He was a fish to keep a man all winter,he thought.Don't think of that.Just rest and try to get your hands in shape to defend what is left of him.The blood smell from my hands means nothing now with all that scent in the water.Besides they do not bleed much.There is nothing cut that means anything.The bleeding may keep the left from cramping.
“I shouldn't have gone out so far,fish,”he said.“ Neither for you nor for me.I'm sorry,fish.”
But you enjoyed killing the dentuso,he thought.He lives on the live fish as you do.He is not a scavenger nor just a moving appetite as some sharks are.He is beautiful and noble and knows no fear of anything.
It is silly not to hope,he thought.Besides I believe it is a sin .Do not think about sin,he thought.There are enough problems now without sin.Also I have no understanding of it.
“But man is not made for defeat,”he said.“A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”I am sorry that I killed the fish though,he thought.Now the bad time is coming and I do not even have the harpoon.The dentuso is cruel and able and strong and intelligent.But I was more intelligent than he was. Perhaps not,he thought.Perhaps I was only better armed.
But I must think,he thought.Because it is all I have left. That and baseball.I wonder how the great DiMaggio would have liked the way I hit him in the brain?It was no great thing, he thought.Any man could do it.But do you think my hands were as great a handicap as the bone spurs?I cannot know. I never had anything wrong with my heel except the time the sting ray stung it when I stepped on him when swimming and paralyzed the lower leg and made the unbearable pain.