the tiny fish that were colored like the trailing filaments and swam between them
and under the small shade the bubble made as it drifted. They were immune to its poison.
But men were not and when same of the filaments would catch on a line and rest there
slimy and purple while the old man was working a fish, he would have welts and sores on
his arms and hands of the sort that poison ivy or poison oak can give. But these
poisonings from the agua mala came quickly and struck like a whiplash.
The iridescent bubbles were beautiful. But they were the falsest thing in the sea and
the old man loved to see the big sea turtles eating them. The turtles saw them,
approached them from the front, then shut their eyes so they were completely carapaced
and ate them filaments and all. The old man loved to see the turtles eat them and he
loved to walk on them on the beach after a storm and hear them pop when he stepped on
them with the horny soles of his feet.
He loved green turtles and hawk-bills with their elegance and speed and their great
value and he had a friendly contempt for the huge, stupid loggerheads, yellow in their
armour-plating, strange in their [36] love-making, and happily eating the Portuguese
men-of-war with their eyes shut.
He had no mysticism about turtles although he had gone in turtle boats for many
years. He was sorry for them all, even the great trunk backs that were as long as the skiff
and weighed a ton. Most people are heartless about turtles because a turtle’s heart will
beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have
such a heart too and my feet and hands are like theirs. He ate the white eggs to give
himself strength. He ate them all through May to be strong in September and October for
the truly big fish.
He also drank a cup of shark liver oil each day from the big drum in the shack where
many of the fishermen kept their gear. It was there for all fishermen who wanted it. Most
fishermen hated the taste. But it was no worse than getting up at the hours that they rose
and it was very good against all colds and grippes and it was good for the eyes.
Now the old man looked up and saw that the bird was circling again.
“He’s found fish,” he said aloud. No flying fish broke the surface and there was no
scattering of bait [37] fish. But as the old man watched, a small tuna rose in the air,
turned and dropped head first into the water. The tuna shone silver in the sun and after
he had dropped back into the water another and another rose and they were jumping in
all directions, churning the water and leaping in long jumps after the bait. They were
circling it and driving it.
If they don’t travel too fast I will get into them, the old man thought, and he watched
the school working the water white and the bird now dropping and dipping into the bait
fish that were forced to the surface in their panic.
“The bird is a great help,” the old man said. Just then the stern line came taut under
his foot, where he had kept a loop of the line, and he dropped his oars and felt tile weight
of the small tuna’s shivering pull as he held the line firm and commenced to haul it in.
The shivering increased as he pulled in and he could see the blue back of the fish in the
water and the gold of his sides before he swung him over the side and into the boat. He

The Old Man and the Sea

lay in the stern in the sun, compact and bullet shaped, his big, unintelligent eyes staring
as he thumped his life out against the planking of the boat with the quick shivering
strokes of his neat, fast-moving [38] tail. The old man hit him on the head for kindness
and kicked him, his body still shuddering, under the shade of the stern.
“Albacore,” he said aloud. “He’ll make a beautiful bait. He’ll weigh ten pounds.”
He did not remember when he had first started to talk aloud when he was by himself.
He had sung when he was by himself in the old days and he had sung at night sometimes
when he was alone steering on his watch in the smacks or in the turtle boats. He had
probably started to talk aloud, when alone, when the boy had left. But he did not
remember. When he and the boy fished together they usually spoke only when it was
necessary. They talked at night or when they were storm-bound by bad weather. It was
considered a virtue not to talk unnecessarily at sea and the old man had always
considered it so and respected it. But now he said his thoughts aloud many times since
there was no one that they could annoy.
“If the others heard me talking out loud they would think that I am crazy,” he said
aloud. “But since I am not crazy, I do not care. And the rich have radios to talk to them in
their boats and to bring them the baseball.”
[39] Now is no time to think of baseball, he thought. Now is the time to think of only
one thing. That which I was born for. There might be a big one around that school, he
thought. I picked up only a straggler from the albacore that were feeding. But they are
working far out and fast. Everything that shows on the surface today travels very fast and
to the north-east. Can that be the time of day? Or is it some sign of weather that I do not
know?
He could not see the green of the shore now but only the tops of the blue hills that
showed white as though they were snow-capped and the clouds that looked like high
snow mountains above them. The sea was very dark and the light made prisms in the
water. The myriad flecks of the plankton were annulled now by the high sun and it was
only the great deep prisms in the blue water that the old man saw now with his lines
going straight down into the water that was a mile deep.
The tuna, the fishermen called all the fish of that species tuna and only distinguished
among them by their proper names when they came to sell them or to trade them for
baits, were down again. The sun was [40] hot now and the old man felt it on the back of
his neck and felt the sweat trickle down his back as he rowed.
I could just drift, he thought, and sleep and put a bight of line around my toe to wake
me. But today is eighty-five days and I should fish the day well.
Just then, watching his lines, he saw one of the projecting green sticks dip sharply.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes,” and shipped his oars without bumping the boat. He reached out
for the line and held it softly between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He felt
no strain nor weight and he held the line lightly. Then it came again. This time it was a
tentative pull, not solid nor heavy, and he knew exactly what it was. One hundred
fathoms down a marlin was eating the sardines that covered the point and the shank of