Free Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway Page A

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 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.
       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 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 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