Read Online Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway - Free Book Online Page A

risen steadily while he swam.
       For an hour the old man had been seeing
black spots before his eyes and the sweat salted his eyes and salted the cut
over his eye and on his forehead. He was not afraid of the black spots. They
were normal at the tension that he was pulling on the line. Twice, though, he
had felt faint and dizzy and that had worried him.
       “I could not fail myself and die on a fish
like this,” he said. “Now that I have him coming so beautifully, God help me
endure. I’ll say a hundred Our Fathers and a hundred Hail Marys. But I cannot
say them now.
       Consider them said, he thought. I’ll say
them later. Just then he felt a sudden banging and jerking on the line he held
with his two hands. It was sharp and hard-feeling and heavy.
       He is hitting the wire leader with his
spear, he thought. That was bound to come. He had to do that. It may make him
jump though and I would rather he stayed circling now. The jumps were necessary
for him to take air. But after that each one can widen the opening of the hook
wound and he can throw the hook.
       “Don’t jump, fish,” he said. “Don’t jump.”
       The fish hit the wire several times more and
each time he shook his head the old man gave up a little line.
       I must hold his pain where it is, he
thought. Mine does not matter. I can control mine. But his pain could drive him
mad.
       After a while the fish stopped beating at
the wire and started circling slowly again. The old man was gaining line
steadily now. But he felt faint again. He lifted some sea water with his left
hand and put it on his head. Then he put more on and rubbed the back of his
neck.
       “I have no cramps,” he said. “He’ll be up
soon and I can last. You have to last. Don’t even speak of it.”
       He kneeled against the bow and, for a
moment, slipped the line over his back again. I’ll rest now while he goes out
on the circle and then stand up and work on him when he comes in, he decided.
       It was a great temptation to rest in the bow
and let the fish make one circle by himself without recovering any line. But
when the strain showed the fish had turned to come toward the boat, the old man
rose to his feet and started the pivoting and the weaving pulling that brought
in all the line he gained.
       I’m tireder than I have ever been, he
thought, and now the trade wind is rising. But that will be good to take him in
with. I need that badly.
       “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 swain 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