In all his greatness and his glory

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 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.”
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.