The Old Man and the Sea

outside the shack and then went up the road to wake the boy. He was shivering with the
morning cold. But he knew he would shiver himself warm and that soon he would be
rowing.
The door of the house where the boy lived was unlocked and he opened it and
walked in quietly with his [25] bare feet. The boy was asleep on a cot in the first room and
the old man could see him clearly with the light that came in from the dying moon. He
took hold of one foot gently and held it until the boy woke and turned and looked at him.
The old man nodded and the boy took his trousers from the chair by the bed and, sitting
on the bed, pulled them on.
The old man went out the door and the boy came after him. He was sleepy and the
old man put his arm across his shoulders and said, “I am sorry.”
“Qua Va,” the boy said. “It is what a man must do.”
They walked down the road to the old man’s shack and all along the road, in the dark,
barefoot men were moving, carrying the masts of their boats.
When they reached the old man’s shack the boy took the rolls of line in the basket
and the harpoon and gaff and the old man carried the mast with the furled sail on his
shoulder.
“Do you want coffee?” the boy asked.
“We’ll put the gear in the boat and then get some.”
They had coffee from condensed milk cans at an early morning place that served
fishermen.
“How did you sleep old man?” the boy asked. He [26] was waking up now although it
was still hard for him to leave his sleep.
“Very well, Manolin,” the old man said. “I feel confident today.”
“So do I,” the boy said. “Now I must get your sardines and mine and your fresh baits.
He brings our gear himself. He never wants anyone to carry anything.”
“We’re different,” the old man said. “I let you carry things when you were five years
old.”
“I know it,” the boy said. “I’ll be right back. Have another coffee. We have credit
here.”
He walked off, bare-footed on the coral rocks, to the ice house where the baits were
stored.
The old man drank his coffee slowly. It was all he would have all day and he knew
that he should take it. For a long time now eating had bored him and he never carried a
lunch. He had a bottle of water in the bow of the skiff and that was all he needed for the
day.
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The Old Man and the Sea
Asiaing.com
The boy was back now with the sardines and the two baits wrapped in a newspaper
and they went down the trail to the skiff, feeling the pebbled sand under their feet, and
lifted the skiff and slid her into the water.
[27] “Good luck old man.”
“Good luck,” the old man said. He fitted the rope lashings of the oars onto the thole
pins and, leaning forward against the thrust of the blades in the water, he began to row
out of the harbour in the dark. There were other boats from the other beaches going out
to sea and the old man heard the dip and push of their oars even though he could not see
them now the moon was below the hills.
Sometimes someone would speak in a boat. But most of the boats were silent except
for the dip of the oars. They spread apart after they were out of the mouth of the harbour
and each one headed for the part of the ocean where he hoped to find fish. The old man
knew he was going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the
clean early morning smell of the ocean. He saw the phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in
the water as he rowed over the part of the ocean that the fishermen called the great well
because there was a sudden deep of seven hundred fathoms where all sorts of fish
congregated because of the swirl the current made against the steep walls of the floor of
the ocean. Here there were concentrations of shrimp and bait fish and sometimes schools
of squid in the deepest holes and these rose close to the surface at night where all the
wandering fish fed on them.
In the dark the old man could feel the morning coming and as he rowed he heard the
trembling sound as flying fish left the water and the hissing that their stiff set wings made
as they soared away in the darkness. He was very fond of flying fish as they were his
principal friends on the ocean. He was sorry for the birds, especially the small delicate
dark terns that were always flying and looking and almost never finding, and he thought,
the birds have a harder life than we do except for the robber birds and the heavy strong
ones. Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean
can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so
suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are
made too delicately for the sea.
He always thought of the sea as la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when
they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always
said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys
as floats for their lines and had motorboats, bought [29] when the shark livers had
brought much money, spoke of her as el mar which is masculine. They spoke of her as a
contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as
feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or
wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a
woman, he thought.
He was rowing steadily and it was no effort for him since he kept well within his
speed and the surface of the ocean was flat except for the occasional swirls of the current.
He was letting the current do a third of the work and as it started to be light he saw he
was already further out than he had hoped to be at this hour.