In the dark he found a water bottle and took a drink.
Then he lay down on the bed.
He pulled the blanket over his shoulders and then over his back and legs and he slept face down on the newspapers with his arms out straight and the palms of his hands up.
He was asleep when the boy looked in the door in the morning.
It was blowing so hard that the drifting-boats would not be going out and the boy had slept late and then come to the old man's shack as he had come each morning.
The boy saw that the old man was breathing and then he saw the old man's hands and he started to cry.
He went out very quietly to go to bring some coffee and all the way down the road he was crying.
Many fishermen were around the skiff looking at what was lashed beside it and one was in the water, his trousers rolled up, measuring the skeleton with a length of line.
The boy did not go down. He had been there before and one of the fishermen was looking after the skiff for him.
"How is he?" one of the fishermen shouted.