The Old Man and the Sea

He lay in the stern in the sun, compact and bullet shaped, his big, unintelligent eyes staring as he thumped his life out against the planking of the boat with the quick shivering strokes of his neat, fast-moving [38] tail. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea. What are birds coming to?” The hawks, he thought, that come out to sea to meet them. One came, finally, against the head itself and he knew that it was over.