the negro’s face

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 water-drop 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
spots and you can see all of the school as 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.