“Are you ready for him, Eddy?” Roger asked.
“Sure,” Eddy said.
“Watch him, Tom,” Roger said and leaned over and took hold of the cable leader.
“Slack off on your drag,” he said to David and began slowly raising the fish, holding and lifting on the heavy cable to bring him within reach of the gaff.
The fish was coming up looking as long and as broad as a big log in the water. David was watching him and glancing up at his rod tip to make sure it was not fouled. For the first time in six hours he had no strain on his back and his arms and legs and Thomas Hudson saw the muscles in his legs twitching and quivering. Eddy was bending over the side with the gaff and Roger was lifting slowly and steadily.
“He’d go over a thousand,” Eddy said. Then he said, very quietly, “Roger, hook’s only holding by a thread.”
“Can you reach him?” Roger asked.
“Not yet,” Eddy said. “Keep him coming easy, easy.”
Roger kept lifting on the wire cable and the great fish rose steadily toward the boat.
“It’s been cutting,” Eddy said. “It’s just holding by nothing.”
“Can you reach him now?” Roger asked. His tone had not changed.
“Not quite yet,” Eddy said as quietly. Roger was lifting as gently and as softly as he could. Then, from lifting, he straightened, all strain gone, holding the slack leader in his two hands.
“No. No. No. Please God, no,” young Tom said.
Eddy lunged down into the water with the gaff and then went overboard to try to get the gaff into the fish if he could reach him.
It was no good. The great fish hung there in the depth of water where he was like a huge dark purple bird and then settled slowly. They all watched him go down, getting smaller and smaller until he was out of sight.
Eddy’s hat was floating on the calm sea and he was holding onto the gaff handle. The gaff was on the line that was fast to the Samson post in the stern. Roger put his arms around David and Thomas Hudson could see David’s shoulders shaking. But he left David to Roger. “Get the ladder out for Eddy to come aboard,” he said to young Tom. “Take Davy’s rod, Andy. Unhook it.”
Roger lifted the boy out of the chair and carried him over to the bunk at the starboard side of the cockpit and laid him down in it. Roger’s arms were around David and the boy lay flat on his face on the bunk.
Eddy came on board soaked and dripping, and started to undress. Andrew fished out his hat with the gaff and Thomas Hudson went below to get Eddy a shirt and a pair of dungarees and a shirt and shorts for David. He was surprised that he had no feeling at all except pity and love for David. All other feeling had been drained out of him in the fight.
When he came up David was lying, naked, face-down on the bunk and Roger was rubbing him down with alcohol.
“It hurts across the shoulders and my tail,” David said. “Watch out, Mr. Davis, please.”
“It’s where it’s chafed,” Eddy told him. “Your father’s going to fix your hands and feet with Mercurochrome. That won’t hurt.”
“Get this shirt on, Davy,” Thomas Hudson said. “So you won’t get cold. Go get one of the lightest blankets for him, Tom.”
Thomas Hudson touched the places where the harness had chafed the boy’s back with Mercurochrome and helped him into the shirt.
“I’m all right,” David said in a toneless voice. “Can I have a Coke, papa?”
“Sure,” Thomas Hudson told him. “Eddy will get you some soup in a little while.”
“I’m not hungry,” David said. “I couldn’t eat yet.”
“We’ll wait a while,” Thomas Hudson said.
“I know how you feel, Dave,” Andrew said when he brought the Coke.
“Nobody knows how I feel,” David said.
Thomas Hudson gave his oldest boy a compass course to steer back to the island.
“Synchronize your motors at three hundred, Tommy,” he said. “We’ll be in sight of the light by dark and then I’ll give you a correction.”
“You check me every once in a while will you please, papa. Do you feel as awful as I do?”
“There’s nothing to do about it.”
“Eddy certainly tried,” young Tom said. “Not everybody would jump in this ocean after a fish.”
“Eddy nearly made it,” his father told him. “It could have been a hell of a thing with him in the water with a gaff in that fish.”
“Eddy would have got out all right,” young Tom said. “Are they synchronized all right?”
“Listen for it,” his father told him. “Don’t just watch the tachometers.”
Thomas Hudson went over to the bunk and sat down by David. He was rolled up in the light blanket and Eddy was fixing his hands and Roger his feet.
“Hi, papa,” he said and looked at Thomas Hudson and then looked away.
“I’m awfully sorry, Davy,” his father said. “You made the best fight on him I ever saw anyone make. Roger or any man ever.”
“Thank you very much, papa. Please don’t talk about it.”
“Can I get you anything, Davy?”
“I’d like another Coke, please,” David said.
Thomas Hudson found a cold bottle of Coca-Cola in the ice of the bait box and opened it. He sat by David and the boy drank the Coke with the hand Eddy had fixed.