Fighting With Big Marlin

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.
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.
Some time before daylight something took one of the baits that were behind
him. He heard the stick break and the line begin to rush out over the gunwale of the skiff.
In the darkness he loosened his sheath knife and taking all the strain of the fish on his
left shoulder he leaned back and cut the line against the wood of the gunwale. Then he
cut the other line closest to him and in the dark made the loose ends of the reserve coils
fast. He worked skillfully with the one hand and put his foot on the coils to hold them as
he drew his knots tight. Now he had six reserve coils of line. There were two from each
bait he had severed and the two from the bait the fish had taken and they were all
connected.
After it is light, he thought, I will work back to the forty-fathom bait and cut it away
too and link up the reserve coils. I will have lost two hundred fathoms of good Catalan
cardel and the hooks and leaders. That can be replaced. But who replaces this fish if I
hook some fish and it cuts him off?
I don’t know what that fish was that took the bait just now. It could have been a
marlin or a broadbill o r a shark. I never felt him. I had to get rid of him too fast.
Aloud he said, “I wish I had the boy.”