“What an excellent fish dolphin is to eat cooked,”he said.“And what a miserable fish raw.I will never go in a boat again without salt or limes.”
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.
“How do you feel,fish?”he asked aloud.“I feel good and my left hand is better and I have food for a night and a day.Pull the boat,fish.”
He rested for what he believed to be two hours. The moon did not rise now until late and he had no way of judging the time. Nor was he really resting except comparatively.He was still bearing the pull of the fish across his shoulders but he placed his left hand on the gunwale of the bow and confided more and more of the resistance to the fish to the skiff itself.
I could go without sleeping,he told himself.But it would be too dangerous.
“I'll lash the two oars together across the stern and that will slow him in the night,”he said.“ He's good for the night and so am I.”
“Unless sharks come,”he said aloud.“If sharks come, God pity him and me.”
The odds would change back and forth all night and they fed the negro rum and lighted cigarettes for him.Then the Negro,after the rum,would try for a tremendous effort and once he had the old man, who was not an old man then but was Santiago El Campeon,nearly three inches off balance.But the old man had raised his hand up to dead even again.He was sure then that he had the negro,who was a fine man and a great athlete,beaten.And at daylight when the bettors were asking that it be called a draw and the referee was shaking his head,he had unleashed his effort and forced the hand of the negro down and down until it rested on the wood.The match had started on a Sunday morning and ended on a Monday morning.Many of the bettors had asked for a draw because they had to go to work on the docks loading sacks of sugar or at the Havana Coal Company. Otherwise everyone would have wanted it to go to a finish.But he had finished it anyway and before anyone had to go to work.