From where he swung lightly against his oars he looked down into the water and saw the tiny fish that were colored like the trailing filaments and swam between them and under the small shade the bubble made as it drifted.They were immune to its poison.But men were not and when some of the filaments would catch on a line and rest there slimy and purple while the old man was working a fish,he would have welts and sores on his arms and hands of the sort that poison ivy or poison oak can give.But these poisonings from the agua mala came quickly and struck like a whiplash.
He could not see the green of the shore now but only the tops of the blue hills that showed white as though they were snow-capped and the clouds that looked like high snow mountains above them.The sea was very dark and the light made prisms in the water.The myriad flecks of the plankton were annulled now by the high sun and it was only the great deep prisms in the blue water that the old man saw now with his lines going straight down into the water that was a mile deep.
“He's found fish,”he said aloud.No flying fish broke the surface and there was no scattering of bait fish.But as the old man watched,a small tuna rose in the air,turned and dropped head first into the water.The tuna shone silver in the sun and after he had dropped back into the water another and another rose and they were jumping in all directions, churning the water and leaping in long jumps after the bait. They were circling it and driving it.