Jake wakes up early, dresses, and goes outside. He digs for worms down beside the stream and collects two tobacco tins full. When Jake goes back inside, Bill begins to joke about irony and pity. He encourages Jake to say o

Jake receives a letter from Mike telling him that Brett fainted on the train and that they stayed in San Sebastian for three days and won't arrive in Pamplona until Wednesday. Cohn sends a telegram announcing that he will arrive on Thursday. Bill and Jake reply to Cohn's telegram, stating that they are returning to Pamplona that night (Wednesday). Before leaving Burguete, Bill and Jake bid a fond farewell to Wilson-Harris, a British war veteran whom they call Harris. The three men had bonded quickly, and Harris is unhappy to part with them. Although Jake invites Harris to come to Spain, Harris refuses the offer. The three men share drinks in a pub. Harris gives them both his address, along with a dozen flies, saying, "I only thought if you fished them some time it might remind you of what a good time we had."

The episode of the bulls and the steers holds great symbolic resonance. We can interpret Jake as something of a steer, since he, like the castrated male animals, is impotent. Also, the steers' function of making peace among the bulls resembles Jake's function of keeping peace among his rowdy friends. Furthermore, the bulls and the steers do not form a community until one of the steers is dead. Their community is thus based on death, just as Jake's friends' community is based largely on their shared experience during a horrific war—and on their mutual social sacrificing of Cohn. The many symbolic layers within this brief passage demonstrate the richness of Hemingway's writing. Despite its apparent simplicity, his prose has tremendous depth of meaning.

When Jake and Bill arrive in Pamplona, the innkeeper, Montoya, informs Jake that his friends have arrived. Montoya regards Jake as a real lover and aficionado of bullfighting, in part because Jake stays in Montoya's hotel every year during the fiesta. Jake and Bill find Brett, Mike, and Cohn in a café. Mike regales them with a war story, relating how he gave away another man's medals, since he had none of his own. Everyone watches the unloading of the bulls. When the shining, muscular beasts charge out of the cages, steers (castrated male bovines) work at calming them so that they do not kill one another. The steers are often gored in the process. Jake tells Brett not to look, but she watches anyway, fascinated. Afterward, they go to a café and get drunk. Mike makes a few cutting remarks about Cohn following Brett around like a steer, referring to the fact that Cohn went to San Sebastian after Bill and Jake left Pamplona. Mike berates Cohn for not knowing when he isn't wanted. Bill leads Cohn away, and things calm down. Mike remarks that Brett has had affairs before, but not with Jews or with men who kept hanging around. The group shares a supper in which copious amounts of wine mask the shared feeling of apprehension.

Bill and Jake's fishing trip is a calm, beautiful experience, and a nice respite from the disenchantment present throughout much of the novel. The aimless, cynical decadence that characterizes their other activities is curiously absent during the trip. They drink, but not excessively as they do in Paris. They seem content simply to fish, swim, and relax, and they are able to appreciate the beauty of the scenery around them (som

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