第10章 The Old Mans Return[第1页/共6页]

Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again.He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him.The old man was dreaming about the lions.

“I know how to care for them. In the night I spat something strange and felt something in my chest was broken.”

The wind is our friend,anyway,he thought.Then he added,sometimes.And the great sea with our friends and our enemies.And bed,he thought.Bed is my friend.Just bed, he thought.Bed will be a great thing.It is easy when you are beaten,he thought.I never knew how easy it was.And what beat you,he thought.

“No.Truly.It was afterwards.”

The boy carried the hot can of coffee up to the old man's shack and sat by him until he woke.Once it looked as though he were waking.But he had gone back into heavy sleep and the boy had gone across the road to borrow some wood to heat the coffee.

He unstepped the mast and furled the sail and tied it. Then he shouldered the mast and started to climb.It was then he knew the depth of his tiredness.He stopped for a moment and looked back and saw in the reflection from the street light the great tail of the fish standing up well behind the skiff's stern.He saw the white naked line of his backbone and the dark mass of the head with the projecting bill and all the nakedness between.

He could feel he was inside the current now and he could see the lights of the beach colonies along the shore.He knew where he was now and it was nothing to get home.