“Look at Dave now,” his father said.
David was working on the fish as though he had just started the fight.
“Look how sort of slab-sided he is,” young Tom said. “His chest and his back are all the same. He looks sort of like he was glued together. But he’s got the longest arm muscles you could ever see. They’re just as long on the back of his arms as on the front. The biceps and the triceps I mean. He’s certainly built strangely, papa. He’s a strange boy and he’s the best damn brother you can have.”
Down in the cockpit Eddy had drained his glass and was wiping David’s back with a towel again. Then he wiped his chest and his long arms.
“You all right, Davy?”
David nodded.
“Listen,” Eddy told him, “I’ve seen a grown man, strong, shoulders like a bull, yellow-out and quit on half the work you’ve put in on that fish already.”
David kept on working.
“Big man. Your Dad and Roger both know him. Trained for it. Fishing all the time. Hooked the biggest goddam fish a man ever hooked and yellowed out and quit on him just because he hurt. Fish made him hurt so he quit. You just keep it steady, Davy.”
David did not say anything. He was saving his breath and pumping, lowering, raising, and reeling.
“This damn fish is so strong because he’s a he,” Eddy told him. “If it was a she it would have quit long ago. It would have bust its insides or its heart or burst its roe. In this kind of fish the he is the strongest. In lots of other fish it’s the she that is strongest. But not with broadbill. He’s awfully strong, Davy. But you’ll get him.”
The line started to go out again and David shut his eyes a moment, braced his bare feet against the wood, hung back against the rod, and rested.
“That’s right, Davy,” Eddy said. “Only work when you’re working. He’s just circling. But the drag makes him work for it and it’s tiring him all the time.”
Eddy turned his head and looked below and Thomas Hudson knew from the way he squinted his eyes that he was looking at the big brass clock on the cabin wall.
“It’s five over three, Roger,” he said. “You’ve been with him three hours and five minutes, Davy old boy.”
They were at the point where David should have started to gain line. But instead the line was going out steadily.
“He’s sounding again,” Roger said. “Watch yourself, Davy. Can you see the line OK, Tom?”
“I can see it OK,” Thomas Hudson told him. It was not yet at a very steep slant and he could see it a long way down in the water from the top of the house.
“He may want to go down to die,” Thomas Hudson told his oldest boy, speaking very low. “That would ruin Dave.”
Young Tom shook his head and bit his lips.
“Hold him all you can, Dave,” Thomas Hudson heard Roger say. “Tighten up on him and give it all it will take.”
The boy tightened up the drag almost to the breaking point of the rod and line and then hung on, bracing himself to take the punishment the best he could, while the line went out and out and down and down.
“When you stop him this time I think you will have whipped him,” Roger told David. “Throw her out, Tom.”
“She’s cut,” Thomas Hudson said. “But I think I could save a little backing.”
“OK. Try it.”
“Backing now,” Thomas Hudson said. They saved a little line by backing but not much, and the line was getting terribly straight up and down. There was less on the reel now than at the worst time before.
“You’ll have to get out on the stern, Davy,” Roger said. “You’ll have to loosen the drag up a little to get the butt out.”
David loosened the drag.
“Now get the butt into your butt rest. You hold him around the waist, Eddy.”
“Oh God, papa,” young Tom said. “He’s taking it all right to the bottom now.”
David was on his knees on the low stern now, the rod bent so that its tip was underwater, its butt in the leather socket of the butt rest that was strapped around his waist. Andrew was holding onto David’s feet and Roger knelt beside him watching the line in the water and the little there was on the reel. He shook his head at Thomas Hudson.
There was not twenty yards more on the reel and David was pulled down with half the rod underwater now. Then there was barely fifteen yards on the reel. Now there was not ten yards. Then the line stopped going out. The boy was still bent far over the stern and most of the rod was in the water. But no line was going out.
“Get him back into the chair, Eddy. Easy. Easy,” Roger said. “When you can, I mean. He’s stopped him.”
Eddy helped David back into the fighting chair, holding him around the waist so that a sudden lurch by the fish would not pull the boy overboard. Eddy eased him into the chair and David got the rod butt into the gimbel socket and braced with his feet and pulled back on the rod. The fish lifted a little.
“Only pull when you are going to get some line,” Roger told David. “Let him pull the rest of the time. Try and rest inside the action except when you are working on him.”
“You’ve got him, Davy,” Eddy said. “You’re getting it on him all the time. Just take it slow and easy and you’ll kill him.
Thomas Hudson eased the boat a little forward to put the fish further astern. There was good shadow now over all the stern. The boat was working steadily further out to sea and no wind troubled the surface.
“Papa,” young Tom said to his father. “I was looking at his feet when I made the drinks. They’re bleeding.”
“He’s chafed them pulling against the wood.”
“Do you think I could put a pillow there? A cushion for him to pull against?”
“Go down and ask Eddy,” Thomas Hudson said. “But don’t interrupt Dave.”
It was well into the fourth hour of the fight now. The boat was still working out to sea and David, with Roger holding the back of his chair now, was raising the fish steadily. David looked stronger now than he had an hour before but Thomas Hudson could see where his heels showed the blood that had run down from the soles of his feet. It looked varnished in the sun.
“How’s your feet, Davy?” Eddy asked.
“They don’t hurt,” David said. “What hurts is my hands and arms and my back.”
“I could put a cushion under them.”
David shook his head.
“I think they’d stick,” he said. “They’re sticky. They don’t hurt. Really.”
Young Tom came up to the top side and said, “He’s wearing the bottoms of his feet right off. He’s getting his hands bad too. He’s had blisters and now they’re all open. Gee, papa. I don’t know.”
“It’s the same as if he had to paddle against a stiff current, Tommy. Or if he had to keep going up a mountain or stick with a horse after he was awfully tired.”
“I know it. But just watching it and not doing it seems so sort of awful when it’s your brother.”
“I know it, Tommy. But there is a time boys have to do things if they are ever going to be men. That’s where Dave is now.”
“I know it. But when I see his feet and his hands I don’t know, papa.”
“If you had the fish would you want Roger or me to take him away from you?”
“No. I’d want to stay with him till I died. But to see it with Davy is different.”
“We have to think about how he feels,” his father told him. “And what’s important to him.”
“I know,” young Tom said hopelessly. “But to me it’s just Davy. I wish the world wasn’t the way it is and that things didn’t have to happen to brothers.”
“I do too,” Thomas Hudson said. “You’re an awfully good boy, Tommy. But please know I would have stopped this long ago except that I know that if David catches this fish he’ll have something inside him for all his life and it will make everything else easier.”
Just then Eddy spoke. He had been looking behind him into the cabin again.
“Four hours even, Roger,” he said. “You better take some water, Davy. How do you feel?”
“Fine,” David said.
“I know what I’ll do that is practical,” young Tom said. “I’ll make a drink for Eddy. Do you want one, papa?”
“No. I’ll skip this one,” Thomas Hudson said.
Young Tom went below and Thomas Hudson watched David working slowly, tiredly but steadily; Roger bending over him and speaking to him in a low voice; Eddy out on the stern watching the slant of the line in the water. Thomas Hudson tried to picture how it would be down where the swordfish was swimming. It was dark of course but probably the fish could see as a horse can see. It would be very cold.
He wondered if the fish was alone or if there could be another fish swimming with him. They had seen no other fish but
