第3章 The Old Man on the Sea[第4页/共12页]

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 stormbound 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.

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 harbor 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 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.