The Return to Harbor

The Return to Harbor is the final action of Santiago's epic journey, in which he sails his skiff back to the little harbour after three days at sea, towing the skeleton of the great marlin he killed, only to find himself utterly exhausted and his prize reduced to a stripped carcass. This arrival completes the narrative arc of the old man's ordeal, transforming his triumph into a quiet, physical defeat that is witnessed by the community and misunderstood by outsiders, and it sets the stage for his final, restorative sleep and the renewal of his bond with the boy Manolin.

The Sail Home and the State of the Fish

After the last shark attack, Santiago sailed the skiff through the night, knowing he was beaten but still steering as well and as intelligently as he could. He felt the boat was light now, with no great weight beside her, and he noted that she was sound and not harmed except for the tiller, which he had broken fighting the sharks. He could feel he was inside the current and could see the lights of the beach colonies along the shore. He thought of the wind as a friend, sometimes, and of the great sea with its friends and enemies, and he thought of bed as a great thing. When asked what beat him, he answered aloud, "Nothing," and said, "I went out too far." The skiff sailed into the little harbour when the lights of the Terrace were out and everyone was in bed. The breeze had risen steadily and was blowing strongly, but it was quiet in the harbour. He sailed up onto the little patch of shingle below the rocks. There was no one to help him, so he pulled the boat up as far as he could, then stepped out and made her fast to a rock.

The Physical Ordeal of Disembarkation

Santiago unstepped the mast, furled the sail, and tied it. Then he shouldered the mast and started to climb. It was then he knew the depth of his tiredness. He stopped for a moment and looked back, seeing in the reflection from the street light the great tail of the fish standing up well behind the skiff's stern, the white naked line of its backbone, the dark mass of the head with the projecting bill, and all the nakedness between. He started to climb again, and at the top he fell and lay for some time with the mast across his shoulder. He tried to get up, but it was too difficult, and he sat there with the mast on his shoulder and looked at the road. A cat passed on the far side going about its business, and the old man watched it. Then he just watched the road. Finally he put the mast down, stood up, picked it up, put it on his shoulder, and started up the road. He had to sit down five times before he reached his shack.

The Shack and the Boy's Vigil

Inside the shack, he leaned the mast against the wall. In the dark he found a water bottle and took a drink. Then he lay down on the bed. He pulled the blanket over his shoulders and then over his back and legs, and he slept face down on the newspapers with his arms out straight and the palms of his hands up. He was asleep when the boy looked in the door in the morning. It was blowing so hard that the drifting-boats would not be going out, and the boy had slept late and then come to the old man's shack as he had come each morning. The boy saw that the old man was breathing, and then he saw the old man's hands and started to cry. He went out very quietly to go to bring some coffee, and all the way down the road he was crying. Many fishermen were around the skiff looking at what was lashed beside it, and one was in the water, his trousers rolled up, measuring the skeleton with a length of line. The boy did not go down. He had been there before, and one of the fishermen was looking after the skiff for him. When a fisherman shouted, "How is he?" the boy called back, "Sleeping," and said, "Let no one disturb him." The fisherman who was measuring called out that the fish was eighteen feet from nose to tail. The boy said, "I believe it." He went into the Terrace and asked for a can of coffee, hot and with plenty of milk and sugar. The proprietor said, "What a fish it was. There has never been such a fish." The boy said, "Damn my fish," and started to cry again. He carried the hot can of coffee up to the old man's shack and sat by him until he woke. Once it looked as though he were waking, but he went back into heavy sleep, and the boy went across the road to borrow some wood to heat the coffee.

The Awakening and the Dialogue

Finally the old man woke. The boy told him not to sit up and gave him the coffee. The old man took it and drank it. He said, "They beat me, Manolin. They truly beat me." The boy answered, "He didn't beat you. Not the fish." The old man said, "No. Truly. It was afterwards." The boy told him that Pedrico was looking after the skiff and the gear, and asked what he wanted done with the head. The old man said to let Pedrico chop it up to use in fish traps. The boy asked for the spear, and the old man told him to keep it if he wanted it. The boy said he wanted it and that now they must make their plans about the other things. The old man asked if they had searched for him, and the boy said, "Of course. With coast guard and with planes." The old man said, "The ocean is very big and a skiff is small and hard to see." He noticed how pleasant it was to have someone to talk to instead of speaking only to himself and to the sea. He said, "I missed you." The boy told him he had caught one fish the first day, one the second, and two the third. The old man said, "Very good." The boy said, "Now we fish together again." The old man said, "No. I am not lucky. I am not lucky anymore." The boy said, "The hell with luck. I'll bring the luck with me." When the old man asked what his family would say, the boy said, "I do not care. I caught two yesterday. But we will fish together now for I still have much to learn." The old man spoke of getting a good killing lance, making the blade from a spring leaf from an old Ford, and grinding it in Guanabacoa. He said his knife broke. The boy said he would get another knife and have the spring ground. The old man asked how many days of heavy brisa they would have, and the boy said maybe three, maybe more. The boy said he would have everything in order and told the old man to get his hands well. The old man said, "I know how to care for them. In the night I spat something strange and felt something in my chest was broken." The boy told him to get that well too, and said he would bring him his clean shirt and something to eat. The old man asked him to bring any of the papers of the time he was gone. The boy said, "You must get well fast for there is much that I can learn and you can teach me everything." He asked, "How much did you suffer?" The old man said, "Plenty." The boy said he would bring the food and the papers and stuff from the drugstore for his hands. The old man said, "Don't forget to tell Pedrico the head is his." The boy said he would remember. As the boy went out the door and down the worn coral rock road, he was crying again.

The Skeleton and the Tourists

That afternoon there was a party of tourists at the Terrace. Looking down in the water among the empty beer cans and dead barracudas, a woman saw a great long white spine with a huge tail at the end that lifted and swung with the tide while the east wind blew a heavy steady sea outside the entrance to the harbour. She asked a waiter, pointing to the long backbone of the great fish that was now just garbage waiting to go out with the tide, "What's that?" The waiter said, "Tiburon. Shark." He was meaning to explain what had happened. The woman said, "I didn't know sharks had such handsome, beautifully formed tails." Her male companion said, "I didn't either." Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face, and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about the lions.