Sometimes he lost the scent.But he would pick it up again,or have just a trace of it and he swam fast and hard on the course.He was a very big Mako shark built to swim as fast as the fastest fish in the sea and everything about him was beautiful except his jaws.
“Galanos.”he said aloud.He had seen the second fin now coming up behind the first and had identified them as shovel-nosed sharks by the brown, triangular fin and the sweeping movements of the tail.They had the scent and were excited and in the stupidity of their great hunger they were losing and finding the scent in their excitement.But they were closing all the time.
They sailed well and the old man soaked his hands in the salt water and tried to keep his head clear.There were high cumulus clouds and enough cirrus above them so that the old man knew the breeze would last all night.The old man looked at the fish constantly to make sure it was true.It was an hour before the first shark hit him.
The breeze was fresh now and he sailed on well. He watched only the forward part of the fish and some of his hope returned.
“God knows how much that last one took,”he said.“But she's much lighter now.”He did not want to think of the mutilated under-side of the fish.He knew that each of the jerking bumps of the shark had been meat torn away and that the fish now made a trail for all sharks as wide as a highway through the sea.