Chapter 115.00: CHAPTER 113. The Forge.

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CHAPTER 113. The Forge.
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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 woeful 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 water-cask 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,
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!