He was an old man fishing alone on a boat that rocked gently on the greenish waters of the Gulf Stream. He had not caught a fish in eighty days. During the first forty days he had had a boy with him. However, after forty days without catching a fish the boy’s parents became convinced that the old man was sorely afflicted with bad luck, and compelled the boy to start working for another fisherman, with whom he caught three fishes just in his first week. The boy felt sad whenever he saw the old man returning home with empty hands. He used to go down to the beach to assist the old man when the latter needed to prepare his boat to go out to sea. The sail of the old man’s ship was patched with flour sacks. When folded, it looked like an endlessly defeated flag. The old man was thin and lanky and had deep wrinkles on his nape. Reddish spots of the benign cancer that is produced by sunlight were strewn all over his cheeks. These spots were found even under his jaws, close to his neck. His hands had the deep scars that ropes leave in those who have pulled big fishes out of the sea, but none of these scars were recent. They were as old as the cracks of an arid desert. Everything was old in him except his eyes: these were of the colour of the tropical sea, lively and triumphant.