First Galanos Attack

The First Galanos Attack marks the beginning of the final, grinding phase of Santiago's ordeal at sea, transforming his triumphant capture of the great marlin into a desperate rearguard action against scavengers. After two hours of sailing with the marlin lashed alongside, the old man, resting in the stern and chewing bits of the fish's meat to keep up his strength, saw the first of two sharks approaching. He uttered a sound, "Ay," that Hemingway describes as having no translation, a noise like that of a man feeling a nail driven through his hands into wood. He identified the pair as galanos, shovel-nosed sharks, by their brown, triangular fins and the sweeping movements of their tails. These were not the noble, fearless Mako he had killed earlier; they were hateful, bad-smelling scavengers as well as killers, the kind that would bite at an oar or a boat's rudder when hungry, that would cut the legs and flippers off sleeping turtles, and that would attack a man in the water even without the scent of fish blood. Santiago made the sheet fast, jammed the tiller, and took up the oar to which he had earlier lashed his knife. His hands rebelled at the pain of gripping it, but he closed them firmly, accepting the hurt, and watched the sharks come.

The Attack and the Old Man's Counterattack

The two galanos did not attack as the Mako had. One turned and went out of sight under the skiff, and Santiago felt the boat shake as the shark jerked and pulled on the marlin. The other, watching the old man with its slitted yellow eyes, came in fast with its half-circle of jaws wide, aiming for the spot where the marlin had already been bitten. Santiago drove the knife on the oar into the juncture where the line showed clearly on the shark's brown head and back, where the brain joined the spinal cord. He withdrew the blade and drove it in again into the shark's yellow, cat-like eyes. The shark let go of the fish and slid down, swallowing what it had taken as it died. But the skiff was still shaking from the destruction the other shark was doing to the fish from underneath. Santiago let go the sheet so the skiff would swing broadside and bring the shark out from under. When he saw it, he leaned over the side and punched at it. He hit only meat; the hide was set hard and he barely got the knife in. The blow hurt not only his hands but his shoulder. The shark came up fast with its head out, and Santiago hit it squarely in the center of its flat-topped head as its nose came out of water and lay against the fish. He withdrew the blade and punched the shark exactly in the same spot again. The shark still hung to the fish with its jaws hooked, and the old man stabbed it in its left eye. Still it hung there. "No?" Santiago said, and drove the blade between the vertebrae and the brain. It was an easy shot now, and he felt the cartilage sever. He reversed the oar and put the blade between the shark's jaws to open them, twisted it, and as the shark slid loose he said, "Go on, galano. Slide down a mile deep. Go see your friend, or maybe it's your mother."

Consequences and the Old Man's State

After the fight, Santiago wiped the blade of his knife and laid down the oar. He found the sheet, the sail filled, and he brought the skiff back onto her course. He estimated aloud that the sharks must have taken a quarter of the marlin, and of the best meat. He wished it were a dream and that he had never hooked the fish. "I'm sorry about it, fish," he said. "It makes everything wrong." He did not want to look at the fish now; drained of blood and awash, it looked the color of the silver backing of a mirror, its stripes still showing. He told himself he should not have gone out so far, neither for the fish nor for himself. He checked the lashing on the knife and saw it had not been cut. He wished he had a stone for the knife, and then told himself it was no time to think of what he did not have, but of what he could do with what there was. He held the tiller under his arm and soaked both his hands in the water as the skiff drove forward. He knew that each jerking bump of the shark had been meat torn away, and that the fish now made a trail for all sharks as wide as a highway through the sea. He tried to rest and get his hands in shape to defend what was left. The next shark that came was a single shovel-nose, which Santiago let hit the fish before driving the knife on the oar down into its brain. But the shark jerked backwards as it rolled, and the knife blade snapped. Santiago now had only the gaff, the two oars, the tiller, and the short club. He thought, "Now they have beaten me. I am too old to club sharks to death." But he resolved to try as long as he had anything to fight with. He put his hands in the water again to soak them, and hoped soon to see land.

Thematic Significance and Broader Context

The First Galanos Attack crystallizes the novel's central paradox: Santiago's triumph over the marlin, an act of love and respect as well as violence, immediately generates a trail of blood that attracts the scavengers, ensuring that his prize will be destroyed. The galanos are not the noble adversary the Mako was; they are ugly, stupid, and hateful, driven by a great hunger that makes them lose and find the scent in their excitement. Santiago's fight against them is purely defensive, without the aesthetic or spiritual dimension of his struggle with the marlin. The attack also marks the point at which the old man's physical resources begin to fail decisively: his hands are badly cut, his knife breaks, and he is forced to improvise with whatever is at hand. The event echoes the earlier description of the shark factory on the other side of the cove, where sharks were hoisted, their livers removed, their fins cut off, and their flesh cut into strips for salting—a reminder of the industrial-scale violence that frames the old man's solitary struggle. The galanos, as scavengers, represent the inexorable logic of the sea, where nothing is wasted and every kill draws more killers. Santiago's lament that he went out too far is not merely a practical error but a recognition that he has violated the unspoken boundaries of his world, and that the consequences are now inescapable. The attack also foreshadows the final destruction of the marlin's carcass, which will be reduced to a skeleton, a piece of garbage that a tourist will mistake for a shark's tail, while the old man sleeps and dreams of the lions.