quot;I'll rest on the next turn as he goes out," he said. "I feel much better. Then in two or three turns more I will have him."
"I'll rest on the next turn as he goes out," he said. "I feel much better. Then in two or three turns more I will have him."
His straw hat was far on the back of his head and he sank down into the bow with the pull of the line as he felt the fish turn.
You work now, fish, he thought. I'll take you at the turn.
The sea had risen considerably. But it was a fair-weather breeze and he had to have it to get home.
"I'll just steer south and west," he said. "A man is never lost at sea and it is a long island."
It was on the third turn that he saw the fish first.
He saw him first as a dark shadow that took so long to pass under the boat that he could not believe its length.
"No," he said. "He can't be that big."
But he was that big and at the end of this circle he came to the surface only thirty yards away and the man saw his tail out of water. It was higher than a big scythe blade and a very pale lavender above the dark blue water. It raked back and as the fish swam just below the surface the old man could see his huge bulk and the purple stripes that banded him. His dorsal fin was down and his huge pectorals were spread wide.
On this circle the old man could see the fish's eye and the two gray sucking fish that swam around him. Sometimes they attached themselves to him. Sometimes they darted off. Sometimes they would swim easily in his shadow. They were each over three feet long and when they swam fast they lashed their whole bodies like eels.
The old man was sweating now but from something else besides the sun. On each calm placid turn the fish made he was gaining line and he was sure that in two turns more he would have a chance to get the harpoon in.
"Неужели я оплошаю и умру из-за какой-то рыбы? - спрашивал он себя. - И главное - теперь, когда все идет так хорошо. Господи, помоги мне выдержать! Я прочту сто раз "Отче наш" и сто раз "Богородицу". Только не сейчас. Сейчас не могу".
|
