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TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

THE TORRENTS OF SPRING

WINNER TAKE NOTHING

*Published by Bantam Books

ISLANDS

IN THE

STREAM

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

A NATIONAL GENERAL COMPANY

This low-priced Bantam Book

has been completely reset in a type face

designed for easy reading, and was printed

from new plates. It contains the complete

text of the original hard-cover edition.

NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

ISLANDS IN THE STREAM

A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with

Charles Scribner’s Sons

PRINTING HISTORY

Scribner’s edition published October 1970

2nd printing ….. October 1970

Book-of-the-Month Club edition published October 1970

Bantam edition published February 1972

Excerpts appeared in ESQUIRE September 1970

Map by Samuel H. Bryant

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by

mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

For information address: Charles Scribner’s Sons,

597 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017.

Published simultaneously in the united States and Canada

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc., a National General company. Its trade-mark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, Is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10019.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Note

Charles Scribner, Jr. and I worked together preparing this book for publication from Ernest’s original manuscript. Beyond the routine chores of correcting spelling and punctuation, we made some cuts in the manuscript, I feeling that Ernest would surely have made them himself. The book is all Ernest’s. We have added nothing to it.

MARY HEMINGWAY

Contents

Note

Contents

Part I

BIMINI

III

VII

VIII

XII

XIII

XIV

Part II

CUBA

Part III

AT SEA

III

VII

VIII

XII

XIII

XIV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XXI

Part I

BIMINI

The house was built on the highest part of the narrow tongue of land between the harbor and the open sea. It had lasted through three hurricanes and it was built solid as a ship. It was shaded by tall coconut palms that were bent by the trade wind and on the ocean side you could walk out of the door and down the bluff across the white sand and into the Gulf Stream. The water of the Stream was usually a dark blue when you looked out at it when there was no wind. But when you walked out into it there was just the green light of the water over that floury white sand and you could see the shadow of any big fish a long time before he could ever come in close to the beach.

It was a safe and fine place to bathe in the day but it was no place to swim at night. At night the sharks came in close to the beach, hunting in the edge of the Stream and from the upper porch of the house on quiet nights you could hear the splashing of the fish they hunted and if you went down to the beach you could see the phosphorescent wakes they made in the water. At night the sharks had no fear and everything else feared them. But in the day they stayed out away from the clear white sand and if they did come in you could see their shadows a long way away.

A man named Thomas Hudson, who was a good painter, lived there in that house and worked there and on the island the greater part of the year. After one has lived in those latitudes long enough the changes of the seasons become as important there as anywhere else and Thomas Hudson, who loved the island, did not want to miss any spring, nor summer, nor any fall or winter.

Sometimes the summers were too hot when the wind dropped in August or when the trade winds sometimes failed in June and July. Hurricanes, too, might come in September and October and even in early November and there could be freak tropical storms any time from June on. But the true hurricane months have fine weather when there are no storms.