“Stay at my house if you like,bird,”he said.“ I am sorry I cannot hoist the sail and take you in with the small breeze that is rising.But I am with a friend.”
The bird made the stern of the boat and rested there. Then he flew around the old man's head and rested on the line where he was more comfortable.
Shifting the weight of the line to his left shoulder and kneeling carefully he washed his hand in the ocean and held it there, submerged , for more than a minute watching the blood trail away and the steady movement of the water against his hand as the boat moved.
It encouraged him to talk because his back had stiffened in the night and it hurt truly now.
“Now,”he said,when his hand had dried,“I must eat the small tuna.I can reach him with the gaff and eat him here in comfort.”
I wish I could feed the fish, he thought. He is my brother.But I must kill him and keep strong to do it.Slowly and conscientiously he ate all of the wedge-shaped strips of fish.
A small bird came toward the skiff from the north.He was a warbler and flying very low over the water.The old man could see that he was very tired.
I hate a cramp,he thought.It is a treachery of one's own body.It is humiliating before others to have a diarrhoea from ptomaine poisoning or to vomit from it.But a cramp, he thought of it as a calambre,humiliates oneself especially when one is alone.