Chapter 1
　　He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four
days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty
days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally
salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat
which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each
day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the
gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour
sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.