“He is tiring or he is resting,”the old man said.“Now let me get through the eating of this dolphin and get some rest and a little sleep.”
Under the stars and with the night colder all the time he ate half of one of the dolphin fillets and one of the flying fish, gutted and with its head cut off.
The sky was clouding over to the east and one after another the stars he knew were gone.It looked now as though he were moving into a great canyon of clouds and the wind had dropped.
The sun will bake it out well now,he thought.It should not cramp on me again unless it gets too cold in the night.I wonder what this night will bring.
For a long time after that everyone had called him The Champion and there had been a return match in the spring. But not much money was bet and he had won it quite easily since he had broken the confidence of the negro from Cienfuegos in the first match.After that he had a few matches and then no more.He decided that he could beat anyone if he wanted to badly enough and he decided that it was bad for his right hand for fishing.He had tried a few practice matches with his left hand.But his left hand had always been a traitor and would not do what he called on it to do and he did not trust it.
An airplane passed overhead on its course to Miami and he watched its shadow scaring up the schools of flying fish.