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The fish had turned silver from his original purple and silver, and the stripes showed the same pale violet colour as his tail.

They were wider than a man's hand with his fingers spread and the fish's eye looked as detached as the mirrors in a periscope or as a saint in a procession.

"It was the only way to kill him," the old man said. He was feeling better since the water and he knew he would not go away and his head was clear. He's over fifteen hundred pounds the way he is, he thought. Maybe much more. If he dresses out two-thirds o

"I need a pencil for that," he said. "My head is not that clear. But I think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today. I had no bone spurs. But the hands and the back hurt truly." I wonder what a bone spur is, he thought. Maybe we have them without k

He made the fish fast to bow and stern and to the middle thwart.

He was so big it was like lashing a much bigger skiff alongside.

He cut a piece of line and tied the fish's lower jaw against his bill so his mouth would not open and they would sail as cleanly as possible.

Then he stepped the mast and, with the stick that was his gaff and with his boom rigged, the patched sail drew, the boat began to move, and half lying in the stern he sailed south-west.

He did not need a compass to tell him where south-west was.

He only needed the feel of the trade wind and the drawing of the sail.

I better put a small line out with a spoon on it and try and get something to eat and drink for the moisture.

But he could not find a spoon and his sardines were rotten.

So he hooked a patch of yellow gulf weed with the gaff as they passed and shook it so that the small shrimps that were in it fell onto the planking of the skiff.

There were more than a dozen of them and they jumped and kicked like sand fleas.

The old man pinched their heads off with his thumb and forefinger and ate them chewing up the shells and the tails.

They were very tiny but he knew they were nourishing and they tasted good.

The old man still had two drinks of water in the bottle and he used half of one after he had eaten the shrimps.

The skiff was sailing well considering the handicaps and he steered with the tiller under his arm.

He could see the fish and he had only to look at his hands and feel his back against the stern to know that this had truly happened and was not a dream.

At one time when he was feeling so badly toward the end, he had thought perhaps it was a dream.

Then when he had seen the fish come out of the water and hang motionless in the sky before he fell, he was sure there was some great strangeness and he could not believe it.

Then he could not see well, although now he saw as well as ever.

Now he knew there was the fish and his hands and back were no dream.

The hands cure quickly, he thought.

I bled them clean and the salt water will heal them.

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