“Ay,”he said aloud. There is no translation for this word and perhaps it is just a noise such as a man might make, involuntarily,feeling the nail go through his hands and into the wood.
So he did that with the tiller under his arm and the sheet of the sail under his foot.
“You give me much good counsel ,”he said aloud.“ I'm tired of it.”
He did not need a compass to tell him where southwest was. He only needed the feel of the trade wind and the drawing of the sail.I better put a small line out with a spoon on it and try and get something to eat and drink for the moisture .But he could not find a spoon and his sardines were rotten.So he hooked a patch of yellow gulf weed with the gaff as they passed and shook it so that the small shrimps that were in it fell onto the planking of the skiff.There were more than a dozen of them and they jumped and kicked like sand fleas.The old man pinched their heads off with his thumb and forefinger and ate them chewing up the shells and the tails. They were very tiny but he knew they were nourishing and they tasted good.