“You did not do so badly for something worthless,”he said to his left hand.“But there was a moment when I could not find you.”
He did not dream of the lions but instead of a vast school of porpoises that stretched for eight or ten miles and it was in the time of their mating and they would leap high into the air and return into the same hole they had made in the water when they leaped.
“Get to work,old man,”he said.He took a very small drink of the water.“ There is very much slave work to be done now that the fight is over.”
It was on the third turn that he saw the fish first.
Then the line would not come in any more and he held it until he saw the drops jumping from it in the sun. Then it started out and the old man knelt down and let it go grudgingly back into the dark water.
He made the fish fast to bow and stern and to the middle thwart.He was so big it was like lashing a much bigger skiff alongside.He cut a piece of line and tied the fish's lower jaw against his bill so his mouth would not open and they would sail as cleanly as possible.Then he stepped the mast and, with the stick that was his gaff and with his boom rigged,the patched sail drew,the boat began to move,and half lying in the stern he sailed southwest.