“He’s tiring me, too,” David said.
“You got a headache?” Eddy asked.
“No.”
“Get a cap for him,” Roger said.
“I don’t want it, Mr. Davis. I’d rather have some water on my head.”
Eddy dipped a bucket of sea water and wet the boy’s head carefully with his cupped hand, soaking his head and pushing the hair back out of his eyes.
“You say if you get a headache,” he told him.
“I’m fine,” David said. “You tell me what to do, Mr. Davis.”
“See if you can get any line on him,” Roger said.
David tried and tried and tried again but he could not raise the fish an inch.
“All right. Save your strength,” Roger told him. Then to Eddy, “Soak a cap and put it on him. This is a hell of a hot day with the calm.”
Eddy dipped a long-visored cap in the bucket of salt water and put it on Dave’s head.
“The salt water gets in my eyes, Mr. Davis. Really. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll wipe it out with some fresh,” Eddy said. “Give me a handkerchief, Roger. You go get some ice water, Andy.”
While the boy hung there, his legs braced, his body arched against the strain, the boat kept moving slowly out to sea. To the westward a school of either bonito or alba-core were troubling the calm of the surface and terns commenced to come flying, calling to each other as they flew. But the school of fish went down and the terns lit on the calm water to wait for the fish to come up again. Eddy had wiped the boy’s face and now was dipping the handkerchief in the glass of ice water and laying it across David’s neck. Then he cooled his wrists with it and then, with the handkerchief soaked in ice water again, wrung it out while he pressed it against the back of David’s neck.
“You say if you have a headache,” Eddy told him. “That ain’t quitting. That’s just sense. This is a hell of a goddam hot sun when it’s a calm.”
“I’m all right,” David told him. “I hurt bad in the shoulders and the arms is all.”
“That’s natural,” Eddy said. “That’ll make a man out of you. What we don’t want is for you to get no sunstroke nor bust any gut.”
“What will he do now, Mr. Davis?” David asked. His voice sounded dry.
“Maybe just what he’s doing. Or he might start to circle. Or he may come up.”
“It’s a damn shame he sounded so deep at the start so we haven’t any line to maneuver him with,” Thomas Hudson said to Roger.
“Dave stopped him is the main thing,” Roger said. “Pretty soon the fish will change his mind. Then we’ll work on him. See if you can get any just once, Dave.”
David tried but he could not raise him at all.
“He’ll come up,” Eddy said. “You’ll see. All of a sudden there won’t be anything to it, Davy. Want to rinse your mouth out?”
David nodded his head. He had reached the breath-saving stage.
“Spit it out,” Eddy said. “Swallow just a little.” He turned to Roger. “One hour even,” he said. “Is your head all right, Davy?”
The boy nodded.
“What do you think, papa?” young Tom said to his father. “Truly?”
“He looks pretty good to me,” his father said. “Eddy wouldn’t let anything happen to him.”
“No, I guess not,” Tom agreed. “I wish I could do something useful. I’m going to get Eddy a drink.”
“Get me one, too, please.”
“Oh good. I’ll make one for Mr. Davis, too.”
“I don’t think he wants one.”
“Well I’ll ask him.”
“Try him once more, Davy,” Roger said very quietly, and the boy lifted with all his strength, holding the sides of the spool of the reel with his hands.
“You got an inch,” Roger said. “Take it in and see if you can get some more.”
Now the real fight began. Before David had only been holding him while the fish moved out to sea and the boat moved with him. But now he had to lift, let the rod straighten with the line he had gained, and then lower the rod slowly while he took the line in by reeling.