Sruggling with fish,old man

What an excellent fish dolphin is to eat cooked,” he said. “And what a miserable fish
raw. I will never go in a boat again without salt or limes.”
If I had brains I would have splashed water on the bow all day and drying, it would
have made salt, he thought. But then I did not hook the dolphin until almost sunset. Still
it was a lack of preparation. But I have chewed it all well and I am not nauseated.
The sky was clouding over to the east and one after another the stars he knew were
gone. It looked now as though he were moving into a great canyon of clouds and the wind
had dropped.
“There will be bad weather in three or four days,” he said. “But not tonight and not
tomorrow. Rig now to get some sleep, old man, while the fish is calm and steady.”
He held the line tight in his right hand and then pushed his thigh against his right
hand as he leaned all his weight against the wood of the bow. Then he passed the line a
little lower on his shoulders and braced his left hand on it.
My right hand can hold it as long as it is braced, he [80] thought If it relaxes in sleep
my left hand will wake me as the line goes out. It is hard on the right hand. But he is used
to punishment Even if I sleep twenty minutes or a half an hour it is good. He lay forward
cramping himself against the line with all of his body, putting all his weight onto his right
band, and he was asleep.
He did not dream of the lions but instead of a vast school of porpoises that stretched
for eight or ten miles and it was in the time of their mating and they would leap high into
the air and return into the same hole they had made in the water when they leaped.
Then he dreamed that he was in the village on his bed and there was a norther and
he was very cold and his right arm was asleep because his head had rested on it instead of
a pillow.
After that he began to dream of the long yellow beach and he saw the first of the
lions come down onto it in the early dark and then the other lions came and he rested his
chin on the wood of the bows where the ship lay anchored with the evening off-shore
breeze and he waited to see if there would be more lions and he was happy.
The moon had been up for a long time but he slept [81] on and the fish pulled on
steadily and the boat moved into the tunnel of clouds.
He woke with the jerk of his right fist coming up against his face and the line burning
out through his right hand. He had no feeling of his left hand but he braked all he could
with his right and the line rushed out. Finally his left hand found the line and he leaned
back against the line and now it burned his back and his left hand, and his left hand was
taking all the strain and cutting badly. He looked back at the coils of line and they were
feeding smoothly. Just then the fish jumped making a great bursting of the ocean and
then a heavy fall. Then he jumped again and again and the boat was going fast although
line was still racing out and the old man was raising the strain to breaking point and
raising it to breaking point again and again. He had been pulled down tight onto the bow
and his face was in the cut slice of dolphin and he could not move.