第7章 The Old Mans Victory[第1頁/共22頁]

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.

The old man dropped the line and put his foot on it and lifted the harpoon as high as he could and drove it down with all his strength,and more strength he had just summoned, into the fish's side just behind the great chest fin that rose high in the air to the altitude of the man's chest.He felt the iron go in and he leaned on it and drove it further and then pushed all his weight after it.

The line went out and out and out but it was slowing now and he was making the fish earn each inch of it.Now he got his head up from the wood and out of the slice of fish that his cheek had crushed.Then he was on his knees and then he rose slowly to his feet.He was ceding line but more slowly all the time.He worked back to where he could feel with his foot the coils of line that he could not see.There was plenty of line still and now the fish had to pull the friction of all that new line through the water.