He watched the flying fish burst out again and again and the ineffectual movements of the bird.That school has gotten away from me,he thought.They are moving out too fast and too far.But perhaps I will pick up a stray and perhaps my big fish is around them.My big fish must be somewhere.
I could just drift,he thought,and sleep and put a bight of line around my toe to wake me.But today is eighty-five days and I should fish the day well.
The iridescent bubbles were beautiful.But they were the falsest thing in the sea and the old man loved to see the big sea turtles eating them.The turtles saw them,approached them from the front,then shut their eyes so they were completely carapaced and ate them filaments and all.The old man loved to see the turtles eat them and he loved to walk on them on the beach after a storm and hear them pop when he stepped on them with the horny soles of his feet.
The boy had given him two fresh small tunas, or albacores,which hung on the two deepest lines like plummets and,on the others,he had a big blue runner and a yellow jack that had been used before;but they were in good condition still and had the excellent sardines to give them scent and attractiveness.Each line,as thick around as a big pencil,was looped onto a green-sapped stick so that any pull or touch on the bait would make the stick dip and each line had two forty-fathom coils which could be made fast to the other spare coils so that,if it were necessary,a fish could take out over three hundred fathoms of line.