The old man looked carefully in the glimpse of vision that he had. Then he took two turns of the harpoon line around the bitt in the bow and laid his head on his hands.
“I'll rest on the next turn as he goes out,”he said.“I feel much better.Then in two or three turns more I will have him.”
Just then he felt a sudden banging and jerking on the line he held with his two hands.It was sharp and hard-feeling and heavy.
He started to pull the fish in to have him alongside so that he could pass a line through his gills and out his mouth and make his head fast alongside the bow.I want to see him, he thought,and to touch and to feel him.He is my fortune, he thought.But that is not why I wish to feel him.I think I felt his heart,he thought.When I pushed on the harpoon shaft the second time.Bring him in now and make him fast and get the noose around his tail and another around his middle to bind him to the skiff.