Mako Shark Attack

The Mako Shark Attack is the first and most formidable shark assault on Santiago's marlin, occurring an hour after he lashed the fish to his skiff and began sailing home. A huge Mako shark, drawn by the blood trail from the marlin's heart wound, attacks the carcass from astern, and Santiago kills it with a harpoon thrust to the brain, but the shark takes about forty pounds of meat, the harpoon, and all the rope, leaving the old man wounded and aware that worse is to come.

The Shark's Arrival and Description

The attack was not an accident. The shark had come up from deep down in the water as the dark cloud of blood from the marlin's heart settled and dispersed in the mile-deep sea. He came up so fast and absolutely without caution that he broke the surface of the blue water and was in the sun. He was a very big Mako shark, built to swim as fast as the fastest fish in the sea, and everything about him was beautiful except his jaws. His back was as blue as a sword fish's and his belly was silver and his hide was smooth and handsome. Inside the closed double lip of his jaws all of his eight rows of teeth were slanted inwards, shaped like a man's fingers when they are crisped like claws, nearly as long as the fingers of the old man and with razor-sharp cutting edges on both sides. This was a fish built to feed on all the fishes in the sea, that were so fast and strong and well armed that they had no other enemy. When the old man saw him coming he knew that this was a shark that had no fear at all and would do exactly what he wished.

The Attack and Santiago's Response

The shark closed fast astern and when he hit the fish the old man saw his mouth open and his strange eyes and the clicking chop of the teeth as he drove forward in the meat just above the tail. The shark's head was out of water and his back was coming out and the old man could hear the noise of skin and flesh ripping on the big fish. Santiago rammed the harpoon down onto the shark's head at a spot where the line between his eyes intersected with the line that ran straight back from his nose—the location of the brain. He hit it with his blood-mushed hands, driving a good harpoon with all his strength, without hope but with resolution and complete malignancy. The shark swung over and the old man saw his eye was not alive; then he swung over once again, wrapping himself in two loops of the rope. The old man knew that he was dead but the shark would not accept it. On his back, with his tail lashing and his jaws clicking, the shark plowed over the water as a speedboat does. The water was white where his tail beat it and three-quarters of his body was clear above the water when the rope came taut, shivered, and then snapped. The shark lay quietly for a little while on the surface and then went down very slowly.

Consequences and Aftermath

"He took about forty pounds," the old man said aloud. The shark took his harpoon too and all the rope, and now his fish bleeds again and there will be others. He did not like to look at the fish anymore since he had been mutilated. When the fish had been hit it was as though he himself were hit. But he had killed the shark that hit his fish, and he was the biggest dentuso that he had ever seen. "But man is not made for defeat," he said. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated." He was sorry that he killed the fish though, because now the bad time was coming and he did not even have the harpoon. The dentuso is cruel and able and strong and intelligent, but he thought he was more intelligent than the shark—or perhaps only better armed. He lashed his knife to the butt of one of the oars, saying, "Now I am still an old man. But I am not unarmed." The attack marks a decisive turning point: the triumph of killing the marlin is immediately poisoned by the loss of meat and weapons, and Santiago's solitary struggle shifts from a contest of will with a noble brother to a desperate, defensive battle against scavengers.