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.