①He 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. ②In the first forty days a boy had been with him.③But 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. ④It 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. ⑤The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

⑥The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. ⑦The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. ⑧The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. ⑨But none of these scars were fresh. ⑩They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.

skiff [sk?f] n．小艇

definitely[?def?n?tl?]ad．明確地，確切地

permanent [?p?:m?n?nt] a．永久的，永恒的

benevolent [b??nev?l?nt] a．好心腸的，與人為善的