第6章 Tired of the Old Man[第3页/共13页]

“How do you feel,fish?”he asked aloud.“I feel good and my left hand is better and I have food for a night and a day.Pull the boat,fish.”

“He hasn't changed at all,”he said.But watching the movement of the water against his hand he noticed that it was perceptibly slower.

He slid the carcass overboard and looked to see if there was any swirl in the water.But there was only the light of its slow descent.He turned then and placed the two flying fish inside the two fillets of fish and putting his knife back in its sheath,he worked his way slowly back to the bow.His back was bent with the weight of the line across it and he carried the fish in his right hand.

Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket,his small line was taken by a dolphin.He saw it first when it jumped in the air,true gold in the last of the sun and bending and flapping wildly in the air.It jumped again and again in the acrobatics of its fear and he worked his way back to the stern and crouching and holding the big line with his right hand and arm,he pulled the dolphin in with his left hand,stepping on the gained line each time with his bare left foot.When the fish was at the stern,plunging and cutting from side to side in desperation,the old man leaned over the stern and lifted the burnished gold fish with its purple spots over the stern.Its jaws were working convulsively in quick bites against the hook and it pounded the bottom of the skiff with its long flat body,its tail and its head until he clubbed it across the shining golden head until it shivered and was still.