"When I was your age I was before the mast on a square rigged ship that ran to Africa and I have seen lions on the beaches in the evening."
[…]
He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach.
Ernest Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea.
I’d read this long ago, and never gave a thought to it that this detail must have been rooted in reality. It’s interesting to learn what the lions were doing there.