Let us hope so, he thought

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?”
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.
“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.”
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.