IX

When the sun woke Thomas Hudson he went down to the beach and swam and then had breakfast before the rest of them were up. Eddy said he did not think they would have much of a breeze and it might even be a calm. He said the gear was all in good shape on the boat and he had a boy out after bait.

Thomas Hudson asked him if he had tested the lines since the boat had not been out for big fish in quite a while and Eddy said he had tested them and taken off all the line that was rotten. He said they were going to have to get some more thirty-six thread line and plenty more twenty-four thread and Thomas Hudson promised to send for it. In the meantime Eddy had spliced enough good line on to replace the discarded line and both the big reels had all they would hold. He had cleaned and sharpened all of the big hooks and checked all the leaders and swivels.

“When did you do all this?”

“I sat up last night splicing,” he said. “Then I worked on that new cast net. Couldn’t sleep with the goddam moon.”

“Does a full moon bother you for sleeping too?”

“Gives me hell,” Eddy said.

“Eddy do you think it’s really bad for you to sleep with it shining on you?”

“That’s what the old heads say. I don’t know. Always makes me feel bad, anyway.”

“Do you think we’ll do anything today?”

“Never know. There’s some awfully big fish out there this time of year. Are you going clean up to the Isaacs?”

“The boys want to go up there.”

“We ought to get going right after breakfast. I’m not figuring to cook lunch. I’ve got conch salad and potato salad and beer and I’ll make up sandwiches. We’ve got a ham that came over on the last run-boat and I’ve got some lettuce and we can use mustard and that chutney. Mustard doesn’t hurt kids, does it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“We never had it when I was a kid. Say, that chutney’s good, too. You ever eat it in a sandwich?”

“No.”

“I didn’t know what it was for when you first got it and I tried some of it like a marmalade. It’s damned good. I use it sometimes on grits.”

“Why don’t we have some curry pretty soon?”

“I got a leg of lamb coming on the next run-boat. Wait till we eat off it a couple of times—once, I guess, with that young Tom and Andrew eating, and we’ll have a curry.”

“Fine. What do you want me to do about getting off?”

“Nothing, Tom. Just get them going. Want me to make you a drink? You aren’t working today. Might as well have one.”

“I’ll drink a cold bottle of beer with breakfast.”

“Good thing. Cut that damn phlegm.”

“Is Joe here yet?”

“No. He went after the boy that’s gone for bait. I’ll put your breakfast out there.”

“No, let me take her.”

“No, go on in and drink a cold bottle of beer and read the paper. I’ve got her all ironed out for you. I’ll bring the breakfast.”

Breakfast was corned-beef hash, browned, with an egg on top of it, coffee and milk, and a big glass of chilled grapefruit juice. Thomas Hudson skipped the coffee and the grapefruit juice and drank a very cold bottle of Heineken beer with the hash.

“I’ll keep the juice cold for the kids,” Eddy said. “That’s some beer, isn’t it, for early in the morning?”

“It would be pretty easy to be a rummy, wouldn’t it, Eddy?”

“You’d never make a rummy. You like to work too well.”

“Drinking in the morning feels awfully good though.”

“You’re damned right it does. Especially something like that beer.”

“I couldn’t do it and work though.”

“Well, you’re not working today so what’s the goddam problem? Drink that one up and I’ll get you another.”

“No. One’s all I want.”

They got off by nine o’clock and went down the channel with the tide. Thomas Hudson was steering on the topside and he headed her out over the bar and ran straight out toward where he could see the dark line of the Gulf. The water was so calm and so very clear that they could see the bottom clearly in thirty fathoms, see that sea fans bent with the tide current, still see it, but cloudily, at forty fathoms, and then it deepened and was dark and they were out in the dark water of the stream.

“It looks like a wonderful day, papa,” Tom said. “It looks like a good stream.”

“It’s a fine stream. Look at the little curl of the whirlpools along the edge.”

“Isn’t this the same water that we have in on the beach in front of the house?”

“Sometimes, Tommy. Now the tide is out and it has pushed the Stream out from in front of the mouth of the harbor. See in there along the beach, where there is no opening, it’s made in again.”

“It looks almost as blue in there as it is out here. What makes the Gulf water so blue?”

“It’s a different density of water. It’s an altogether different type of water.”

“The depth makes it darker, though.”

“Only when you look down into it. Sometimes the plankton in it make it almost purple.”

“Why?”

“Because they add red to the blue I think. I know they call the Red Sea red because the plankton make it look really red. They have terrific concentrations of them there.”

“Did you like the Red Sea, papa?”

“I loved it. It was awfully hot but you never saw such wonderful reefs and it’s full of fish on the two monsoons. You’d like it, Tom.”

“I read two books about it in French by Mr. de Montfried. They were very good. He was in the slave trade. Not the white slave trade. The olden days slave trade. He’s a friend of Mr. Davis.”

“I know,” Thomas Hudson said. “I know him, too.”

“Mr. Davis told me that Mr. de Montfried came back to Paris one time from the slave trade and when he would take a lady out anywhere he would have the taxi driver put down the top of the taxi and he would steer the taxi driver wherever he wanted to go by the stars. Say Mr. de Montfried was on the Pont de la Concorde and he wanted to go to the Madeleine. He wouldn’t just tell the taxi driver to take him to the Madeleine, or to cross the Place de la Concorde and go up the Rue Royale the way you or I would do it, papa. Mr. de Montfried would steer himself to the Madeleine by the North Star.”

“I never heard that one about Mr. de Montfried,” Thomas Hudson said. “I heard quite a lot of others.”

“It’s quite a complicated way to get around in Paris, don’t you think? Mr. Davis wanted to go into the slave trade at one time with Mr. de Montfried but there was some sort of a hitch. I don’t remember what it was. Yes, now I do. Mr. de Montfried had left the slave trade and gone into the opium trade. That was it.”

“Didn’t Mr. Davis want to go into the opium trade?”

“No. I remember he said he thought he’d leave the opium trade to Mr. De Quincey and Mr. Cocteau. He said they’d done so well in it that he didn’t think it was right to disturb them. That was one of those remarks that I couldn’t understand. Papa, you explain anything to me that I ask but it used to slow the conversation up so much to be asking all the time that I would just remember certain things I didn’t understand to ask about sometime and that’s one of those things.”

“You must have quite a backlog of those things.”

“I’ve got hundreds of them. Possibly thousands. But I get rid of a lot of them every year by getting to understand them myself. But some I know I’ll have to ask you about. At school this year I may write a list of them for an English composition. I’ve got some awfully good ones for a composition of that sort.”

“Do you like school, Tom?”

“It’s just one of those things you have to take. I don’t think anyone likes school, do they, that has ever done anything else?”

“I don’t know. I hated it.”

“Didn’t you like art school either?”

“No. I liked to learn to draw but I didn’t like the school part.”

“I don’t really mind it,” Tom said. “But after you’ve spent your life with men like Mr. Joyce and Mr. Pascin and you and Mr. Davis, being with boys seems sort of juvenile.”

“You have fun, though, don’t you?”

“Oh yes. I have lots of friends and I like any of the sports that aren’t built around throwing or catching balls and I study quite hard. But papa, it isn’t much of a life.”

“That was the way I always felt about it,” Thomas Hudson said. “You liven it up as much as you can, though.”

“I do. I liven it up all I can and still stay in it. Sometimes it’s a pretty close thing, though.”

Thomas Hudson looked astern where the wake ran crisply in the calm sea and the two baits from the outriggers were dragging; dipping and leaping in the curl of the waves the wake raised as it cut the calm. David and Andrew sat in the two fishing chairs holding rods. Thomas Hudson saw their backs. Their faces were astern watching the baits. He looked ahead at some bonito jumping, not working and threshing the water, but coming up out and dropping back into the water singly and in pairs, making hardly any disturbance of the surface as they rose, shining in the sun, and returning, heavy heads down, to enter the water almost without splash.

“Fish!” Thomas Hudson heard young Tom shout. “Fish! Fish! There he comes up. Behind you, Dave. Watch him!”

Thomas Hudson saw a huge boil in the water but could not see the fish. David had the rod butt in the gimble and was looking up at the clothespin on the outrigger line. Thomas Hudson saw the line fall from the outrigger in a long, slow loop that tightened as it hit the water and now was racing out at a slant, slicing the water as it went.

“Hit him, Dave. Hit him hard,” Eddy called from the companionway.

“Hit him, Dave. For God’s sake hit him,” Andrew begged.

“Shut up,” David said. “I’m handling him.” He hadn’t struck yet and the line was steadily going out at that angle, the rod bowed, the boy holding back on it as the line moved out. Thomas Hudson had throttled the motors down so they were barely turning over.

“Oh for God’s sake, hit him,” Andrew pleaded. “Or let me hit him.”

David just held back on the rod and watched the line moving out at the same steady angle. He had loosened the drag.

“He’s a broadbill, papa,” he said without looking up. “I saw his sword when he took it.”

“Honest to God?” Andrew asked. “Oh boy.”

“I think you ought to hit him now,” Roger was standing with the boy now. He had the back out of the chair and he was buckling the harness on the reel. “Hit him now, Dave, and really hit him.”

“Do you think he’s had it long enough?” David asked. “You don’t think he’s just carrying it in his mouth and swimming with it?”

“I think you better hit him before he spits it out.”

David braced his feet, tightened the drag well down with his right hand, and struck back hard against the great weight. He struck again and again bending the rod like a bow. The line moved out steadily. He had made no impression on the fish.

“Hit him again, Dave,” Roger said. “Really put it into him.”

David struck again with all his strength and the line started zizzing out, the rod bent so that he could hardly hold it.

“Oh God,” he said devoutly. “I think I’ve got it into him.”

“Ease up on your drag,” Roger told him. “Turn with him, Tom, and watch the line.”

“Turn with him and watch the line,” Thomas Hudson repeated. “You all right, Dave?”

“I’m wonderful, papa,” Dave said. “Oh God, if I can catch this fish.”

Thomas Hudson swung the boat around almost on her stern. Dave’s line was fading off the reel and Thomas Hudson moved up on the fish.

“Tighten up and get that line in now,” Roger said. “Work on him, Dave.”

David was lifting and reeling as he lowered, lifting and reeling as he lowered, as regularly as a machine, and was getting back a good quantity of line onto his reel.

“Nobody in our family’s ever caught a broadbill,” Andrew said.

“Oh keep your mouth off him, please,” David said. “Don’t put your mouth on him.”

“I won’t,” Andrew said. “I’ve been doing nothing but pray ever since you hooked him.”

“Do you think his mouth will hold?” young Tom whispered to his father, who was holding the wheel and looking down into the stern and watching the slant of the white line in the dark water.

“I hope so. Dave isn’t strong enough to be rough with him.”

“I’ll do anything if we can get him,” young Tom said. “Anything. I’ll give up anything. I’ll promise anything. Get him some water, Andy.”

“I’ve got some,” Eddy said. “Stay with him, old Dave boy.”

“I don’t want him any closer,” Roger called up. He was a great fisherman and he and Thomas Hudson understood each other perfectly in a boat.

“I’ll put him astern,” Thomas Hudson called and swung the boat around very softly and easily so the stern hardly disturbed the calm sea.

The fish was sounding now and Thomas Hudson backed the boat very slowly to ease the pressure on the line all that he could. But with only a touch of reverse with the stern moving slowly toward the fish the angle was all gone from the line and the rod tip was pointing straight down and the line kept going out in a series of steady jerks, the rod bucking each time in David’s hands. Thomas Hudson slipped the boat ahead just a thought so that the boy would not have the line so straight up and down in the water. He knew how it was pulling on his back in that position, but he had to save all the line he could.

“I can’t put any more drag on or it will break,” David said. “What will he do, Mr. Davis?”

“He’ll just keep on going down until you stop him,” Roger said. “Or until he stops. Then you’ve got to try to get him up.”

The line kept going out and down, out and down, out and down. The rod was bent so far it looked as though it must break and the line was taut as a tuned cello string and there was not much more of it on the reel.

“What can I do, papa?”

“Nothing. You’re doing what there is to do.”

“Won’t he hit the bottom?” Andrew asked.

“There isn’t any bottom,” Roger told him.

“You hold him, Davy,” Eddy said. “He’ll get sick of it and come up.”

“These damned straps are killing me,” David said. “They cut my shoulders off.”

“Do you want me to take him?” Andrew asked. “No, you fool,” David said. “I just said what they were doing to me. I don’t care about it.”

“See if you can rig him the kidney harness,” Thomas Hudson called down to Eddy. “You can tie it on with line if the straps are too long.”

Eddy wrapped the broad, quilted pad across the small of the boy’s back and fastened the rings on the web straps that ran across it to the reel with heavy line.

“That’s much better,” David said. “Thank you very much, Eddy.”

“Now you can hold him with your back as well as your shoulders,” Eddy told him.

“But there isn’t going to be any line.” David said. “Oh Goddam him, why does he have to keep on sounding?”

“Tom,” Eddy called up. “Ease her a little northwest. I think he’s moving.”

Thomas Hudson turned the wheel and moved her softly, slowly, softly out to sea. There was a big patch of yellow gulf weed ahead with a bird on it and the water was calm and so blue and clear that, as you looked down into it, there were lights in it like the reflections from a prism.

“You see?” Eddy told David. “You’re not losing any now.”

The boy could not raise the rod; but the line was no longer jerking down into the water. It was as taut as ever and there weren’t fifty yards left on the reel. But it was not going out. David was holding him and the boat was on his course. Thomas Hudson could see the just perceptible slant of the white line deep down in the blue water as the boat barely moved, its engines turning so quietly he could not hear them.

“You see, Davy, he went down to where he liked it and now he’s moving out to where he wants to go. Pretty soon you’ll get some line on him.”

The boy’s brown back was arched, the rod bent, the line moved slowly through the water, and the boat moved slowly on the surface, and a quarter of a mile below the great fish was swimming. The gull left the patch of weed and flew toward the boat. He flew around Thomas Hudson’s head while he steered, then headed off toward another patch of yellow weed on the water.

“Try to get some on him now,” Roger told the boy. “If you can hold him you can get some.”

“Put her ahead just a touch more,” Eddy called to the bridge and Thomas Hudson eased her ahead as softly as he could.

David lifted and lifted, but the rod only bent and the line only tightened. It was as though he were hooked to a moving anchor.

“Never mind,” Roger told him. “You’ll get it later. How are you, Davy?”

“I’m fine,” David said. “With that harness across my back I’m fine.”

“Do you think you can stay with him?” Andrew asked.

“Oh shut up,” David said. “Eddy, can I have a drink of water?”

“Where’d I put it?” Eddy asked. “I guess I spilled it.”

“I’ll get one,” Andrew went below.

“Can I do anything, Dave?” young Tom asked. “I’m going up so I won’t be in the way.”

“No, Tom. Goddam it, why can’t I lift on him?”

“He’s an awfully big fish, Dave,” Roger told him. “You can’t bull him around. You’ve got to lead him and try to convince him where he has to come.”

“You tell me what to do and I’ll do it until I die,” David said. “I trust you.”

“Don’t talk about dying,” Roger said. “That’s no way to talk.”

“I mean it,” David said. “I mean it really.”

Young Tom came back up on the flying bridge with his father. They were looking down at David, bent and harnessed to his fish, with Roger standing by him and Eddy holding the chair. Andrew was putting the glass of water to Dave’s mouth. He took some in and spat it out.

“Pour some on my wrists, will you, Andy?” he asked.

“Papa, do you think he can really stay with this fish?” Tom said to his father very softly.

“It’s an awful lot of fish for him.”

“It scares me,” Tom said. “I love David and I don’t want any damned fish to kill him.”

“Neither do I and neither does Roger and neither does Eddy.”

“Well we’ve got to look after him. If he gets in really bad shape, Mr. Davis ought to take the fish or you take him.”

“He’s a long way from bad shape yet.”

“But you don’t know him like we do. He would kill himself to get the fish.”

“Don’t worry, Tom.”

“I can’t help it,” young Tom said. “I’m the one in the family that always worries. I hope I’ll get over it.”

“I wouldn’t worry about this now,” Thomas Hudson said.

“But papa, how is a boy like David going to catch a fish like that? He’s never caught anything bigger than sailfish and amberjack.”

“This fish will get tired. It’s the fish that has the hook in his mouth.”

“But he’s monstrous,” Tom said. “And Dave’s fastened to him just as much as he is to Dave. It’s so wonderful I can’t believe it if Dave catches him, but I wish you or Mr. Davis had him.

“Dave’s doing all right.”

They were getting further out to sea all the time but it was still a flat calm. There were many patches of Gulf weed now, sunburned so that they were yellow on the purple water, and sometimes the slow-moving taut white line ran through a patch of weed and Eddy reached down and cleared any weed that clung to the line. As he leaned over the coaming and pulled the yellow weed off the line and tossed it away, Thomas Hudson saw his wrinkled red brown neck and old felt hat and heard him say to Dave, “He’s practically towing the boat, Davy. He’s way down there tiring himself and tiring himself all the time.”

“He’s tiring me, too,” David said.

“You got a headache?” Eddy asked.

“No.”

“Get a cap for him,” Roger said.

“I don’t want it, Mr. Davis. I’d rather have some water on my head.”

Eddy dipped a bucket of sea water and wet the boy’s head carefully with his cupped hand, soaking his head and pushing the hair back out of his eyes.

“You say if you get a headache,” he told him.

“I’m fine,” David said. “You tell me what to do, Mr. Davis.”

“See if you can get any line on him,” Roger said.

David tried and tried and tried again but he could not raise the fish an inch.

“All right. Save your strength,” Roger told him. Then to Eddy, “Soak a cap and put it on him. This is a hell of a hot day with the calm.”

Eddy dipped a long-visored cap in the bucket of salt water and put it on Dave’s head.

“The salt water gets in my eyes, Mr. Davis. Really. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll wipe it out with some fresh,” Eddy said. “Give me a handkerchief, Roger. You go get some ice water, Andy.”

While the boy hung there, his legs braced, his body arched against the strain, the boat kept moving slowly out to sea. To the westward a school of either bonito or alba-core were troubling the calm of the surface and terns commenced to come flying, calling to each other as they flew. But the school of fish went down and the terns lit on the calm water to wait for the fish to come up again. Eddy had wiped the boy’s face and now was dipping the handkerchief in the glass of ice water and laying it across David’s neck. Then he cooled his wrists with it and then, with the handkerchief soaked in ice water again, wrung it out while he pressed it against the back of David’s neck.

“You say if you have a headache,” Eddy told him. “That ain’t quitting. That’s just sense. This is a hell of a goddam hot sun when it’s a calm.”

“I’m all right,” David told him. “I hurt bad in the shoulders and the arms is all.”

“That’s natural,” Eddy said. “That’ll make a man out of you. What we don’t want is for you to get no sunstroke nor bust any gut.”

“What will he do now, Mr. Davis?” David asked. His voice sounded dry.

“Maybe just what he’s doing. Or he might start to circle. Or he may come up.”

“It’s a damn shame he sounded so deep at the start so we haven’t any line to maneuver him with,” Thomas Hudson said to Roger.

“Dave stopped him is the main thing,” Roger said. “Pretty soon the fish will change his mind. Then we’ll work on him. See if you can get any just once, Dave.”

David tried but he could not raise him at all.

“He’ll come up,” Eddy said. “You’ll see. All of a sudden there won’t be anything to it, Davy. Want to rinse your mouth out?”

David nodded his head. He had reached the breath-saving stage.

“Spit it out,” Eddy said. “Swallow just a little.” He turned to Roger. “One hour even,” he said. “Is your head all right, Davy?”

The boy nodded.

“What do you think, papa?” young Tom said to his father. “Truly?”

“He looks pretty good to me,” his father said. “Eddy wouldn’t let anything happen to him.”

“No, I guess not,” Tom agreed. “I wish I could do something useful. I’m going to get Eddy a drink.”

“Get me one, too, please.”

“Oh good. I’ll make one for Mr. Davis, too.”

“I don’t think he wants one.”

“Well I’ll ask him.”

“Try him once more, Davy,” Roger said very quietly, and the boy lifted with all his strength, holding the sides of the spool of the reel with his hands.

“You got an inch,” Roger said. “Take it in and see if you can get some more.”

Now the real fight began. Before David had only been holding him while the fish moved out to sea and the boat moved with him. But now he had to lift, let the rod straighten with the line he had gained, and then lower the rod slowly while he took the line in by reeling.

“Don’t try to do it too fast,” Roger told him. “Don’t rush yourself. Just keep it steady.”

The boy was bending forward and pulling up from the soles of his feet, using all the leverage of his body and all of what weight he had on each lift; then reeling fast with his right hand as he lowered.

“David fishes awfully pretty,” young Tom said. “He’s fished since he was a little boy but I didn’t know he could fish this well. He always makes fun of himself because he can’t play games. But look at him now.”

“The hell with games,” Thomas Hudson said. “What did you say, Roger?”

“Go ahead on him just a touch,” Roger called up.

“Ahead on him just a touch,” Thomas Hudson repeated and on the next lift, as they nudged slowly forward, David recovered more line.

“Don’t you like games either, papa?” Tom asked.

“I used to. Very much. But not anymore.”

“I like tennis and fencing,” Tom said. “The throw-and-catch ball games are the ones I don’t like. That’s from being brought up in Europe I guess. I’ll bet David could be a fine fencer if he wanted to learn because he has so much brains. But he doesn’t want to learn. All he wants to do is read and fish and shoot and tie flies. He shoots better than Andy does in the field. He can tie beautiful flies too. Am I bothering you, papa, talking so much?”

“Of course not, Tom.”

He was holding to the rail of the flying bridge and looking aft as his father was and his father put one hand on his shoulder. It was salty from the buckets of sea water the boys had thrown over each other on the stern before the fish struck. The salt was very fine and felt faintly sandy under his hand.

“You see I get so nervous watching David I talk to take my mind off it. I’d rather have David catch that fish than anything on earth.”

“He’s a hell of a fish. Wait till we see him.”

“I saw one one time when I was fishing with you years ago. He hit a big mackerel bait with his sword and he jumped and threw the hook. He was enormous and I used to dream about him. I’ll go down and make the drinks.”

“There’s no hurry,” his father told him.

Down in the backless fighting chair, set in its swivel base, David braced his feet against the stern and lifted with his arms, back, withers, and thighs; then lowered and reeled and lifted again. Steadily, an inch, two inches, three inches at a time he was getting more and more line on the reel.

“Is your head all right?” Eddy, who was holding the arms of the chair to steady it, asked him.

David nodded. Eddy put his hand on the top of the boy’s head and felt his cap.

“Cap’s still wet,” he said. “You’re giving him hell, Davy. Just like a machine.”

“It’s easier now than holding him,” David said, his voice still dry.

“Sure,” Eddy told him. “Something gives now. Other way it was just pulling your back out by the roots.”

“Don’t work him any faster than you can,” Roger said. “You’re doing wonderfully, Dave.”

“Will we gaff him when he comes up this time?” Andrew asked.

“Oh keep your mouth off of him, please,” David said.

“I wasn’t trying to mouth him.”

“Oh just shut up, Andy, please. I’m sorry.”

Andrew came climbing up topside. He had on one of the long-peaked caps but under it his father could see his eyes were wet and the boy turned his head away because his lips trembled.

“You didn’t say anything bad,” Thomas Hudson told him.

Andrew spoke with his head turned away. “Now if he loses him he’ll think I mouthed him,” he said bitterly. “All I wanted to do was help get everything ready.”

“It’s natural for Dave to be nervous,” his father told him. “He’s trying to be polite.”

“I know it,” Andrew said. “He’s fighting him just as good as Mr. Davis could. I just felt bad he could think that.”

“Lots of people are irritable with a big fish. This is the first one Dave’s ever had.”

“You’re always polite and Mr. Davis is always polite.”

“We didn’t use to be. When we were learning to fish big fish together we used to be excited and rude and sarcastic. We both used to be terrible.”

“Truly?”

“Sure. Truly. We used to suffer and act as though everybody was against us. That’s the natural way to be. The other’s discipline or good sense when you learn. We started to be polite because we found we couldn’t catch big fish being rude and excited. And if we did, it wasn’t any fun. We were both really awful though; excited and sore and misunderstood and it wasn’t any fun. So now we always fight them politely. We talked it over and decided we’d be polite no matter what.”

“I’ll be polite,” Andrew said. “But it’s hard sometimes with Dave. Papa, do you think he can really get him? That it isn’t just like a dream or something?”

“Let’s not talk about it.”

“Have I said something wrong again?”

“No. Only it always seems bad luck to talk that way. We got it from the old fishermen. I don’t know what started it.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Here’s your drink, papa,” Tom said, handing it up from below. The glass was wrapped in a triple thickness of paper towel with a rubber band around to hold the paper tight against the glass and keep the ice from melting. “I put lime, bitters, and no sugar in it. Is that how you want it? Or can I change it?”

“That’s fine. Did you make it with coconut water?”

“Yes, and I made Eddy a whisky. Mr. Davis didn’t want anything. Are you staying up there, Andy?”

“No. I’m coming down.”

Tom climbed up and Andrew went down.

Looking back over the stern, Thomas Hudson noticed the line starting to slant up in the water.

“Watch it, Roger,” he called. “It looks like he’s coming up.”

“He’s coming up!” Eddy yelled. He had seen the slant in the line too. “Watch your wheel.”

Thomas Hudson looked down at the spool of the reel to see how much line there was to maneuver with. It was not yet a quarter full and as he watched it started to whiz off and Thomas Hudson started backing, turning sharp toward the slant of the line, well under way as Eddy yelled, “Back on him, Tom. The son of a bitch is coming up. We ain’t got no line to turn.”

“Keep your rod up,” Roger said to David. “Don’t let him get it down.” Then to Thomas Hudson, “Back on him all you can, Tom. You’re going right. Give her all she’ll take.”

Then, astern of the boat and off to starboard, the calm of the ocean broke open and the great fish rose out of it, rising, shining dark blue and silver, seeming to come endlessly out of the water, unbelievable as his length and bulk rose out of the sea into the air and seemed to hang there until he fell with a splash that drove the water up high and white.

“Oh, God,” David said. “Did you see him?”

“His sword’s as long as I am,” Andrew said in awe.

“He’s so beautiful,” Tom said. “He’s much better than the one I had in the dream.”

“Keep backing on him,” Roger said to Thomas Hudson. Then to David, “Try and get some line out of that belly. He came up from way down and there’s a big belly of line and you can get some of it.”

Thomas Hudson, backing fast onto the fish, had stopped the line going out and now David was lifting, lowering, and reeling, and the line was coming onto the reel in sweeps as fast as he could turn the reel handle.

“Slow her down,” Roger said. “We don’t want to get over him.

“Son of a bitch’ll weigh a thousand pounds,” Eddy said. “Get that easy line in, Davy boy.”

The ocean was flat and empty where he had jumped but the circle made where the water had been broken was still widening.

“Did you see the water he threw when he jumped, papa?” young Tom asked his father. “It was like the whole sea bursting open.”

“Did you see the way he seemed to climb up and up, Tom? Did you ever see such a blue and that wonderful silver on him?”

“His sword is blue too,” young Tom said. “The whole back of it is blue. Will he really weigh a thousand pounds, Eddy?” he called down.

“I think he will. Nobody can say. But he’ll weigh something awful.”

“Get all the line you can, Davy, now while it’s cheap,” Roger told him. “You’re getting it fine.”

The boy was working like a machine again, recovering line from the great bulge of line in the water and the boat was backing so slowly that the movement was barely perceptible.

“What will he do now, papa?” Tom asked his father. Thomas Hudson was watching the slant of the line in the water and thinking it would be safer to go ahead just a little but he knew how Roger had suffered with so much line out. The fish had only needed to make one steady rush to strip all the line from the reel and break off and now Roger was taking chances to get a reserve of line. As Thomas Hudson watched the line, he saw that David had the reel nearly half full and that he was still gaining.

“What did you say?” Thomas Hudson asked his boy Tom.

“What do you think he’ll do now?”

“Wait a minute, Tom,” his father said and called down to Roger. “I’m afraid we’re going to get over him, kid.”

“Then put her ahead easy,” Roger said.

“Ahead easy,” Thomas Hudson repeated. David stopped getting in so much line but the fish was in a safer position.

Then the line started to go out again and Roger called up, “Throw her out,” and Thomas Hudson threw out the clutches and let the motors idle.

“She’s out,” he said. Roger was bending over David and the boy was braced and holding back on the rod and the line was slipping steadily away.

“Tighten on him a little bit, Davy,” Roger said. “We’ll make him work for it.”

“I don’t want him to break,” David said. But he tightened the drag.

“He won’t break,” Roger told him. “Not with that drag.”

The line kept going out but the rod was bent heavier and the boy was braced back holding against the pressure with his bare feet against the wood of the stern. Then the line stopped going out.

“Now you can get some,” Roger told the boy. “He’s circling and this is the in-turn. Get back all you can.”

The boy lowered and reeled, then lifted; let the rod straighten; lowered and reeled. He was getting line beautifully again.

“Am I doing all right?” he asked.

“You’re doing wonderful,” Eddy told him. “He’s hooked deep, Davy. I could see when he jumped.”

Then, while the boy was lifting, the line started to go out again.

“Hell,” David said.

“That’s OK,” Roger told him. “That’s what’s supposed to happen. He’s on the out-turn now. He circled in toward you and you got line. Now he’s taking it back.”

Steadily, slowly, with David holding him with all the strain the line would take, the fish took out all the line the boy had just recovered and a little more. Then the boy held him.

“All right. Get to work on him,” Roger said quietly. “He widened his circle a little bit but he’s on the in-swing now.”

Thomas Hudson was using the engines only occasionally now to keep the fish astern. He was trying to do everything for the boy that the boat could do and he was trusting the boy and the fight to Roger. As he saw it there was no other thing to do.

On the next circle the fish gained a little line again. On the circle after that he gained too. But the boy still had almost half the line on the reel. He was still working the fish exactly as he should and delivering each time Roger asked him to do something. But he was getting very tired and the sweat and salt water had made salty blotches on his brown back and shoulders.

“Two hours even,” Eddy said to Roger. “How’s your head, Davy?”

“All right.”

“Not ache?”

The boy shook his head.

“You better drink some water this time,” Eddy said.

David nodded and drank when Andrew put the glass to his lips.

“How do you feel, Davy, really?” Roger asked him, bending close over him,

“Fine. All except my back and legs and arms.” He shut his eyes for an instant and held to the bucking of the rod as the line went out against the heavy drag.

“I don’t want to talk,” he said.

“You can get some on him now,” Roger told him and the boy went back to work.

“David’s a saint and a martyr,” Tom said to his father. “Boys don’t have brothers like David. Do you mind if I talk, papa? I’m awfully nervous about this.”

“Go ahead and talk, Tommy. We’re both worried.”

“He’s always been wonderful, you know,” Tom said. “He’s not a damn genius nor an athlete like Andy. He’s just wonderful. I know you love him the most and that’s right because he’s the best of us and I know this must be good for him or you wouldn’t let him do it. But it certainly makes me nervous.”

Thomas Hudson put an arm around his shoulder and steered, looking astern with only one hand on the wheel.

“The trouble is, Tommy, what it would do to him if we made him give it up. Roger and Eddy know everything about what they’re doing and I know they love him and wouldn’t have him do what he can’t do.”

“But there is no limit with him, papa. Truly. He’ll always do what he can’t do.”

“You trust me and I’ll trust Roger and Eddy.”

“All right. But I’m going to pray for him now.”

“You do,” said Thomas Hudson. “Why did you say I loved him the best?”

“You ought to.”

“I’ve loved you the longest.”

“Let’s not think about me nor you. Let’s both of us pray for Davy.”

“Good,” said Thomas Hudson. “Now look. We hooked him right at noon. There’s going to be some shade now. I think we’ve got some already. I’m going to work her around very softly and put Davy in the shade.”

Thomas Hudson called down to Roger. “If it’s OK with you, Roge, I’d like to work her around slow and put Dave in the shade. I don’t think it will make any difference with the fish the way he’s circling and we’ll be on his real course.”

“Fine,” Roger said. “I should have thought of it.”

“There hasn’t been any shade until now,” Thomas Hudson said. He worked the boat around so slowly, just swinging her on her stern, that they lost almost no line by the maneuver. David’s head and shoulders were now shaded by the aft part of the house. Eddy was wiping the boy’s neck and shoulders with a towel and putting alcohol on his back and on the back of his neck.

“How’s that, Dave?” young Tom called down to him.

“Wonderful,” David said.

“I feel better about him now,” young Tom said. “You know at school somebody said David was my half brother, not my real brother, and I told him we didn’t have half brothers in our family. I wish I didn’t worry so much though, papa.”

“You’ll get over it.”

“In a family like ours somebody has to worry,” young Tom said. “But I never worry about you anymore. It’s David now. I guess I better make a couple of more drinks. I can pray while I make them. Do you want one, papa?”

“I’d love one.”

“Eddy probably needs one pretty badly,” the boy said. “It must be nearly three hours. Eddy’s only had one drink in three hours. I’ve certainly been remiss about things. Why do you suppose Mr. Davis wouldn’t take one, papa?”

“I didn’t think he would take one while David was going through all that.”

“Maybe he will now Dave’s in the shade. I’ll try him now anyway.”

He went below.

“I don’t think so, Tommy,” Thomas Hudson heard Roger say.

“You haven’t had one all day, Mr. Davis,” Tom urged.

“Thanks, Tommy,” Roger said. “You drink a bottle of beer for me.” Then he called up to the wheel. “Put her ahead a little easy, Tom. He’s coming better on this tack.”

“Ahead a little easy,” Thomas Hudson repeated.

The fish was still circling deep, but in the direction the boat was headed now he was shortening the circle. It was the direction he wanted to move in. Now, too, it was easier to see the slant of the line. It was easier to see its true slant much deeper in the dark water with the sun behind the boat and Thomas Hudson felt safer steering with the fish. He thought how fortunate it was that the day was calm for he knew David could never have taken the punishment that he would have had if he were hooked to such a fish in even a moderate sea. Now that David was in the shade and the sea stayed calm he began to feel better about it all.

“Thanks, Tommy,” he heard Eddy say and then the boy climbed up with his paper-wrapped glass and Thomas Hudson tasted, took a swallow and felt the cold that had the sharpness of the lime, the aromatic varnishy taste of the Angostura and the gin stiffening the lightness of the ice-cold coconut water.

“Is it all right, papa?” the boy asked. He had a bottle of beer from the icebox that was perspiring cold drops in the sun.

“It’s excellent,” his father told him. “You put in plenty of gin too.”

“I have to,” young Tom said. “Because the ice melts so fast. We ought to have some sort of insulated holders for the glasses so the ice wouldn’t melt. I’m going to work out something at school. I think I could make them out of cork blocks. Maybe I can make them for you for Christmas.”

“Look at Dave now,” his father said.

David was working on the fish as though he had just started the fight.

“Look how sort of slab-sided he is,” young Tom said. “His chest and his back are all the same. He looks sort of like he was glued together. But he’s got the longest arm muscles you could ever see. They’re just as long on the back of his arms as on the front. The biceps and the triceps I mean. He’s certainly built strangely, papa. He’s a strange boy and he’s the best damn brother you can have.”

Down in the cockpit Eddy had drained his glass and was wiping David’s back with a towel again. Then he wiped his chest and his long arms.

“You all right, Davy?”

David nodded.

“Listen,” Eddy told him, “I’ve seen a grown man, strong, shoulders like a bull, yellow-out and quit on half the work you’ve put in on that fish already.”

David kept on working.

“Big man. Your Dad and Roger both know him. Trained for it. Fishing all the time. Hooked the biggest goddam fish a man ever hooked and yellowed out and quit on him just because he hurt. Fish made him hurt so he quit. You just keep it steady, Davy.”

David did not say anything. He was saving his breath and pumping, lowering, raising, and reeling.

“This damn fish is so strong because he’s a he,” Eddy told him. “If it was a she it would have quit long ago. It would have bust its insides or its heart or burst its roe. In this kind of fish the he is the strongest. In lots of other fish it’s the she that is strongest. But not with broadbill. He’s awfully strong, Davy. But you’ll get him.”

The line started to go out again and David shut his eyes a moment, braced his bare feet against the wood, hung back against the rod, and rested.

“That’s right, Davy,” Eddy said. “Only work when you’re working. He’s just circling. But the drag makes him work for it and it’s tiring him all the time.”

Eddy turned his head and looked below and Thomas Hudson knew from the way he squinted his eyes that he was looking at the big brass clock on the cabin wall.

“It’s five over three, Roger,” he said. “You’ve been with him three hours and five minutes, Davy old boy.”

They were at the point where David should have started to gain line. But instead the line was going out steadily.

“He’s sounding again,” Roger said. “Watch yourself, Davy. Can you see the line OK, Tom?”

“I can see it OK,” Thomas Hudson told him. It was not yet at a very steep slant and he could see it a long way down in the water from the top of the house.

“He may want to go down to die,” Thomas Hudson told his oldest boy, speaking very low. “That would ruin Dave.”

Young Tom shook his head and bit his lips.

“Hold him all you can, Dave,” Thomas Hudson heard Roger say. “Tighten up on him and give it all it will take.”

The boy tightened up the drag almost to the breaking point of the rod and line and then hung on, bracing himself to take the punishment the best he could, while the line went out and out and down and down.

“When you stop him this time I think you will have whipped him,” Roger told David. “Throw her out, Tom.”

“She’s cut,” Thomas Hudson said. “But I think I could save a little backing.”

“OK. Try it.”

“Backing now,” Thomas Hudson said. They saved a little line by backing but not much, and the line was getting terribly straight up and down. There was less on the reel now than at the worst time before.

“You’ll have to get out on the stern, Davy,” Roger said. “You’ll have to loosen the drag up a little to get the butt out.”

David loosened the drag.

“Now get the butt into your butt rest. You hold him around the waist, Eddy.”

“Oh God, papa,” young Tom said. “He’s taking it all right to the bottom now.”

David was on his knees on the low stern now, the rod bent so that its tip was underwater, its butt in the leather socket of the butt rest that was strapped around his waist. Andrew was holding onto David’s feet and Roger knelt beside him watching the line in the water and the little there was on the reel. He shook his head at Thomas Hudson.

There was not twenty yards more on the reel and David was pulled down with half the rod underwater now. Then there was barely fifteen yards on the reel. Now there was not ten yards. Then the line stopped going out. The boy was still bent far over the stern and most of the rod was in the water. But no line was going out.

“Get him back into the chair, Eddy. Easy. Easy,” Roger said. “When you can, I mean. He’s stopped him.”

Eddy helped David back into the fighting chair, holding him around the waist so that a sudden lurch by the fish would not pull the boy overboard. Eddy eased him into the chair and David got the rod butt into the gimbel socket and braced with his feet and pulled back on the rod. The fish lifted a little.

“Only pull when you are going to get some line,” Roger told David. “Let him pull the rest of the time. Try and rest inside the action except when you are working on him.”

“You’ve got him, Davy,” Eddy said. “You’re getting it on him all the time. Just take it slow and easy and you’ll kill him.

Thomas Hudson eased the boat a little forward to put the fish further astern. There was good shadow now over all the stern. The boat was working steadily further out to sea and no wind troubled the surface.

“Papa,” young Tom said to his father. “I was looking at his feet when I made the drinks. They’re bleeding.”

“He’s chafed them pulling against the wood.”

“Do you think I could put a pillow there? A cushion for him to pull against?”

“Go down and ask Eddy,” Thomas Hudson said. “But don’t interrupt Dave.”

It was well into the fourth hour of the fight now. The boat was still working out to sea and David, with Roger holding the back of his chair now, was raising the fish steadily. David looked stronger now than he had an hour before but Thomas Hudson could see where his heels showed the blood that had run down from the soles of his feet. It looked varnished in the sun.

“How’s your feet, Davy?” Eddy asked.

“They don’t hurt,” David said. “What hurts is my hands and arms and my back.”

“I could put a cushion under them.”

David shook his head.

“I think they’d stick,” he said. “They’re sticky. They don’t hurt. Really.”

Young Tom came up to the top side and said, “He’s wearing the bottoms of his feet right off. He’s getting his hands bad too. He’s had blisters and now they’re all open. Gee, papa. I don’t know.”

“It’s the same as if he had to paddle against a stiff current, Tommy. Or if he had to keep going up a mountain or stick with a horse after he was awfully tired.”

“I know it. But just watching it and not doing it seems so sort of awful when it’s your brother.”

“I know it, Tommy. But there is a time boys have to do things if they are ever going to be men. That’s where Dave is now.”

“I know it. But when I see his feet and his hands I don’t know, papa.”

“If you had the fish would you want Roger or me to take him away from you?”

“No. I’d want to stay with him till I died. But to see it with Davy is different.”

“We have to think about how he feels,” his father told him. “And what’s important to him.”

“I know,” young Tom said hopelessly. “But to me it’s just Davy. I wish the world wasn’t the way it is and that things didn’t have to happen to brothers.”

“I do too,” Thomas Hudson said. “You’re an awfully good boy, Tommy. But please know I would have stopped this long ago except that I know that if David catches this fish he’ll have something inside him for all his life and it will make everything else easier.”

Just then Eddy spoke. He had been looking behind him into the cabin again.

“Four hours even, Roger,” he said. “You better take some water, Davy. How do you feel?”

“Fine,” David said.

“I know what I’ll do that is practical,” young Tom said. “I’ll make a drink for Eddy. Do you want one, papa?”

“No. I’ll skip this one,” Thomas Hudson said.

Young Tom went below and Thomas Hudson watched David working slowly, tiredly but steadily; Roger bending over him and speaking to him in a low voice; Eddy out on the stern watching the slant of the line in the water. Thomas Hudson tried to picture how it would be down where the swordfish was swimming. It was dark of course but probably the fish could see as a horse can see. It would be very cold.

He wondered if the fish was alone or if there could be another fish swimming with him. They had seen no other fish but that did not prove this fish was alone. There might be another with him in the dark and the cold.

Thomas Hudson wondered why the fish had stopped when he had gone so deep the last time. Did the fish reach his maximum possible depth the way a plane reached its ceiling? Or had the pulling against the bend of the rod, the heavy drag on the line, and the resistance of its friction in the water discouraged him so that now he swam quietly in the direction he wished to go? Was he only rising a little, steadily, as David lifted on him; rising docilely to ease the unpleasant tension that held him? Thomas Hudson thought that was probably the way it was and that David might have great trouble with him yet if the fish was still strong.

Young Tom had brought Eddy’s own bottle to him and Eddy had taken a long pull out of it and then asked Tom to put it in the bait box to keep it cool. “And handy,” he added. “If I see Davy fight this fish much longer it will make a damned rummy out of me.”

“I’ll bring it any time you want it,” Andrew said.

“Don’t bring it when I want it,” Eddy told him. “Bring it when I ask for it.”

The oldest boy had come up with Thomas Hudson and together they watched Eddy bend over David and look carefully into his eyes. Roger was holding the chair and watching the line.

“Now listen, Davy,” Eddy told the boy, looking close into his face. “Your hands and your feet don’t mean a damn thing. They hurt and they look bad but they are all right. That’s the way a fisherman’s hands and feet are supposed to get and next time they’ll be tougher. But is your bloody head all right?”

“Fine,” David said.

“Then God bless you and stay with the son of a bitch because we are going to have him up here soon.”

“Davy,” Roger spoke to the boy. “Do you want me to take him?”

David shook his head.

“It wouldn’t be quitting now,” Roger said. “It would just make sense. I could take him or your father could take him.”

“Am I doing anything wrong?” David asked bitterly.

“No. You’re doing perfectly.”

“Then why should I quit on him?”

“He’s giving you an awful beating, Davy,” Roger said. “I don’t want him to hurt you.”

“He’s the one has the hook in his goddam mouth,” David’s voice was unsteady. “He isn’t giving me a beating. I’m giving him a beating. The son of a bitch.”

“Say anything you want, Dave,” Roger told him.

“The damn son of a bitch. The big son of a bitch.”

“He’s crying,” Andrew, who had come up topside and was standing with young Tom and his father, said. “He’s talking that way to get rid of it.”

“Shut up, horseman,” young Tom said.

“I don’t care if he kills me, the big son of a bitch,” David said. “Oh hell. I don’t hate him. I love him.”

“You shut up now,” Eddy said to David. “You save your wind.”

He looked at Roger and Roger lifted his shoulders to show he did not know.

“If I see you getting excited like that I’ll take him away from you,” Eddy said.

“I’m always excited,” David said. “Just because I never say it nobody knows. I’m no worse now. It’s only the talking.”

“Well you shut up now and take it easy,” Eddy said. “You stay calm and quiet and we’ll go with him forever.”

“I’ll stay with him,” David said. “I’m sorry I called him the names. I don’t want to say anything against him. I think he’s the finest thing in the world.”

“Andy, get me that bottle of pure alcohol,” Eddy said. I’m going to loosen up his arms and shoulders and his legs,” he said to Roger. “I don’t want to use any more of that ice water for fear I’d cramp him up.”

He looked into the cabin and said, “Five and a half even, Roger.” He turned to David, “You don’t feel too heated up now, do you, Davy?”

The boy shook his head.

“That straight-up-and-down sun in the middle of the day was what I was afraid of,” Eddy said. “Nothing going to happen to you now, Davy. Just take it easy and whip this old fish. We want to whip him before dark.”

David nodded.

“Papa, did you ever see a fish fight like this one?” young Tom asked.

“Yes,” Thomas Hudson told him.

“Very many?”

“I don’t know, Tommy. There are some terrible fish in this Gulf. Then there are huge big fish that are easy to catch.”

“Why are some easier?”

“I think because they get old and fat. Some I think are almost old enough to die. Then, of course, some of the biggest jump themselves to death.”

There had been no boats in sight for a long time and it was getting late in the afternoon and they were a long way out between the island and the great Isaacs light.

“Try him once more, Davy,” Roger said.

The boy bent his back, pulled back against his braced feet, and the rod, instead of staying solid, lifted slowly.

“You’ve got him coming,” Roger said. “Get that line on and try him again.”

The boy lifted and again recovered line.

“He’s coming up,” Roger told David. “Keep on him steady and good.”

David went to work like a machine, or like a very tired boy performing as a machine.

“This is the time,” Roger said. “He’s really coming up. Put her ahead just a touch, Tom. We want to take him on the port side if we can.”

“Ahead just a touch,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Use your own judgment on it,” Roger said. “We want to bring him up easy where Eddy can gaff him and we can get a noose over him. I’ll handle the leader. Tommy, you come down here to handle the chair and see the line doesn’t foul on the rod when I take the leader. Keep the line clear all the time in case I have to turn him loose. Andy, you help Eddy with anything he asks for and give him the noose and the club when he asks for them.”

The fish was coming up steadily now and David was not breaking the rhythm of his pumping.

“Tom, you better come down and take the wheel below,” Roger called up.

“I was just coming down,” Thomas Hudson told him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Davy, remember if he runs and I have to turn him loose keep your rod up and everything clear. Slack off your drag as soon as I take hold of the leader.”

“Keep her spooled even,” Eddy said. “Don’t let her jam up now, Davy.”

Thomas Hudson swung down from the flying bridge into the cockpit and took the wheel and the controls there. It was not as easy to see into the water as it was on the flying bridge but it was handier in case of any emergency and communication was easier. It was strange to be on the same level as the action after having looked down on it for so many hours, he thought. It was like moving down from a box seat onto the stage or to the ringside or close against the railing of the track. Everyone looked bigger and closer and they were all taller and not foreshortened.

He could see David’s bloody hands and lacquered-looking oozing feet and he saw the welts the harness had made across his back and the almost hopeless expression on his face as he turned his head at the last finish of a pull. He looked in the cabin and the brass clock showed that it was ten minutes to six. The sea looked different to him now that he was so close to it, and looking at it from the shade and from David’s bent rod, the white line slanted into the dark water and the rod lowered and rose steadily. Eddy knelt on the stern with the gaff in his sun-spotted freckled hands and looked down into the almost purple water trying to see the fish. Thomas Hudson noticed the rope hitches around the haft of the gaff and the rope made fast to the Samson post in the stern and then he looked again at David’s back, his outstretched legs, and his long arms holding the rod.

“Can you see him, Eddy?” Roger asked from where he was holding the chair.

“Not yet. Stay on him, Davy, steady and good.”

David kept on his same raising, lowering, and reeling; the reel heavy with line now; bringing in a sweep of line each time he swung it around.

Once the fish held steady for a moment and the rod doubled toward the water and line started to go out.

“No. He can’t be,” David said.

“He might,” Eddy said. “You can’t ever know.”

But then David lifted slowly, suffering against the weight and, after the first slow lift, the line started to come again as easily and steadily as before.

“He just held for a minute,” Eddy said. His old felt hat on the back of his head, he was peering down into the clear, dark purple water.

“There he is,” he said.

Thomas Hudson slipped back quickly from the wheel to look over the stern. The fish showed, deep astern, looking tiny and foreshortened in the depth but in the small time Thomas Hudson looked at him he grew steadily in size. It was not as rapidly as a plane grows as it comes in toward you but it was as steady.

Thomas Hudson put his arm on David’s shoulder and went back to the wheel. Then he heard Andrew say, “Oh look at him,” and this time he could see him from the wheel deep in the water and well astern, showing brown now and grown greatly in length and bulk.

“Keep her just as she is,” Roger said without looking back and Thomas Hudson answered, “Just as she is.”

“Oh God look at him,” young Tom said.

Now he was really huge, bigger than any swordfish Thomas Hudson had ever seen. All the great length of him was purple blue now instead of brown and he was swimming slowly and steadily in the same direction the boat was going; astern of the boat and on David’s right.

“Keep him coming all the time, Davy,” Roger said. “He’s coming in just right.”

“Go ahead just a touch,” Roger said, watching the fish.

“Ahead just a touch,” Thomas Hudson answered.

“Keep it spooled,” Eddy told David. Thomas Hudson could see the swivel of the leader now out of water.

“Ahead just a little more,” Roger said.

“Going ahead just a little more,” Thomas Hudson repeated. He was watching the fish and easing the stern onto the course that he was swimming. He could see the whole great purple length of him now, the great broad sword forward, the slicing dorsal fin set in his wide shoulders, and his huge tail that drove him almost without a motion.

“Just a touch more ahead,” Roger said.

“Going ahead a touch more.”

David had the leader within reach now.

“Are you ready for him, Eddy?” Roger asked.

“Sure,” Eddy said.

“Watch him, Tom,” Roger said and leaned over and took hold of the cable leader.

“Slack off on your drag,” he said to David and began slowly raising the fish, holding and lifting on the heavy cable to bring him within reach of the gaff.

The fish was coming up looking as long and as broad as a big log in the water. David was watching him and glancing up at his rod tip to make sure it was not fouled. For the first time in six hours he had no strain on his back and his arms and legs and Thomas Hudson saw the muscles in his legs twitching and quivering. Eddy was bending over the side with the gaff and Roger was lifting slowly and steadily.

“He’d go over a thousand,” Eddy said. Then he said, very quietly, “Roger, hook’s only holding by a thread.”

“Can you reach him?” Roger asked.

“Not yet,” Eddy said. “Keep him coming easy, easy.”

Roger kept lifting on the wire cable and the great fish rose steadily toward the boat.

“It’s been cutting,” Eddy said. “It’s just holding by nothing.”

“Can you reach him now?” Roger asked. His tone had not changed.

“Not quite yet,” Eddy said as quietly. Roger was lifting as gently and as softly as he could. Then, from lifting, he straightened, all strain gone, holding the slack leader in his two hands.

“No. No. No. Please God, no,” young Tom said.

Eddy lunged down into the water with the gaff and then went overboard to try to get the gaff into the fish if he could reach him.

It was no good. The great fish hung there in the depth of water where he was like a huge dark purple bird and then settled slowly. They all watched him go down, getting smaller and smaller until he was out of sight.

Eddy’s hat was floating on the calm sea and he was holding onto the gaff handle. The gaff was on the line that was fast to the Samson post in the stern. Roger put his arms around David and Thomas Hudson could see David’s shoulders shaking. But he left David to Roger. “Get the ladder out for Eddy to come aboard,” he said to young Tom. “Take Davy’s rod, Andy. Unhook it.”

Roger lifted the boy out of the chair and carried him over to the bunk at the starboard side of the cockpit and laid him down in it. Roger’s arms were around David and the boy lay flat on his face on the bunk.

Eddy came on board soaked and dripping, and started to undress. Andrew fished out his hat with the gaff and Thomas Hudson went below to get Eddy a shirt and a pair of dungarees and a shirt and shorts for David. He was surprised that he had no feeling at all except pity and love for David. All other feeling had been drained out of him in the fight.

When he came up David was lying, naked, face-down on the bunk and Roger was rubbing him down with alcohol.

“It hurts across the shoulders and my tail,” David said. “Watch out, Mr. Davis, please.”

“It’s where it’s chafed,” Eddy told him. “Your father’s going to fix your hands and feet with Mercurochrome. That won’t hurt.”

“Get this shirt on, Davy,” Thomas Hudson said. “So you won’t get cold. Go get one of the lightest blankets for him, Tom.”

Thomas Hudson touched the places where the harness had chafed the boy’s back with Mercurochrome and helped him into the shirt.

“I’m all right,” David said in a toneless voice. “Can I have a Coke, papa?”

“Sure,” Thomas Hudson told him. “Eddy will get you some soup in a little while.”

“I’m not hungry,” David said. “I couldn’t eat yet.”

“We’ll wait a while,” Thomas Hudson said.

“I know how you feel, Dave,” Andrew said when he brought the Coke.

“Nobody knows how I feel,” David said.

Thomas Hudson gave his oldest boy a compass course to steer back to the island.

“Synchronize your motors at three hundred, Tommy,” he said. “We’ll be in sight of the light by dark and then I’ll give you a correction.”

“You check me every once in a while will you please, papa. Do you feel as awful as I do?”

“There’s nothing to do about it.”

“Eddy certainly tried,” young Tom said. “Not everybody would jump in this ocean after a fish.”

“Eddy nearly made it,” his father told him. “It could have been a hell of a thing with him in the water with a gaff in that fish.”

“Eddy would have got out all right,” young Tom said. “Are they synchronized all right?”

“Listen for it,” his father told him. “Don’t just watch the tachometers.”

Thomas Hudson went over to the bunk and sat down by David. He was rolled up in the light blanket and Eddy was fixing his hands and Roger his feet.

“Hi, papa,” he said and looked at Thomas Hudson and then looked away.

“I’m awfully sorry, Davy,” his father said. “You made the best fight on him I ever saw anyone make. Roger or any man ever.”

“Thank you very much, papa. Please don’t talk about it.”

“Can I get you anything, Davy?”

“I’d like another Coke, please,” David said.

Thomas Hudson found a cold bottle of Coca-Cola in the ice of the bait box and opened it. He sat by David and the boy drank the Coke with the hand Eddy had fixed.

“I’ll have some soup ready right away. It’s heating now,” Eddy said. “Should I heat some chile, Tom? We’ve got some conch salad.”

“Let’s heat some chile,” Thomas Hudson said. “We haven’t eaten since breakfast. Roger hasn’t had a drink all day.”

“I had a bottle of beer just now,” Roger said.

“Eddy,” David said. “What would he really weigh?”

“Over a thousand,” Eddy told him.

“Thank you very much for going overboard,” David said. “Thank you very much, Eddy.”

“Hell,” Eddy said. “What else was there to do?”

“Would he really have weighed a thousand, papa?” David asked.

“I’m sure of it,” Thomas Hudson answered. “I’ve never seen a bigger fish, either broadbill or marlin, ever.”

The sun had gone down and the boat was driving through the calm sea, the boat alive with the engines, pushing fast through the same water they had moved so slowly through for all those hours.

Andrew was sitting on the edge of the wide bunk now, too.

“Hello, horseman,” David said to him.

“If you’d have caught him,” Andrew said, “you’d have been probably the most famous young boy in the world.”

“I don’t want to be famous,” David said. “You can be famous.”

“We’d have been famous as your brothers,” Andrew said. “I mean really.”

“I’d have been famous as your friend,” Roger told him.

“I’d have been famous because I steered,” Thomas Hudson said. “And Eddy because he gaffed him.”

“Eddy ought to be famous anyway,” Andrew said. “Tommy would be famous because he brought so many drinks. All through the terrific battle Tommy kept them supplied.”

“What about the fish? Wouldn’t he be famous?” David asked. He was all right, now. Or, at least, he was talking all right.

“He’d be the most famous of all,” Andrew said. “He’d be immortal.”

“I hope nothing happened to him,” David said. “I hope he’s all right.”

“I know he’s all right,” Roger told him. “The way he was hooked and the way he fought I know he was all right.”

“I’ll tell you sometime how it was,” David said.

“Tell now,” Andy urged him.

“I’m tired now and besides it sounds crazy.”

“Tell now. Tell a little bit,” Andrew said.

“I don’t know whether I better. Should I, papa?”

“Go ahead,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Well,” David said with his eyes tight shut. “In the worst parts, when I was the tiredest I couldn’t tell which was him and which was me.”

“I understand,” Roger said.

“Then I began to love him more than anything on earth.”

“You mean really love him?” Andrew asked.

“Yeah. Really love him.”

“Gee,” said Andrew. “I can’t understand that.”

“I loved him so much when I saw him coming up that I couldn’t stand it,” David said, his eyes still shut. “All I wanted was to see him closer.”

“I know,” Roger said.

“Now I don’t give a shit I lost him,” David said. “I don’t care about records. I just thought I did. I’m glad that he’s all right and that I’m all right. We aren’t enemies.”

“I’m glad you told us,” Thomas Hudson said.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Davis, for what you said when I first lost him,” David said with his eyes still shut.

Thomas Hudson never knew what it was that Roger had said to him.