“Think about something cheerful,old man,”he said.“Every minute now you are closer to home.You sail lighter for the loss of forty pounds.”
The old man wiped the blade of his knife and laid down the oar.Then he found the sheet and the sail filled and he brought the skiff onto her course.
“You give me much good counsel ,”he said aloud.“ I'm tired of it.”
“They must have taken a quarter of him and of the best meat,”he said aloud.“I wish it were a dream and that I had never hooked him.I'm sorry about it,fish.It makes everything wrong.”He stopped and he did not want to look at the fish now.Drained of blood and awash he looked the color of the silver backing of a mirror and his stripes still showed.
He had ailed for two hours, resting in the stern and sometimes chewing a bit of the meat from the marlin,trying to rest and to be strong,when he saw the first of the two sharks.
The old man settled himself to steer.He did not even watch the big shark sinking slowly in the water,showing first life-size,then small,then tiny.That always fascinated the old man.But he did not even watch it now.
The next shark that came was a single shovel-nose.He came like a pig to the trough if a pig had a mouth so wide that you could put your head in it.The old man let him hit the fish and then drove the knife on the oar down into his brain. But the shark jerked backwards as he rolled and the knife blade snapped.