You work now, fish, he thought. I’ll take you at the turn.
The sea had risen considerably. But it was a fair-weather breeze and he had to have it to get home.
“I’ll just steer south and west,” he said. “A man is never lost at sea and it is a long island.”
It was on the third turn that he saw the fish first.
He saw him first as a dark shadow that took so long to pass under the boat that he could not believe its length.
“No,” he said. “He can’t be that big.”
But he was that big and at the end of this circle he came to the surface only thirty yards away and the man saw his tail out of water. It was higher than a big scythe blade and a very pale lavender above the dark blue water. It raked back and as the fish swam just below the surface the old man could see his huge bulk and the purple stripes that banded him. His dorsal fin was down and his huge pectorals were spread wide.
On this circle the old man could see the fish’s eye and the two gray sucking fish that swain around him.
