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Sometimes someone would speak in a boat. But most
of the boats were silent except for the dip of the
oars. They spread apart after they were out of the
mouth of the harbour and each one headed for the
part of the ocean where he hoped to find fish. The
old man knew he was going far out and he left the
smell of the land behind and rowed out into the
clean early morning smell of the ocean. He saw the
phosphorescence of the Gulf weed in the water as
he rowed over the part of the ocean that the
fishermen called the great well because there was
a sudden deep of seven hundred fathoms where all
sorts of fish congregated because of the swirl the
current made against the steep walls of the floor
of the ocean. Here there were concentrations of
shrimp and bait fish and sometimes schools of
squid in the deepest holes and these rose close to
the surface at night where all the wandering fish
fed on them.
In the dark the old man could feel the morning
coming and as he rowed he heard the trembling
sound as flying fish left the water and the
hissing that their stiff set wings made as they
soared away in the darkness. He was very fond of
flying fish as they were his principal friends on
the ocean. He was sorry for the birds, especially
the small delicate dark terns that were always
flying and looking and almost never finding, and
he thought, "The birds have a harder life than we
do except for the robber birds and the heavy
strong ones. Why did they make birds so delicate
and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can
be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But
she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and
such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with
their small sad voices are made too delicately for
the sea."
He always thought of the sea as la mar which is
what people call her in Spanish when they love
her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things
of her but they are always said as though she were
a woman. Some of the younger fishermen, those who
used buoys as floats for their lines and had
motorboats, bought when the shark livers had
brought much money, spoke of her as el mar which
is masculine. They spoke of her as a contestant or
a place or even an enemy. But the old man always
thought of her as feminine and as something that
gave or withheld great favours, and if she did
wild or wicked things it was because she could not
help them. The moon affects her as it does a
woman, he thought.
He was rowing steadily and it was no effort for
him since he kept well within his speed and the
surface of the ocean was flat except for the
occasional swirls of the current. He was letting
the current do a third of the work and as it
started to be light he saw he was already further
out than he had hoped to be at this hour.
I worked the deep wells for a week and did
nothing, he thought. Today I'll work out where the
schools of bonita and albacore are and maybe there
will be a big one with them.
Before it was really light he had his baits out
and was drifting with the current. One bait was
down forty fathoms. The second was at seventy-five
and the third and fourth were down in the blue
water at one hundred and one hundred and
twenty-five fathoms. Each bait hung head down with
the shank of the hook inside the bait fish, tied
and sewed solid and all the projecting part of the
hook, the curve and the point, was covered with
fresh sardines. Each sardine was hooked through
both eyes so that they made a half-garland on the
projecting steel. There was no part of the hook
that a great fish could feel which was not sweet
smelling and good tasting.
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