“Who gave this to you?”
“I think they are equal.”
“I'll give him the belly meat of a big fish,”the old man said.“ Has he done this for us more than once?”
He no longer dreamed of storms,nor of women,nor of great occurrences ,nor of great fish,nor fights,nor contests of strength,nor of his wife.He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach.They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy.He never dreamed about the boy.He simply woke,looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on. He urinated outside the shack and then went up the road to wake the boy.He was shivering with the morning cold.But he knew he would shiver himself warm and that soon he would be rowing.
“We'll put the gear in the boat and then get some.”
“We're different,”the old man said.“I let you carry things when you were five years old.”
He was asleep in a short time and he dreamed of Africa when he was a boy and the long golden beaches and the white beaches,so white they hurt your eyes,and the high capes and the great brown mountains.He lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the surf roar and saw the native boats come riding through it.He smelled the tar and oakum of the deck as he slept and he smelled the smell of Africa that the land breeze brought at morning.