“No.Afterwards I will see what he can eat.”
“The ocean is very big and a skiff is small and hard to see,”the old man said.He noticed how pleasant it was to have someone to talk to instead of speaking only to himself and to the sea.“I missed you,”he said.“What did you catch?”
“Maybe three.Maybe more.”
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.
“No.I will remember.”
“I didn't either,”her male companion said.
“You must get well fast for there is much that I can learn and you can teach me everything.How much did you suffer?”
“He was eighteen feet from nose to tail,”the fisherman who was measuring him called.
“One on the first day. One the second and two the third.”
She's good,he thought.She is sound and not harmed in any way except for the tiller.That is easily replaced .
“What will your family say?”
He was asleep when the boy looked in the door in the morning.It was blowing so hard that the drifting-boats would not be going out and the boy had slept late and then come to the old man's shack as he had come each morning.The boy saw that the old man was breathing and then he saw the old man's hands and he started to cry.He went out very quietly to go to bring some coffee and all the way down the road he was crying.