Once he stood up and urinated over the side of the skiff and looked at the stars and checked his course.The line showed like a phosphorescent streak in the water straight out from his shoulders.They were moving more slowly now and the glow of Havana was not so strong,so that he knew the current must be carrying them to the eastward.If I lose the glare of Havana we must be going more to the eastward,he thought.For if the fish's course held true I must see it for many more hours.I wonder how the baseball came out in the grand leagues today,he thought.It would be wonderful to do this with a radio.Then he thought,think of it always.Think of what you are doing.You must do nothing stupid.
Then he said aloud,‘I wish I had the boy.To help me and to see this.'
No one should be alone in their old age,he thought.But it is unavoidable.I must remember to eat the tuna before he spoils in order to keep strong.Remember,no matter how little you want to,that you must eat him in the morning.Remember,he said to himself.
During the night two porpoise came around the boat and he could hear them rolling and blowing.He could tell the difference between the blowing noise the male made and the sighing blow of the female.
‘They are good,'he said.‘They play and make jokes and love one another.They are our brothers like the flying fish.'
Then he began to pity the great fish that he had hooked.He is wonderful and strange and who knows how old he is,he thought.Never have I had such a strong fish nor one who acted so strangely.Perhaps he is too wise to jump.He could ruin me by jumping or by a wild rush.But perhaps he has been hooked many times before and he knows that this is how he should make his fight.He cannot know that it is only one man against him,nor that it is an old man.But what a great fish he is and what he will bring in the market if the flesh is good.He took the bait like a male and he pulls like a male and his fight has no panic in it.I wonder if he has any plans or if he is just as desperate as I am?
He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin.The male fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish,the female,made a wild,panic stricken,despairing fight that soon exhausted her,and all the time the male had stayed with her,crossing the line and circling with her on the surface.He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape.When the old man had gaffed her and clubbed her,holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and clubbing her across the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors,and then,with the boy's aid,hoisted her aboard,the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat.Then,while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon,the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep,his lavender wings,that were his pectoral fins,spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing.He was beautiful,the old man remembered,and he had stayed.
That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them,the old man thought.The boy was sad too and we begged her pardon and butchered her promptly.
‘I wish the boy was here,'he said aloud and settled himself against the rounded planks of the bow and felt the strength of the great fish through the line he held across his shoulders moving steadily toward whatever he had chosen.
When once,through my treachery,it had been necessary to him to make a choice,the old man thought.
His choice had been to stay in the deep dark water far out beyond all snares and traps and treacheries.My choice was to go there to find him beyond all people.Beyond all people in the world.Now we are joined together and have been since noon.And no one to help either one of us.
Perhaps I should not have been a fisherman,he thought.But that was the thing that I was born for.I must surely remember to eat the tuna after it gets light.
Some time before daylight something took one of the baits that were behind him.He heard the stick break and the line begin to rush out over the gunwale of the skiff.In the darkness he loosened his sheath knife and taking all the strain of the fish on his left shoulder he leaned back and cut the line against the wood of the gunwale.Then he cut the other line closest to him and in the dark made the loose ends of the reserve coils fast.He worked skilfully with the one hand and put his foot on the coils to hold them as he drew his knots tight.Now he had six reserve coils of line.There were two from each bait he had severed and the two from the bait the fish had taken and they were all connected.
After it is light,he thought,I will work back to the forty fathom bait and cut it away too and link up the reserve coils.I will have lost two hundred fathoms of good Catalan cordel and the hooks and leaders.That can be replaced.But who replaces this fish if I hook some fish and it cuts him off?I don't know what that fish was that took the bait just now.It could have been a marlin or a broadbill or a shark.I never felt him.I had to get rid of him too fast.
Aloud he said,‘I wish I had the boy.'
But you haven't got the boy,he thought.You have only yourself and you had better work back to the last line now,in the dark or not in the dark,and cut it away and hook up the two reserve coils.
So he did it.It was difficult in the dark and once the fish made a surge that pulled him down on his face and made a cut below his eye.The blood ran down his cheek a little way.But it coagulated and dried before it reached his chin and he worked his way back to the bow and rested against the wood.He adjusted the sack and carefully worked the line so that it came across a new part of his shoulders and,holding it anchored with his shoulders,he carefully felt the pull of the fish and then felt with his hand the progress of the skiff through the water.