The Old Man And The Sea

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.

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.

‘How old are you?’ the old man asked the bird. ‘Is this your first trip?’

The bird looked at him when he spoke. He was too tired even to examine the line and he teetered on it as his delicate feet gripped it fast.

‘It’s steady,’ the old man told him. ‘It’s too steady. You shouldn’t be that tired after a windless night. What are birds coming to?’

The hawks, he thought, that come out to sea to meet them. But he said nothing of this to the bird who could not understand him anyway and who would Learn about the hawks soon enough.

‘Take a good rest, small bird,’ he said. ‘Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.’

It encouraged him to talk because his back had stiffened in the night and it hurt truly now.

‘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.’

Just then the fish gave a sudden lurch that pulled the old man dawn on to the bow and would have pulled him overboard if he had not braced himself and given some line.

The bird had flown up when the line jerked and the old man had not even seen him go. He felt the line carefully with his right hand and noticed his hand was bleeding.

‘Something hurt him then,’ he said aloud and pulled back on the line to see if he could turn the fish. But then he was touching the breaking point he held steady and settled back against the strain of the line.

‘You’re feeling it now, fish,’ he said. ‘And so, God knows, am I.’

He looked around for the bird now because he would have liked him for company. The bird was gone.

You did not stay long, the man thought. But it is rougher where you are going until you make the shore. How did I let the fish cut me with that one quick pull he made? I must be getting very stupid. Or perhaps I was looking at the small bird and thinking of him. Now I will pay attention to my work and then I must eat the tuna so that I will not have a failure of strength.

‘I wish the boy were here and that I had some salt,’ he said aloud.

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.

‘He has slowed much,’ he said.

The old man would have liked to keep his hand in the salt water longer but he was afraid of another sudden lurch by the fish and he stood up and braced himself and held his hand up against the sun. It was only a line burn that had cut his flesh. But it was in the working part of his hand. He knew he would need his hands before this wa…