113. CHAPTER CXIII.
THE FORGE.
With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin
apron, about mid day, Perth was standing between his forge
and anvil, the latter placed upon an iron-wood log, with one
hand holding a pike-head in the coals, and with the other at his
forge's lungs, when Captain Ahab came along, carrying in his
hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag. While yet a little
distance from the forge, moody Ahab paused; till at last, Perth,
withdrawing his iron from the fire, began hammering it upon
the anvil—the red mass sending off the sparks in thick hovering
flights, some of which flew close to Ahab.
“Are these thy Mother Carey's chickens, Perth? they are
always flying in thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to
all;—look here, they burn; but thou—thou liv'st among them
without a scorch.”
“Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab,” answered
Perth, resting for a moment on his hammer; “I am past
scorching; not easily can'st thou scorch a scar.”
“Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly,
sanely woful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of
all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad,
blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou
endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee,
that thou can'st not go mad?—What wert thou making there?”
“Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents
in it.”
“And can'st thou make it all smooth again, blacksmith, after
such hard usage as it had?”
“I think so, sir.”
“And I suppose thou can'st smoothe almost any seams and
dents; never mind how hard the metal, blacksmith?”
“Aye, sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one.”
“Look ye here, then,” cried Ahab, passionately advancing,
and leaning with both hands on Perth's shoulders; “look ye
here—here—can ye smoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith,”
sweeping one hand across his ribbed brow; “if thou could'st,
blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my head upon thy anvil,
and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes. Answer!
Can'st thou smoothe this seam?”
“Oh! that is the one, sir! Said I not all seams and dents
but one?”
“Aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable;
for though thou only see'st it here in my flesh, it has
worked down into the bone of my skull—that is all wrinkles!
But, away with child's play; no more gaffs and pikes to-day.
Look ye here!” jingling the leathern bag, as if it were full of
gold coins. “I, too, want a harpoon made; one that a thousand
yoke of fiends could not part, Perth; something that will
stick in a whale like his own fin-bone. There's the stuff,” flinging
the pouch upon the anvil. “Look ye, blacksmith, these
are the gathered nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses.”
“Horse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast
here, then, the best and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever
work.”
“I know it, old man; these stubbs will weld together like
glue from the melted bones of murderers. Quick! forge me
the harpoon. And forge me first, twelve rods for its shank;
then wind, and twist, and hammer these twelve together like
the yarns and strands of a tow-line. Quick! I'll blow the
fire.”
When at last the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried them,
one by one, by spiralling them, with his own hand, round a
long, heavy iron bolt. “A flaw!” rejecting the last one.
“Work that over again, Perth.”
This done, Perth was about to begin welding the twelve into
one, when Ahab stayed his hand, and said he would weld his
own iron. As, then, with regular, gasping hems, he hammered
on the anvil, Perth passing to him the glowing rods, one after
the other, and the hard pressed forge shooting up its intense
straight flame, the Parsee passed silently, and bowing over his
head towards the fire, seemed invoking some curse or some
blessing on the toil. But, as Ahab looked up, he slid aside.
“What's that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for?”
muttered Stubb, looking on from the forecastle. “That Parsee
smells fire like a fusee; and smells of it himself, like a hot
musket's powder-pan.”
At last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final heat;
and as Perth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing into the cask
of water near by, the scalding steam shot up into Ahab's bent
face.
“Would'st thou brand me, Perth?” wincing for a moment
with the pain; “have I been but forging my own branding-iron,
then?”
“Pray God, not that; yet I fear something, Captain Ahab.
Is not this harpoon for the White Whale?”
“For the white fiend! But now for the barbs; thou must
make them thyself, man. Here are my razors—the best of
steel; here, and make the barbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the
Icy Sea.”
For a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though
he would fain not use them.
“Take them, man, I have no need for them; for I now
neither shave, sup, nor pray till—but here—to work!”
Fashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth
to the shank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and
as the blacksmith was about giving the barbs their final heat,
prior to tempering them, he cried to Ahab to place the watercask
near.
“No, no—no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper.
Ahoy, there! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What
say ye, pagans! Will ye give me as much blood as will cover
this barb?” holding it high up. A cluster of dark nods replied,
Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen flesh, and the
White Whale's barbs were then tempered.
“Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine
diaboli!” deliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron
scorchingly devoured the baptismal blood.
Now, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting one
of hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end
to the socket of the iron. A coil of new tow-line was then
unwound, and some fathoms of it taken to the windlass, and
stretched to a great tension. Pressing his foot upon it, till the
rope hummed like a harp-string, then eagerly bending over it,
and seeing no strandings, Ahab exclaimed, “Good! and now
for the seizings.”
At one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the separate
spread yarns were all braided and woven round the socket of
the harpoon; the pole was then driven hard up into the socket;
from the lower end the rope was traced half way along the pole's
length, and firmly secured so, with intertwistings of twine. This
done, pole, iron, and rope—like the Three Fates—remained
inseparable, and Ahab moodily stalked away with the weapon;
the sound of his ivory leg, and the sound of the hickory pole,
both hollowly ringing along every plank. But ere he entered
his cabin, a light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous
sound was heard. Oh, Pip! thy wretched laugh, thy idle but
unresting eye; all thy strange mummeries not unmeaningly
blended with the black tragedy of the melancholy ship, and
mocked it!
