He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf
Stream and he had gong eighty-four days now without taking
a fish. In the fist forty days a boy had been with him. But after
forty days without a fish the boy's parents had told him that the
old man was now definitely and finally salao,whichis the worst
form of unlucky, and the boy had gong at their order in another
boat which caught three good fish the first week.It made the boy
sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff enpty and
he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or
the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast.
The sail was patched whith flour sacks and, furled, it looked like
the flay of permanent defeat.
The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck.
The brown blotchesof the benevolent skin
cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on
his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and
hishands had the deep-creased scars from handing heavy fish on
the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as
erosions in a fishless desert.