A small bird came toward the skiff from the north.He was a warbler and flying very low over the water.The old man could see that he was very tired.
“Now,”he said,when his hand had dried,“I must eat the small tuna.I can reach him with the gaff and eat him here in comfort.”
“Bad news for you fish,”he said and shifted the line over the sacks that covered his shoulders.
He was comfortable but suffering,although he did not admit the suffering at all.
I wonder what he made that lurch for,he thought.The wire must have slipped on the hill of his back.Certainly his back cannot feel as badly as mine does.But he cannot pull this skiff forever,no matter how great he is.Now everything is cleared away that might make trouble and I have a big reserve of line;all that a man can ask.
“I don't think I can eat an entire one,”he said and drew his knife across one of the strips.He could feel the steady hard pull of the line and his left hand was cramped.It drew up tight on the heavy cord and he looked at it in disgust.
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.