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He hit only meat and the hide was set hard and he barely got the knife in.

The blow hurt not only his hands but his shoulder too.

But the shark came up fast with his head out and the old man hit him squarely in the center of his flat-topped head as his nose came out of water and lay against the fish.

The old man withdrew the blade and punched the shark exactly in the same spot again.

He still hung to the fish with his jaws hooked and the old man stabbed him in his left eye.

The shark still hung there.

"No?" the old man said and he drove the blade between the vertebrae and the brain.

It was an easy shot now and he felt the cartilage sever.

The old man reversed the oar and put the blade between the shark's jaws to open them.

He twisted the blade and as the shark slid loose he said, "Go on, galano.

Slide down a mile deep.

Go see your friend, or maybe it's your mother."

The old man wiped the blade of his knife and laid down the oar. Then he found the sheet and the sail filled and he brought the skiff onto her course.

"They must have taken a quarter of him and of the best meat," he said aloud.

"I wish it were a dream and that I had never hooked him.

I'm sorry about it, fish.

It makes everything wrong." He stopped and he did not want to look at the fish now.

Drained of blood and awash he looked the colour of the silver backing of a mirror and his stripes still showed.

"I shouldn't have gone out so far, fish," he said. "Neither for you nor for me. I'm sorry, fish."

Now, he said to himself. Look to the lashing on the knife and see if it has been cut. Then get your hand in order because there still is more to come.

"I wish I had a stone for the knife," the old man said after he had checked the lashing on the oar butt.

"I should have brought a stone." You should have brought many things, he thought.

But you did not bring them, old man.

Now is no time to think of what you do not have.

Think of what you can do with what there is.

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