Moving along, Santiago spots flying fish and birds, expressing great sympathy for the latter. Soon, Santiago rows over the 'great well,' a sudden drop of seven hundred fathoms where shrimp, bait fish, and squid congregate.

'He knew he was going far out and he left the smell of the land behind and rowed out into the clean early morning smell of the ocean' (28). Santiago leaves shore early in the morning, before sunrise. When he returns, he wishes the old man luck, and Santiago goes out to sea. The boy leaves to fetch the sardines for the old man. The two take the old man's supplies from his shack to his boat and enjoy coffee at an early morning place that serves fisherman. The old man wakes and retrieves the boy from his house. 'He lived along that coast now every night and in his dreams he heard the surf roar and saw the native boats come riding through it.He dreamed of places now and lions on the beach' (24). Santiago dreams of Africa, where he traveled as a shipmate in his youth. Manolin and Santiago talk baseball for a while, and the boy then leaves to be woken in the morning by the old man. During the course of the meal, the boy realizes the squalor in which the old man lives and reminds himself to bring the old man a shirt, shoes, a jacket, and a blanket for the coming winter. The two eat the food the boy has brought. The two friends speak for a while, then Manolin leaves briefly to get food. His house is very simple with a bed, table, and chair on a dirt floor.

The two gather Santiago's things from his boat and go to the old man's house. Santiago tells Manolin that tomorrow he will go out far in the Gulf to fish. Despite this, the boy helps the old man to bring in his empty boat every day. After forty days, though, Manolin's parents decided the old man was unlucky and ordered their son to join another boat. He has a single friend, a boy named Manolin, who helped him during the first forty days of his dryspell. Santiago's lack of success, though, does not destroy his spirit, as his 'cheerful and undefeated' eyes show (10). They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert' (10). He is 'thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck.and his hands had deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords.

There is an old fisherman in Cuba, Santiago, who has gone eighty-four days without a catch.

The old man and the sea book