After it is light,he thought,I will work back to the forty-fathom bait and cut it away too and link up the reserve coils. I will have lost two hundred fathoms of good Catalan cordel and the hooks and leaders.That can be replaced .But who replaces this fish if I hook some fish and it cuts him off?I don't know what that fish was that took the bait just now.It could have been a marlin or a broadbill or a shark.I never felt him.I had to get rid of him too fast.
“I am not religious ,”he said.“But I will say ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys that I should catch this fish,and I promise to make a pilgrimage to the Virgin de Cobre if I catch him.That is a promise.”
“How does it go,hand?Or is it too early to know?”
“You're feeling it now,fish,”he said.“And so,God knows,am I.”
“I don't think I can eat an entire one,”he said and drew his knife across one of the strips.He could feel the steady hard pull of the line and his left hand was cramped.It drew up tight on the heavy cord and he looked at it in disgust.
He knelt down and found the tuna under the stern with the gaff and drew it toward him keeping it clear of the coiled lines.Holding the line with his left shoulder again,and bracing on his left hand and arm,he took the tuna off the gaff hook and put the gaff back in place.He put one knee on the fish and cut strips of dark red meat longitudinally from the back of the head to the tail.They were wedge-shaped strips and he cut them from next to the backbone down to the edge of the belly.When he had cut six strips he spread them out on the wood of the bow,wiped his knife on his trousers, and lifted the carcass of the bonito by the tail and dropped it overboard.