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The water was a dark blue now, so dark that it was almost purple.

As he looked down into it he saw the red sifting of the plankton in the dark water and the strange light the sun made now.

He watched his lines to see them go straight down out of sight into the water and he was happy to see so much plankton because it meant fish.

The strange light the sun made in the water, now that the sun was higher, meant good weather and so did the shape of the clouds over the land.

But the bird was almost out of sight now and nothing showed on the surface of the water but some patches of yellow, sun-bleached Sargasso weed and the purple, formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war floating close beside the boat.

It turned on its side and then righted itself.

It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple filaments trailing a yard behind it in the water.

"Agua mala," the man said. "You whore."

From where he swung lightly against his oars he looked down into the water and saw the tiny fish that were coloured like the trailing filaments and swam between them and under the small shade the bubble made as it drifted.

They were immune to its poison.

But men were not and when some of the filaments would catch on a line and rest there slimy and purple while the old man was working a fish, he would have welts and sores on his arms and hands of the sort that poison ivy or poison oak can give.

But these poisonings from the agua mala came quickly and struck like a whiplash.

The iridescent bubbles were beautiful.

But they were the falsest thing in the sea and the old man loved to see the big sea turtles eating them.

The turtles saw them, approached them from the front, then shut their eyes so they were completely carapaced and ate them filaments and all.

The old man loved to see the turtles eat them and he loved to walk on them on the beach after a storm and hear them pop when he stepped on them with the horny soles of his feet.

He loved green turtles and hawks-bills with their elegance and speed and their great value and he had a friendly contempt for the huge, stupid loggerheads, yellow in their armour-plating, strange in their love-making, and happily eating the Portuguese men-of-war with their eyes shut.

He had no mysticism about turtles although he had gone in turtle boats for many years.

He was sorry for them all, even the great trunk backs that were as long as the skiff and weighed a ton.

Most people are heartless about turtles because a turtle's heart will beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered.

But the old man thought, I have such a heart too and my feet and hands are like theirs.

He ate the white eggs to give himself strength.

He ate them all through May to be strong in September and October for the truly big fish.

He also drank a cup of shark liver oil each day from the big drum in the shack where many of the fishermen kept their gear.

It was there for all fishermen who wanted it.

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