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They changed the referees every four hours after the first eight so that the referees could sleep.

Blood came out from under the fingernails of both his and the negro's hands and they looked each other in the eye and at their hands and forearms and the bettors went in and out of the room and sat on high chairs against the wall and watched.

The walls were painted bright blue and were of wood and the lamps threw their shadows against them.

The negro's shadow was huge and it moved on the wall as the breeze moved the lamps.

The odds would change back and forth all night and they fed the negro rum and lighted cigarettes for him.

Then the negro, after the rum, would try for a tremendous effort and once he had the old man, who was not an old man then but was Santiago El Campeon, nearly three inches off balance.

But the old man had raised his hand up to dead even again.

He was sure then that he had the negro, who was a fine man and a great athlete, beaten.

And at daylight when the bettors were asking that it be called a draw and the referee was shaking his head, he had unleashed his effort and forced the hand of the negro down and down until it rested on the wood.

The match had started on a Sunday morning and ended on a Monday morning.

Many of the bettors had asked for a draw because they had to go to work on the docks loading sacks of sugar or at the Havana Coal Company.

Otherwise everyone would have wanted it to go to a finish.

But he had finished it anyway and before anyone had to go to work.

For a long time after that everyone had called him The Champion and there had been a return match in the spring.

But not much money was bet and he had won it quite easily since he had broken the confidence of the negro from Cienfuegos in the first match.

After that he had a few matches and then no more.

He decided that he could beat anyone if he wanted to badly enough and he decided that it was bad for his right hand for fishing.

He had tried a few practice matches with his left hand.

But his left hand had always been a traitor and would not do what he called on it to do and he did not trust it.

The sun will bake it out well now, he thought. It should not cramp on me again unless it gets too cold in the night. I wonder what this night will bring.

An airplane passed over head on its course to Miami and he watched its shadow scaring up the schools of flying fish.

"With so much flying fish there should be dolphin," he said, and leaned back on the line to see if it was possible to gain any on his fish.

But he could not and it stayed at the hardness and water-drop shivering that preceded breaking.

The boat moved ahead slowly and he watched the airplane until he could no longer see it.

It must be very strange in an airplane, he thought.

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