“One on the first day. One the second and two the third.”
“You must get well fast for there is much that I can learn and you can teach me everything.How much did you suffer?”
“He was eighteen feet from nose to tail,”the fisherman who was measuring him called.
“Anything more?”
He unstepped the mast and furled the sail and tied it. Then he shouldered the mast and started to climb.It was then he knew the depth of his tiredness.He stopped for a moment and looked back and saw in the reflection from the street light the great tail of the fish standing up well behind the skiff's stern.He saw the white naked line of his backbone and the dark mass of the head with the projecting bill and all the nakedness between.
He could feel he was inside the current now and he could see the lights of the beach colonies along the shore.He knew where he was now and it was nothing to get home.
“Plenty,”the old man said.
“Of course.With coast guard and with planes.”
That afternoon there was a party of tourists at the Terrace and looking down in the water among the empty beer cans and dead barracudas a woman saw a great long white spine with a huge tail at the end that lifted and swung with the tide while the east wind blew a heavy steady sea outside the entrance to the harbor.