The sea had risen considerably.But it was a fair-weather breeze and he had to have it to get home.
Just then he felt a sudden banging and jerking on the line he held with his two hands.It was sharp and hard-feeling and heavy.
He did not dream of the lions but instead of a vast school of porpoises that stretched for eight or ten miles and it was in the time of their mating and they would leap high into the air and return into the same hole they had made in the water when they leaped.
When he thought that he knew that he was not being clear-headed and he thought he should chew some more of the dolphin.But I can't,he told himself.It is better to be light-headed than to lose your strength from nausea.And I know I cannot keep it if I eat it since my face was in it.I will keep it for an emergency until it goes bad.But it is too late to try for strength now through nourishment.You're stupid, he told himself.Eat the other flying fish.
He took hold of the line carefully so that it did not fit into any of the fresh line cuts and shifted his weight so that he could put his left hand into the sea on the other side of the skiff.
Then he dreamed that he was in the village on his bed and there was a norther and he was very cold and his right arm was asleep because his head had rested on it instead of a pillow.