{"id":"01KJNXJV9042XGPNYR9FFGQ7Y0","cid":"bafkreigxwke5cnf74f4lp7sx5kmbvporlu5cnkci64bpdmnvbflm4v4hsq","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1071497,"char_start":1063584,"chunk_index":150,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1979,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"alluringly spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable, taking\r\nterrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of\r\ninfinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them—“Come hither,\r\nbroken-hearted; here is another life without the guilt of intermediate\r\ndeath; here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. Come\r\nhither! bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred and\r\nabhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither! put\r\nup _thy_ gravestone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, till\r\nwe marry thee!”\r\n\r\nHearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sunrise, and by\r\nfall of eve, the blacksmith’s soul responded, Aye, I come! And so Perth\r\nwent a-whaling.\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 113. The Forge.\r\n\r\nWith matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron, about\r\nmid-day, Perth was standing between his forge and anvil, the latter\r\nplaced upon an iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head in the\r\ncoals, and with the other at his forge’s lungs, when Captain Ahab came\r\nalong, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag. While\r\nyet a little distance from the forge, moody Ahab paused; till at last,\r\nPerth, withdrawing his iron from the fire, began hammering it upon the\r\nanvil—the red mass sending off the sparks in thick hovering flights,\r\nsome of which flew close to Ahab.\r\n\r\n“Are these thy Mother Carey’s chickens, Perth? they are always flying\r\nin thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to all;—look here, they\r\nburn; but thou—thou liv’st among them without a scorch.”\r\n\r\n“Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab,” answered Perth, resting\r\nfor a moment on his hammer; “I am past scorching; not easily can’st\r\nthou scorch a scar.”\r\n\r\n“Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woeful\r\nto me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others\r\nthat is not mad. Thou should’st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou\r\nnot go mad? How can’st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens\r\nyet hate thee, that thou can’st not go mad?—What wert thou making\r\nthere?”\r\n\r\n“Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it.”\r\n\r\n“And can’st thou make it all smooth again, blacksmith, after such hard\r\nusage as it had?”\r\n\r\n“I think so, sir.”\r\n\r\n“And I suppose thou can’st smoothe almost any seams and dents; never\r\nmind how hard the metal, blacksmith?”\r\n\r\n“Aye, sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one.”\r\n\r\n“Look ye here, then,” cried Ahab, passionately advancing, and leaning\r\nwith both hands on Perth’s shoulders; “look ye here—_here_—can ye\r\nsmoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith,” sweeping one hand across his\r\nribbed brow; “if thou could’st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my\r\nhead upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes.\r\nAnswer! Can’st thou smoothe this seam?”\r\n\r\n“Oh! that is the one, sir! Said I not all seams and dents but one?”\r\n\r\n“Aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable; for\r\nthough thou only see’st it here in my flesh, it has worked down into\r\nthe bone of my skull—_that_ is all wrinkles! But, away with child’s\r\nplay; no more gaffs and pikes to-day. Look ye here!” jingling the\r\nleathern bag, as if it were full of gold coins. “I, too, want a harpoon\r\nmade; one that a thousand yoke of fiends could not part, Perth;\r\nsomething that will stick in a whale like his own fin-bone. There’s the\r\nstuff,” flinging the pouch upon the anvil. “Look ye, blacksmith, these\r\nare the gathered nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses.”\r\n\r\n“Horse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast here, then, the\r\nbest and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever work.”\r\n\r\n“I know it, old man; these stubbs will weld together like glue from the\r\nmelted bones of murderers. Quick! forge me the harpoon. And forge me\r\nfirst, twelve rods for its shank; then wind, and twist, and hammer\r\nthese twelve together like the yarns and strands of a tow-line. Quick!\r\nI’ll blow the fire.”\r\n\r\nWhen at last the twelve rods were made, Ahab tried them, one by one, by\r\nspiralling them, with his own hand, round a long, heavy iron bolt. “A\r\nflaw!” rejecting the last one. “Work that over again, Perth.”\r\n\r\nThis done, Perth was about to begin welding the twelve into one, when\r\nAhab stayed his hand, and said he would weld his own iron. As, then,\r\nwith regular, gasping hems, he hammered on the anvil, Perth passing to\r\nhim the glowing rods, one after the other, and the hard pressed forge\r\nshooting up its intense straight flame, the Parsee passed silently, and\r\nbowing over his head towards the fire, seemed invoking some curse or\r\nsome blessing on the toil. But, as Ahab looked up, he slid aside.\r\n\r\n“What’s that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for?” muttered\r\nStubb, looking on from the forecastle. “That Parsee smells fire like a\r\nfusee; and smells of it himself, like a hot musket’s powder-pan.”\r\n\r\nAt last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final heat; and as\r\nPerth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing into the cask of water near\r\nby, the scalding steam shot up into Ahab’s bent face.\r\n\r\n“Would’st thou brand me, Perth?” wincing for a moment with the pain;\r\n“have I been but forging my own branding-iron, then?”\r\n\r\n“Pray God, not that; yet I fear something, Captain Ahab. Is not this\r\nharpoon for the White Whale?”\r\n\r\n“For the white fiend! But now for the barbs; thou must make them\r\nthyself, man. Here are my razors—the best of steel; here, and make the\r\nbarbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the Icy Sea.”\r\n\r\nFor a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he would\r\nfain not use them.\r\n\r\n“Take them, man, I have no need for them; for I now neither shave, sup,\r\nnor pray till—but here—to work!”\r\n\r\nFashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the\r\nshank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and as the\r\nblacksmith was about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to\r\ntempering them, he cried to Ahab to place the water-cask near.\r\n\r\n“No, no—no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy,\r\nthere! Tashtego, Queequeg, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me\r\nas much blood as will cover this barb?” holding it high up. A cluster\r\nof dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen\r\nflesh, and the White Whale’s barbs were then tempered.\r\n\r\n“Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!”\r\ndeliriously howled Ahab, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the\r\nbaptismal blood.\r\n\r\nNow, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting one of\r\nhickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to the\r\nsocket of the iron. A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some\r\nfathoms of it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great tension.\r\nPressing his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harp-string,\r\nthen eagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings, Ahab exclaimed,\r\n“Good! and now for the seizings.”\r\n\r\nAt one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the separate spread yarns\r\nwere all braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon; the pole\r\nwas then driven hard up into the socket; from the lower end the rope\r\nwas traced half-way along the pole’s length, and firmly secured so,\r\nwith intertwistings of twine. This done, pole, iron, and rope—like the\r\nThree Fates—remained inseparable, and Ahab moodily stalked away with\r\nthe weapon; the sound of his ivory leg, and the sound of the hickory\r\npole, both hollowly ringing along every plank. But ere he entered his\r\ncabin, light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous sound was\r\nheard. Oh, Pip! thy wretched laugh, thy idle but unresting eye; all thy\r\nstrange mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the\r\nmelancholy ship, and mocked it!\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 114. The Gilder.\r\n\r\nPenetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese cruising\r\nground, the Pequod was soon all astir in the fishery."},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KJNXEDHZCC8DR4EPSQD0QP4P","peer_label":"moby-dick","peer_type":"text","predicate":"derived_from"},{"peer":"01KJNXECF9R1EZKS5Z7J8A8ZSB","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"}],"ver":1,"created_at":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.136Z","ts":"2026-03-02T00:01:19.136Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KJ6WPT018SDDANE6N7Q8E428"}}