He could feel he was inside the current now and he could see the lights of the beach colonies along the shore.He knew where he was now and it was nothing to get home.
“Very good.”
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.
Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again.He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him.The old man was dreaming about the lions.
Finally the old man woke.
He went into the Terrace and asked for a can of coffee.
“We must get a good killing lance and always have it on board.You can make the blade from a spring leaf from an old Ford.We can grind it in Guanabacoa.It should be sharp and not tempered so it will break.My knife broke.”
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.