“I have the gaff now,”he said.“ But it will do no good.I have the two oars and the tiller and the short club.”
“Ay,”he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily,feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.
“God knows how much that last one took,”he said.“But she's much lighter now.”He did not want to think of the mutilated under-side of the fish.He knew that each of the jerking bumps of the shark had been meat torn away and that the fish now made a trail for all sharks as wide as a highway through the sea.
“I shouldn't have gone out so far,fish,”he said.“ Neither for you nor for me.I'm sorry,fish.”
“Think about something cheerful,old man,”he said.“Every minute now you are closer to home.You sail lighter for the loss of forty pounds.”
He knew quite well the pattern of what could happen when he reached the inner part of the current.But there was nothing to be done now.