第8章 The Sharks Attack[第1页/共13页]

The shark swung over and the old man saw his eye was not alive and then he swung over once again,wrapping himself in two loops of the rope.The old man knew that he was dead but the shark would not accept it.Then,on his back,with his tail lashing and his jaws clicking,the shark plowed over the water as a speed-boat does.The water was white where his tail beat it and three-quarters of his body was clear above the water when the rope came taut ,shivered, and then snapped.The shark lay quietly for a little while on the surface and the old man watched him. Then he went down very slowly.

“I shouldn't have gone out so far,fish,”he said.“ Neither for you nor for me.I'm sorry,fish.”

“Ay,”he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily,feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.

“No?”the old man said and he drove the blade between the vertebrae and the brain.It was an easy shot now and he felt the cartilage sever.The old man reversed the oar and put the blade between the shark's jaws to open them.He twisted the blade and as the shark slid loose he said,“Go on,galano. Slide down a mile deep.Go see your friend,or maybe it's your mother.”

“I killed him in self-defense,”the old man said aloud.“And I killed him well.”

The skiff was still shaking with the destruction the other shark was doing to the fish and the old man let go the sheet so that the skiff would swing broadside and bring the shark out from under.When he saw the shark he leaned over the side and punched at him.He hit only meat and the hide was set hard and he barely got the knife in.The blow hurt not only his hands but his shoulder too.But the shark came up fast and his head out and the old man hit him squarely in the center of his flat-topped head as his nose came out of water and lay against the fish.The old man withdrew the blade and punched the shark exactly in the same spot again.He still hung to the fish with his jaws hooked and the old man stabbed him in his left eye.The shark still hung there.