After a while the fish stopped beating at the wire and started circling slowly again. The old man
- was gaining line steadily now. But he felt faint again. He lifted some sea water with his left hand and
- put it on his head. Then he put more on and rubbed the back of his neck.
- “I have no cramps,” he said. “He’ll be up soon and I can last. You have to last. Don’t even
- speak of it.”
- He kneeled against the bow and, for a moment, slipped the line over his back again. I’ll rest
- now while he goes out on the circle and then stand up and work on him when he comes in, he
- decided.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 25
- [88] It was a great temptation to rest in the bow and let the fish make one circle by himself
- without recovering any line. But when the strain showed the fish had turned to come toward the
- boat, the old man rose to his feet and started the pivoting and the weaving pulling that brought in all
- the line he gained.
- I’m tireder than I have ever been, he thought, and now the trade wind is rising. But that will be
- good to take him in with. I need that badly.
- “I’ll rest on the next turn as he goes out,” he said. “I feel much better. Then in two or three
- turns more I will have him.”
- His straw hat was far on the back of his head and he sank down into the bow with the pull of
- the line as he felt the fish turn.
- You work now, fish, he thought. I’ll take you at the turn.
- The sea had risen considerably. But it was a fair-weather breeze and he had to have it to get
- home.
- “I’ll just steer south and west,” he said. “A man is never lost at sea and it is a long island.”
- It was on the third turn that he saw the fish first.
- He saw him first as a dark shadow that took so long [89] to pass under the boat that he could
- not believe its length.
- “No,” he said. “He can’t be that big.”
- But he was that big and at the end of this circle he came to the surface only thirty yards away
- and the man saw his tail out of water. It was higher than a big scythe blade and a very pale lavender
- above the dark blue water. It raked back and as the fish swam just below the surface the old man
- could see his huge bulk and the purple stripes that banded him. His dorsal fin was down and his
- huge pectorals were spread wide.
- On this circle the old man could see the fish’s eye and the two gray sucking fish that swain
- around him. Sometimes they attached themselves to him. Sometimes they darted off. Sometimes
- they would swim easily in his shadow. They were each over three feet long and when they swam fast
- they lashed their whole bodies like eels.
- The old man was sweating now but from something else besides the sun. On each calm placid
- turn the fish made he was gaining line and he was sure that in two turns more he would have a
- chance to get the harpoon in.
- [90] But I must get him close, close, close, he thought. I mustn’t try for the head. I must get the
- heart.
- “Be calm and strong, old man,” he said.
- On the next circle the fish’s beck was out but he was a little too far from the boat. On the next
- circle he was still too far away but he was higher out of water and the old man was sure that by
- gaining some more line he could have him alongside.
- He had rigged his harpoon long before and its coil of light rope was in a round basket and the
- end was made fast to the bitt in the bow.
- The fish was coming in on his circle now calm and beautiful looking and only his great tail
- moving. The old man pulled on him all that he could to bring him closer. For just a moment the fish
- turned a little on his side. Then he straightened himself and began another circle.
- “I moved him,” the old man said. “I moved him then.”
- He felt faint again now but he held on the great fish all the strain that he could. I moved him,
- he thought. Maybe this time I can get him over. Pull, hands, he thought. Hold up, legs. Last for me,
- head. Last for me. You never went. This time I’ll pull him over.
- [91] But when he put all of his effort on, starting it well out before the fish came alongside and
- pulling with all his strength, the fish pulled part way over and then righted himself and swam away.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 26
- “Fish,” the old man said. “Fish, you are going to have to die anyway. Do you have to kill me
- too?”
- That way nothing is accomplished, he thought. His mouth was too dry to speak but he could
- not reach for the water now. I must get him alongside this time, he thought. I am not good for many
- more turns. Yes you are, he told himself. You’re good for ever.
- On the next turn, he nearly had him. But again the fish righted himself and swam slowly away.
- You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a
- greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me.
- I do not care who kills who.
- Now you are getting confused in the head, he thought. You must keep your head clear. Keep
- your head clear and know how to suffer like a man. Or a fish, he thought.
- “Clear up, head,” he said in a voice he could hardly hear. “Clear up.”
- [92] Twice more it was the same on the turns.
- I do not know, the old man thought. He had been on the point of feeling himself go each time.
- I do not know. But I will try it once more.
- He tried it once more and he felt himself going when he turned the fish. The fish righted
- himself and swam off again slowly with the great tail weaving in the air.
- I’ll try it again, the old man promised, although his hands were mushy now and he could only
- see well in flashes.
- 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
- almost touching the planking 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 more strength he had [93] just summoned, 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 projecting at an angle from the fish’s shoulder and
- the sea was discolouring with the red of the blood from his heart. First it was dark as a shoal in the
- blue water that was more than a mile deep. Then it spread like a cloud. The fish was silvery 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 [94] line around the bitt in the bow and hid his head on his hands.
- “Keep my head dear,” 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 slave work.”
- Now I must prepare the nooses and the rope to lash 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 lash 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 mouth and make his head fast alongside the bow. I want to see him, he thought, and to
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 27
- 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 [95] small drink of the water. “There is very
- much slave 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
- more 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 lay there wallowing now in the seas and the old man pulled the skiff upon to 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 colour 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.
- [96] “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 hundred pounds the
- way he is, he thought. Maybe much more. 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
- lashing a much bigger skiff alongside. He cut a piece of line and tied the fish’s lower jaw against his
- bill so his mouth 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 move, and half lying in the stern he sailed south-west.
- He did not need a compass to tell him where southwest was. He only needed the feel of the
- trade wind and the drawing of the sail. I better put a small line [97] out with a spoon on it and try
- and get something to eat and drink for the moisture. But he could not find a spoon and his sardines
- were rotten. So he hooked a patch of yellow Gulf weed with the gaff as they passed and shook it so
- that the small shrimps that were in it fell onto the planking of the skiff. There were more than a
- dozen of them and they jumped and kicked like sand fleas. The old man pinched their heads off
- with his thumb and forefinger and ate them chewing up the shells and the tails. They were very tiny
- but he knew they were nourishing and they tasted good.
- The old man still had two drinks of water in the bottle and he used half of one after he had
- eaten the shrimps. The skiff was sailing well considering the handicaps and he steered with the tiller
- under his arm. He could see the fish and he had only to look at his hands and feel his back against
- the stern to know that this had truly happened and was not a dream. At one time when he was
- feeling so badly toward the end, he had thought perhaps it was a dream. Then when he had seen the
- fish come out of the water and hang motionless in the sky before he fell, he was sure there was some
- great strangeness and he could not believe it.
- [98] Then he could not see well, although now he saw as well as ever. Now he knew there was
- the fish and his hands and back were no dream. The hands cure quickly, he thought. I bled them
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 28
- clean and the salt water will heal them. The dark water of the true gulf is the greatest healer that
- there is. All I must do is keep the head clear. The hands have done their work and we sail well. With
- his mouth shut and his tail straight up and down we sail like brothers. Then his head started to
- become a little unclear and he thought, is he bringing me in or am I bringing him in? If I were
- towing him behind there would be no question. Nor if the fish were in the skiff, with all dignity
- gone, there would be no question either. But they were sailing together lashed side by side and the
- old man thought, let him bring me in if it pleases him. I am only better than him through trickery
- and he meant me no harm.
- They sailed well and the old man soaked his hands in the salt water and tried to keep his head
- clear. There were high cumulus clouds and enough cirrus above them so that the old man knew the
- breeze would last all night. The old man looked at the fish constantly [99] to make sure it was true. It
- was an hour before the first shark hit him.
- The shark was not an accident. He had come up from deep down in the water as the dark cloud
- of blood had settled and dispersed in the mile deep sea. He had come up so fast and absolutely
- without caution that he broke the surface of the blue water and was in the sun. Then he fell back
- into the sea and picked up the scent and started swimming on the course the skiff and the fish had
- taken.
- Sometimes he lost the scent. But he would pick it up again, or have just a trace of it, and he
- swam fast and hard on the course. He was a very big Make shark built to swim as fast as the fastest
- fish in the sea and everything about him was beautiful except his jaws. His back was as blue as a
- sword fish’s and his belly was silver and his hide was smooth and handsome. He was built as a
- sword fish except for his huge jaws which were tight shut now as he swam fast, just under the
- surface with his high dorsal fin knifing through the water without wavering. Inside the closed double
- lip of his jaws all of his eight rows of teeth were slanted inwards. They were not the ordinary
- pyramid-shaped teeth of most sharks. They were shaped like a man’s [100] fingers when they are
- crisped like claws. They were nearly as long as the fingers of the old man and they had razor-sharp
- cutting edges on both sides. This was a fish built to feed on all the fishes in the sea, that were so fast
- and strong and well armed that they had no other enemy. Now he speeded up as he smelled the
- fresher scent and his blue dorsal fin cut the water.
- When the old man saw him coming he knew that this was a shark that had no fear at all and
- would do exactly what he wished. He prepared the harpoon and made the rope fast while he
- watched the shark come on. The rope was short as it lacked what he had cut away to lash the fish.
- The old man’s head was clear and good now and he was full of resolution but he had little
- hope. It was too good to last, he thought. He took one look at the great fish as he watched the shark
- close in. It might as well have been a dream, he thought. I cannot keep him from hitting me but
- maybe I can get him. Dentuso, he thought. Bad luck to your mother.
- The shark closed fast astern and when he hit the fish the old man saw his mouth open and his
- strange eyes and the clicking chop of the teeth as he drove forward in the meat just above the tail.
- The shark’s head [101] was out of water and his back was coming out and the old man could hear
- the noise of skin and flesh ripping on the big fish when he rammed the harpoon down onto the
- shark’s head at a spot where the line between his eyes intersected with the line that ran straight back
- from his nose. There were no such lines. There was only the heavy sharp blue head and the big eyes
- and the clicking, thrusting all-swallowing jaws. But that was the location of the brain and the old
- man hit it. He hit it with his blood mushed hands driving a good harpoon with all his strength. He
- hit it without hope but with resolution and complete malignancy.
- The shark swung over and the old man saw his eye was not alive and then he swung over once
- again, wrapping himself in two loops of the rope. The old man knew that he was dead but the shark
- would not accept it. Then, on his back, with his tail lashing and his jaws clicking, the shark plowed
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 29
- over the water as a speedboat does. The water was white where his tail beat it and three-quarters of
- his body was clear above the water when the rope came taut, shivered, and then snapped. The shark
- lay quietly for a little while on the surface and the old man watched him. Then he went down very
- slowly.
- [102] “He took about forty pounds,” the old man said aloud. He took my harpoon too and all
- the rope, he thought, and now my fish bleeds again and there will be others.
- He did not like to look at the fish anymore since he had been mutilated. When the fish had
- been hit it was as though he himself were hit.
- But I killed the shark that hit my fish, he thought. And he was the biggest dentuso that I have
- ever seen. And God knows that I have seen big ones.
- It was too good to last, he thought. I wish it had been a dream now and that I had never
- hooked the fish and was alone in bed on the newspapers.
- “But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” I am
- sorry that I killed the fish though, he thought. Now the bad time is coming and I do not even have
- the harpoon. The dentuso is cruel and able and strong and intelligent. But I was more intelligent
- than he was. Perhaps not, he thought. Perhaps I was only better armed.
- “Don’t think, old man,” he said aloud. “Sail on this course and take it when it comes.
- But I must think, he thought. Because it is all I have left. That and baseball. I wonder how the
- great [103] DiMaggio would have liked the way I hit him in the brain? It was no great thing, he
- thought. Any man could do it. But do you think my hands were as great a handicap as the bone
- spurs? I cannot know. I never had anything wrong with my heel except the time the sting ray stung it
- when I stepped on him when swimming and paralyzed the lower leg and made the unbearable pain.
- “Think about something cheerful, old man,” he said. “Every minute now you are closer to
- home. You sail lighter for the loss of forty pounds.”
- He knew quite well the pattern of what could happen when he reached the inner part of the
- current. But there was nothing to be done now.
- “Yes there is,” he said aloud. “I can lash my knife to the butt of one of the oars.”
- So he did that with the tiller under his arm and the sheet of the sail under his foot.
- “Now,” he said. “I am still an old man. But I am not unarmed.”
- The breeze was fresh now and he sailed on well. He watched only the forward part of the fish
- and some of his hope returned.
- It is silly not to hope, he thought. Besides I believe [104] it is a sin. Do not think about sin, he
- thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.
- I have no understanding of it and I am not sure that I believe in it. Perhaps it was a sin to kill
- the fish. I suppose it was even though I did it to keep me alive and feed many people. But then
- everything is a sin. Do not think about sin. It is much too late for that and there are people who are
- paid to do it. Let them think about it. You were born to be a fisherman as the fish was born to be a
- fish. San Pedro was a fisherman as was the father of the great DiMaggio.
- But he liked to think about all things that he was involved in and since there was nothing to
- read and he did not have a radio, he thought much and he kept on thinking about sin. You did not
- kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because
- you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is
- not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?
- “You think too much, old man,” he said aloud.
- But you enjoyed killing the dentuso, he thought. He lives on the live fish as you do. He is not a
- scavenger [105] nor just a moving appetite as some sharks are. He is beautiful and noble and knows
- no fear of anything.
- “I killed him in self-defense,” the old man said aloud. “And I killed him well.”
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 30
- Besides, he thought, everything kills everything else in some way. Fishing kills me exactly as it
- keeps me alive. The boy keeps me alive, he thought. I must not deceive myself too much.
- He leaned over the side and pulled loose a piece of the meat of the fish where the shark had cut
- him. He chewed it and noted its quality and its good taste. It was firm and juicy, like meat, but it was
- not red. There was no stringiness in it and he knew that it would bring the highest price In the
- market. But there was no way to keep its scent out of the water and the old man knew that a very
- had time was coming.
- The breeze was steady. It had backed a little further into the north-east and he knew that meant
- that it would not fall off. The old man looked ahead of him but he could see no sails nor could he
- see the hull nor the smoke of any ship. There were only the flying fish that went up from his bow
- sailing away to either side and the yellow patches of Gulf weed. He could not even see a bird.
- [106] He had sailed for two hours, resting in the stern and sometimes chewing a bit of the meat
- from the marlin, trying to rest and to be strong, when he saw the first of the two sharks.
- “Ay,” he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a
- man might make, involuntarily, feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.
- “Galanos,” he said aloud. He had seen the second fin now coming up behind the first and had
- identified them as shovel-nosed sharks by the brown, triangular fin and the sweeping movements of
- the tail. They had the scent and were excited and in the stupidity of their great hunger they were
- losing and finding the scent in their excitement. But they were closing all the time.
- The old man made the sheet fast and jammed the tiller. Then he took up the oar with the knife
- lashed to it. He lifted it as lightly as he could because his hands rebelled at the pain. Then he opened
- and closed them on it lightly to loosen them. He closed them firmly so they would take the pain now
- and would not flinch and watched the sharks come. He could see their wide, flattened, shovelpointed
- heads now and their white tipped wide pectoral fins. They were hateful sharks, [107] bad
- smelling, scavengers as well as killers, and when they were hungry they would bite at an oar or the
- rudder of a boat. It was these sharks that would cut the turtles’ legs and flippers off when the turtles
- were asleep on the surface, and they would hit a man in the water, if they were hungry, even if the
- man had no smell of fish blood nor of fish slime on him.
- “Ay,” the old man said. “Galanos. Come on galanos.”
- They came. But they did not come as the Mako had come. One turned and went out of sight
- under the skiff and the old man could feel the skiff shake as he jerked and pulled on the fish. The
- other watched the old man with his slitted yellow eyes and then came in fast with his half circle of
- jaws wide to hit the fish where he had already been bitten. The line showed clearly on the top of his
- brown head and back where the brain joined the spinal cord and the old man drove the knife on the
- oar into the juncture, withdrew it, and drove it in again into the shark’s yellow cat-like eyes. The
- shark let go of the fish and slid down, swallowing what he had taken as he died.
- The skiff was still shaking with the destruction the other shark was doing to the fish and the old
- man let [108] go the sheet so that the skiff would swing broadside and bring the shark out from
- under. When he saw the shark he leaned over the side and punched at him. He hit only meat and the
- hide was set hard and he barely got the knife in. The blow hurt not only his hands but his shoulder
- too. But the shark came up fast with his head out and the old man hit him squarely in the center of
- his flat-topped head as his nose came out of water and lay against the fish. The old man withdrew
- the blade and punched the shark exactly in the same spot again. He still hung to the fish with his
- jaws hooked and the old man stabbed him in his left eye. The shark still hung there.
- “No?” the old man said and he drove the blade between the vertebrae and the brain. It was an
- easy shot now and he felt the cartilage sever. The old man reversed the oar and put the blade
- between the shark’s jaws to open them. He twisted the blade and as the shark slid loose he said, “Go
- on, galano. Slide down a mile deep. Go see your friend, or maybe it’s your mother.”
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 31
- The old man wiped the blade of his knife and laid down the oar. Then he found the sheet and
- the sail filled and he brought the skiff onto her course.
- [109] “They must have taken a quarter of him and of the best meat,” he said aloud. “I wish it
- were a dream and that I had never hooked him. I’m sorry about it, fish. It makes everything wrong.”
- He stopped and he did not want to look at the fish now. Drained of blood and awash he looked the
- colour of the silver backing of a minor and his stripes still showed.
- “I shouldn’t have gone out so far, fish,” he said. “Neither for you nor for me. I’m sorry, fish.”
- Now, he said to himself. Look to the lashing on the knife and see if it has been cut. Then get
- your hand in order because there still is more to come.
- “I wish I had a stone for the knife,” the old man said after he had checked the lashing on the
- oar butt. “I should have brought a stone.” You should have brought many things, he thought. But
- you did not bring them, old man. Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what
- you can do with what there is.
- “You give me much good counsel,” he said aloud. “I’m tired of it.”
- He held the tiller under his arm and soaked both his hands in the water as the skiff drove
- forward.
- “God knows how much that last one took,” he said.
- [110] “But she’s much lighter now.” He did not want to think of the mutilated under-side of the
- fish. He knew that each of the jerking bumps of the shark had been meat torn away and that the fish
- now made a trail for all sharks as wide as a highway through the sea.
- He was a fish to keep a man all winter, he thought Don’t think of that. Just rest and try to get
- your hands in shape to defend what is left of him. The blood smell from my hands means nothing
- now with all that scent in the water. Besides they do not bleed much. There is nothing cut that
- means anything. The bleeding may keep the left from cramping.
- What can I think of now? he thought. Nothing. I must think of nothing and wait for the next
- ones. I wish it had really been a dream, he thought. But who knows? It might have turned out well.
- The next shark that came was a single shovelnose. He came like a pig to the trough if a pig had
- a mouth so wide that you could put your head in it. The old man let him hit the fish and then drove
- the knife on the oar don into his brain. But the shark jerked backwards as he rolled and the knife
- blade snapped.
- The old man settled himself to steer. He did not even watch the big shark sinking slowly in the
- water, [111] showing first life-size, then small, then tiny. That always fascinated the old man. But he
- did not even watch it now.
- “I have the gaff now,” he said. “But it will do no good. I have the two oars and the tiller and
- the short club.”
- Now they have beaten me, he thought. I am too old to club sharks to death. But I will try it as
- long as I have the oars and the short club and the tiller.
- He put his hands in the water again to soak them. It was getting late in the afternoon and he
- saw nothing but the sea and the sky. There was more wind in the sky than there had been, and soon
- he hoped that he would see land.
- “You’re tired, old man,” he said. “You’re tired inside.”
- The sharks did not hit him again until just before sunset.
- The old man saw the brown fins coming along the wide trail the fish must make in the water.
- They were not even quartering on the scent. They were headed straight for the skiff swimming side
- by side.
- He jammed the tiller, made the sheet fast and reached under the stem for the club. It was an oar
- handle [112] from a broken oar sawed off to about two and a half feet in length. He could only use it
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 32
- effectively with one hand because of the grip of the handle and he took good hold of it with his
- right hand, flexing his hand on it, as he watched the sharks come. They were both galanos.
- I must let the first one get a good hold and hit him on the point of the nose or straight across
- the top of the head, he thought.
- The two sharks closed together and as he saw the one nearest him open his jaws and sink them
- into the silver side of the fish, he raised the club high and brought it down heavy and slamming onto
- the top of the shark’s broad head. He felt the rubbery solidity as the club came down. But he felt the
- rigidity of bone too and he struck the shark once more hard across the point of the nose as he slid
- down from the fish.
- The other shark had been in and out and now came in again with his jaws wide. The old man
- could see pieces of the meat of the fish spilling white from the corner of his jaws as he bumped the
- fish and closed his jaws. He swung at him and hit only the head and the shark looked at him and
- wrenched the meat loose. The [113] old man swung the club down on him again as he slipped away
- to swallow and hit only the heavy solid rubberiness.
- “Come on, galano,” the old man said. “Come in again.”
- The shark came in a rush and the old man hit him as he shut his jaws. He hit him solidly and
- from as high up as he could raise the club. This time he felt the bone at the base of the brain and he
- hit him again in the same place while the shark tore the meat loose sluggishly and slid down from
- the fish.
- The old man watched for him to come again but neither shark showed. Then he saw one on the
- surface swimming in circles. He did not see the fin of the other.
- I could not expect to kill them, he thought. I could have in my time. But I have hurt them both
- badly and neither one can feel very good. If I could have used a bat with two hands I could have
- killed the first one surely. Even now, he thought.
- He did not want to look at the fish. He knew that half of him had been destroyed. The sun had
- gone down while he had been in the fight with the sharks.
- “It will be dark soon,” he said. “Then I should see [114] the glow of Havana.. If I am too far to
- the eastward I will see the lights of one of the new beaches.”
- I cannot be too far out now, he thought. I hope no one has been too worried. There is only the
- boy to worry, of course. But I am sure he would have confidence. Many of the older fishermen will
- worry. Many others too, he thought. I live in a good town.
- He could not talk to the fish anymore because the fish had been ruined too badly. Then
- something came into his head.
- “Half fish,” he said. “Fish that you were. I am sorry that I went too far out. I ruined us both.
- But we have killed many sharks, you and I, and ruined many others. How many did you ever kill, old
- fish? You do not have that spear on your head for nothing.”
- He liked to think of the fish and what he could do to a shark if he were swimming free. I should
- have chopped the bill off to fight them with, he thought. But there was no hatchet and then there
- was no knife.
- But if I had, and could have lashed it to an oar butt, what a weapon. Then we might have
- fought them together. What will you do now if they come in the night? What can you do?
- “Fight them,” he said. “I’ll fight them until I die.”
- [115] But in the dark now and no glow showing and no lights and only the wind and the steady
- pull of the sail he felt that perhaps he was already dead. He put his two hands together and felt the
- palms. They were not dead and he could bring the pain of life by simply opening and closing them.
- He leaned his back against the stern and knew he was not dead. His shoulders told him.
- I have all those prayers I promised if I caught the fish, he thought. But I am too tired to say
- them now. I better get the sack and put it over my shoulders.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 33
- He lay in the stern and steered and watched for the glow to come in the sky. I have half of him,
- he thought. Maybe I’ll have the luck to bring the forward half in. I should have some luck. No, he
- said. You violated your luck when you went too far outside.
- “Don’t be silly,” he said aloud. “And keep awake and steer. You may have much luck yet.”
- “I’d like to buy some if there’s any place they sell it,” he said.
- What could I buy it with? he asked himself. Could I buy it with a lost harpoon and a broken
- knife and two bad hands?
- “You might,” he said. “You tried to buy it with [116] eighty-four days at sea. They nearly sold it
- to you too.”
- I must not think nonsense, he thought. Luck is a thing that comes in many forms and who can
- recognize her? I would take some though in any form and pay what they asked. I wish I could see
- the glow from the lights, he thought. I wish too many things. But that is the thing I wish for now.
- He tried to settle more comfortably to steer and from his pain he knew he was not dead.
- He saw the reflected glare of the lights of the city at what must have been around ten o’clock at
- night. They were only perceptible at first as the light is in the sky before the moon rises. Then they
- were steady to see across the ocean which was rough now with the increasing breeze. He steered
- inside of the glow and he thought that now, soon, he must hit the edge of the stream.
- Now it is over, he thought. They will probably hit me again. But what can a man do against
- them in the dark without a weapon?
- He was stiff and sore now and his wounds and all of the strained parts of his body hurt with the
- cold of the night. I hope I do not have to fight again, he thought. I hope so much I do not have to
- fight again.
- [117] But by midnight he fought and this time he knew the fight was useless. They came in a
- pack and he could only see the lines in the water that their fins made and their phosphorescence as
- they threw themselves on the fish. He clubbed at heads and heard the jaws chop and the shaking of
- the skiff as they took hold below. He clubbed desperately at what he could only feel and hear and he
- felt something seize the club and it was gone.
- He jerked the tiller free from the rudder and beat and chopped with it, holding it in both hands
- and driving it down again and again. But they were up to the bow now and driving in one after the
- other and together, tearing off the pieces of meat that showed glowing below the sea as they turned
- to come once more.
- One came, finally, against the head itself and he knew that it was over. He swung the tiller
- across the shark’s head where the jaws were caught in the heaviness of the fish’s head which would
- not tear. He swung it once and twice and again. He heard the tiller break and he lunged at the shark
- with the splintered butt. He felt it go in and knowing it was sharp he drove it in again. The shark let
- go and rolled away. That was the [118] last shark of the pack that came. There was nothing more for
- them to eat.
- The old man could hardly breathe now and he felt a strange taste in his mouth. It was coppery
- and sweet and he was afraid of it for a moment. But there was not much of it.
- He spat into the ocean and said, “Eat that, galanos. And make a dream you’ve killed a man.”
- He knew he was beaten now finally and without remedy and he went back to the stern and
- found the jagged end of the tiller would fit in the slot of the rudder well enough for him to steer. He
- settled the sack around his shoulders and put the skiff on her course. He sailed lightly now and he
- had no thoughts nor any feelings of any kind. He was past everything now and he sailed the skiff to
- make his home port as well and as intelligently as he could. In the night sharks hit the carcass as
- someone might pick up crumbs from the table. The old man paid no attention to them and did not
- pay any attention to anything except steering. He only noticed how lightly and bow well the skiff
- sailed now there was no great weight beside her.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 34
- [119] She’s good, he thought. She is sound and not harmed in any way except for the tiller. That
- is easily replaced.
- He could feel he was inside the current now and he could see the lights of the beach colonies
- along the shore. He knew where he was now and it was nothing to get home.
- The wind is our friend, anyway, he thought. Then he added, sometimes. And the great sea with
- our friends and our enemies. And bed, he thought. Bed is my friend. Just bed, he thought. Bed will
- be a great thing. It is easy when you are beaten, he thought. I never knew how easy it was. And what
- beat you, he thought.
- “Nothing,” he said aloud. “I went out too far.”
- When he sailed into the little harbour the lights of the Terrace were out and he knew everyone
- was in bed. The breeze had risen steadily and was blowing strongly now. It was quiet in the harbour
- though and he sailed up onto the little patch of shingle below the rocks. There was no one to help
- him so he pulled the boat up as far as he could. Then he stepped out and made her fast to a rock.
- [120] He unstepped the mast and furled the sail and tied it. Then he shouldered the mast and
- started to climb. It was then he knew the depth of his tiredness. He stopped for a moment and
- looked back and saw in the reflection from the street light the great tail of the fish standing up well
- behind the skiff’s stern. He saw the white naked line of his backbone and the dark mass of the head
- with the projecting bill and all the nakedness between.
- He started to climb again and at the top he fell and lay for some time with the mast across his
- shoulder. He tried to get up. But it was too difficult and he sat there with the mast on his shoulder
- and looked at the road. A cat passed on the far side going about its business and the old man
- watched it. Then he just watched the road.
- Finally he put the mast down and stood up. He picked the mast up and put it on his shoulder
- and started up the road. He had to sit down five times before he reached his shack.
- Inside the shack he leaned the mast against the wall. In the dark he found a water bottle and
- took a drink. Then he lay down on the bed. He pulled the blanket [121] over his shoulders and then
- over his back and legs and he slept face down on the newspapers with his arms out straight and the
- palms of his hands up.
- He was asleep when the boy looked in the door in the morning. It was blowing so hard that the
- drifting-boats would not be going out and the boy had slept late and then come to the old man’s
- shack as he had come each morning. The boy saw that the old man was breathing and then he saw
- the old man’s hands and he started to cry. He went out very quietly to go to bring some coffee and
- all the way down the road he was crying.
- Many fishermen were around the skiff looking at what was lashed beside it and one was in the
- water, his trousers rolled up, measuring the skeleton with a length of line.
- The boy did not go down. He had been there before and one of the fishermen was looking
- after the skiff for him.
- “How is he?” one of the fishermen shouted.
- “Sleeping,” the boy called. He did not care that they saw him crying. “Let no one disturb him.”
- “He was eighteen feet from nose to tail,” the fisherman who was measuring him called.
- [122] “I believe it,” the boy said.
- He went into the Terrace and asked for a can of coffee.
- “Hot and with plenty of milk and sugar in it.”
- “Anything more?”
- “No. Afterwards I will see what he can eat.”
- “What a fish it was,” the proprietor said. “There has never been such a fish. Those were two
- fine fish you took yesterday too.”
- “Damn my fish,” the boy said and he started to cry again.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 35
- “Do you want a drink of any kind?” the proprietor asked.
- “No,” the boy said. “Tell them not to bother Santiago. I’ll be back.”
- “Tell him how sorry I am.”
- “Thanks,” the boy said.
- The boy carried the hot can of coffee up to the old man’s shack and sat by him until he woke.
- Once it looked as though he were waking. But he had gone back into heavy sleep and the boy had
- gone across the road to borrow some wood to heat the coffee.
- Finally the old man woke.
- [123] “Don’t sit up,” the boy said. “Drink this.”
- He poured some of the coffee in a glass.
- The old man took it and drank it.
- “They beat me, Manolin,” he said. “They truly beat me.”
- “He didn’t beat you. Not the fish.”
- “No. Truly. It was afterwards.”
- “Pedrico is looking after the skiff and the gear. What do you want done with the head?”
- “Let Pedrico chop it up to use in fish traps.”
- “And the spear?”
- “You keep it if you want it.”
- “I want it,” the boy said. “Now we must make our plans about the other things.”
- “Did they search for me?”
- “Of course. With coast guard and with planes.”
- “The ocean is very big and a skiff is small and hard to see,” the old man said. He noticed how
- pleasant it was to have someone to talk to instead of speaking only to himself and to the sea. “I
- missed you,” he said. “What did you catch?”
- “One the first day. One the second and two the third.”
- [124] “Very good.”
- “Now we fish together again.”
- “No. I am not lucky. I am not lucky anymore.”
- “The hell with luck,” the boy said. “I’ll bring the luck with me.”
- “What will your family say?”
- “I do not care. I caught two yesterday. But we will fish together now for I still have much to
- learn.”
- “We must get a good killing lance and always have it on board. You can make the blade from a
- spring leaf from an old Ford. We can grind it in Guanabacoa. It should be sharp and not tempered
- so it will break. My knife broke.”
- “I’ll get another knife and have the spring ground.”
- How many days of heavy brisa have we?”
- “Maybe three. Maybe more.”
- “I will have everything in order,” the boy said. “You get your hands well old man.”
- “I know how to care for them. In the night I spat something strange and felt something in my
- chest was broken.”
- “Get that well too,” the boy said. “Lie down, old man, and I will bring you your clean shirt.
- And something to eat.”
- [125] “Bring any of the papers of the time that I was gone,” the old man said.
- “You must get well fast for there is much that I can learn and you can teach me everything.
- How much did you suffer?”
- “Plenty,” the old man said.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 36
- “I’ll bring the food and the papers,” the boy said. “Rest well, old man. I will bring stuff from
- the drugstore for your hands.”
- “Don’t forget to tell Pedrico the head is his.”
- “No. I will remember.”
- As the boy went out the door and down the worn coral rock road he was crying again.
- That afternoon there was a party of tourists at the Terrace and looking down in the water
- among the empty beer cans and dead barracudas a woman saw a great long white spine with a huge
- tail at the end that lifted and swung with the tide while the east wind blew a heavy steady sea outside
- the entrance to the harbour.
- “What’s that?” she asked a waiter and pointed to the long backbone of the great fish that was
- now just garbage waiting to go out with the tide.
- “Tiburon,” the waiter said. “Shark.” He was meaning to explain what had happened.
- “I didn’t know sharks had such handsome, beautifully formed tails.”
- “I didn’t either,” her male companion said.
- Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face and
- the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about the lions.
- THE END.
- Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea
- 37
- About the Author
- Ernest Hemingway was horn in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899, and began his writing career for The
- Kansas City Star in 1917. During the First World War he volunteered as an ambulance driver on the
- Italian front but was invalided home, having been seriously wounded while serving with the infantry.
- In 1921 Hemingway settled in Paris, where he became part of the American expatriate circle of
- Gertrude Stein, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Ford Maddox Ford. His first book, Three Stories
- and Ten Poems, was published in Paris in 1923 and was followed by the short story selection In Our
- Time, which marked his American debut in 1925. With the appearance of The Sun Also Rises in 1926,
- Hemingway became not only the voice of the “lost generation” but the preeminent writer of his
- time. This was followed by Men Without Women in 1927, when Hemingway returned to the United
- States, and his novel of the Italian front, A Farewell to Arms (1929). In the 1930s, Hemingway settled
- in Key West, and later in Cuba, but he traveled widely—to Spain, Florida, Italy and Africa—and
- wrote about his experiences in Death in the Afternoon (1932), his classic treatise on bullfighting, and
- Green Hills of Africa (1935), an account of big-game hunting in Africa. Later he reported on the
- Spanish Civil War, which became the background for his brilliant war novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls
- (1939), hunted U-boats in the Caribbean, and covered the European front during the Second World
- War. Hemingway’s most popular work, The Old Man and the Sea, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in
- 1953, and in 1954 Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his powerful, style-forming
- mastery of the art of narration.” One of the most important influences on the development of the
- short story and novel in American fiction, Hemingway has seized the imagination of the American
- public like no other twentieth-century author. He died, by suicide, in Ketchum, Idaho, in 1961. His
- other works include The Torrents of Spring (1926), Winner Take Nothing (1933), To Have and Have Not
- (1937), The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938), Across The River and Into the Trees (1950),
- and posthumously A Moveable Feast (1964), Islands in the Stream (1970), The Dangerous Summer (1985),
- and The Garden of Eden (1986).
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