Santiago decides to rest. He wishes that he could sleep and dream about the lions and then wonders why the lions are the main thing that is left to him. The marlin begins to swim at a higher level and turns a bit to the east, which Santiago previously thought of as signs that the fish is tiring and the current is pushing it more eastward. Santiago can picture the fish swimming below the water and wonders what it can see at that depth. And he remembers that he, like a cat, once saw well in the dark, though not absolute dark.
Santiago's hand finally uncramps, he shifts the line on his back, and thinks that he is tired and that if the fish is not tired, it is a very strange fish. He tries to think of baseball, of the New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers and how this is the second day that he hasn't known what's happening. He tells himself he must have confidence and be worthy of the great DiMaggio, "who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel." He wonders momentarily what a bone spur really is.
Santiago thinks that "Man is not much beside the great birds and beasts" and that he'd rather be the marlin, unless the sharks come. He says, "If the sharks come, God pity him and me." Then Santiago considers that DiMaggio, whose father was a fisherman, would probably stay with a fish as long as Santiago has, unless the bone spur hurt too much.
