“Ay,”the old man said.“ Galanos.Come on Galanos.”
“Now,”he said.“I am still an old man.But I am not unarmed.”
“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.”
“I killed him in self-defense,”the old man said aloud.“And I killed him well.”
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.
Now they have beaten me,he thought.I am too old to club sharks to death.But I will try it as long as I have the oars and the short club and the tiller.
The old man still had two drinks of water in the bottle and he used half of one after he had eaten the shrimps.The skiff was sailing well considering the handicaps and he steered with the tiller under his arm.He could see the fish and he had only to look at his hands and feel his back against the stern to know that this had truly happened and was not a dream. At one time when he was feeling so badly toward the end,he had thought perhaps it was a dream.Then when he had seen the fish come out of the water and hang motionless in the sky before he fell,he was sure there was some great strangeness and he could not believe it. Then he could not see well, although now he saw as well as ever.