{"id":"01KJNXJV90WGTPVQS201N32P34","cid":"bafkreieeyodwegh2k43svvdx7xv3dxtde6g6e5hbk54n7lscusrjuohbuu","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":1064338,"char_start":1056518,"chunk_index":149,"chunk_total":178,"estimated_tokens":1955,"source_file_key":"moby-dick","text":"awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those\r\nfabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St.\r\nJohn. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery\r\nprairies and Potters’ Fields of all four continents, the waves should\r\nrise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of\r\nmixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all\r\nthat we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing\r\nlike slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by\r\ntheir restlessness.\r\n\r\nTo any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld, must\r\never after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost waters of\r\nthe world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms. The same\r\nwaves wash the moles of the new-built Californian towns, but yesterday\r\nplanted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded but still\r\ngorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while all between\r\nfloat milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown\r\nArchipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysterious, divine\r\nPacific zones the world’s whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay to\r\nit; seems the tide-beating heart of earth. Lifted by those eternal\r\nswells, you needs must own the seductive god, bowing your head to Pan.\r\n\r\nBut few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab’s brain, as standing like an iron\r\nstatue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging, with one\r\nnostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles\r\n(in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the other\r\nconsciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea; that sea in\r\nwhich the hated White Whale must even then be swimming. Launched at\r\nlength upon these almost final waters, and gliding towards the Japanese\r\ncruising-ground, the old man’s purpose intensified itself. His firm\r\nlips met like the lips of a vice; the Delta of his forehead’s veins\r\nswelled like overladen brooks; in his very sleep, his ringing cry ran\r\nthrough the vaulted hull, “Stern all! the White Whale spouts thick\r\nblood!”\r\n\r\n\r\nCHAPTER 112. The Blacksmith.\r\n\r\nAvailing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that now reigned in\r\nthese latitudes, and in preparation for the peculiarly active pursuits\r\nshortly to be anticipated, Perth, the begrimed, blistered old\r\nblacksmith, had not removed his portable forge to the hold again, after\r\nconcluding his contributory work for Ahab’s leg, but still retained it\r\non deck, fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast; being now almost\r\nincessantly invoked by the headsmen, and harpooneers, and bowsmen to do\r\nsome little job for them; altering, or repairing, or new shaping their\r\nvarious weapons and boat furniture. Often he would be surrounded by an\r\neager circle, all waiting to be served; holding boat-spades,\r\npike-heads, harpoons, and lances, and jealously watching his every\r\nsooty movement, as he toiled. Nevertheless, this old man’s was a\r\npatient hammer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur, no impatience, no\r\npetulance did come from him. Silent, slow, and solemn; bowing over\r\nstill further his chronically broken back, he toiled away, as if toil\r\nwere life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating\r\nof his heart. And so it was.—Most miserable!\r\n\r\nA peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but painful appearing\r\nyawing in his gait, had at an early period of the voyage excited the\r\ncuriosity of the mariners. And to the importunity of their persisted\r\nquestionings he had finally given in; and so it came to pass that every\r\none now knew the shameful story of his wretched fate.\r\n\r\nBelated, and not innocently, one bitter winter’s midnight, on the road\r\nrunning between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidly felt\r\nthe deadly numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge in a leaning,\r\ndilapidated barn. The issue was, the loss of the extremities of both\r\nfeet. Out of this revelation, part by part, at last came out the four\r\nacts of the gladness, and the one long, and as yet uncatastrophied\r\nfifth act of the grief of his life’s drama.\r\n\r\nHe was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had postponedly\r\nencountered that thing in sorrow’s technicals called ruin. He had been\r\nan artisan of famed excellence, and with plenty to do; owned a house\r\nand garden; embraced a youthful, daughter-like, loving wife, and three\r\nblithe, ruddy children; every Sunday went to a cheerful-looking church,\r\nplanted in a grove. But one night, under cover of darkness, and further\r\nconcealed in a most cunning disguisement, a desperate burglar slid into\r\nhis happy home, and robbed them all of everything. And darker yet to\r\ntell, the blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct this burglar into\r\nhis family’s heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror! Upon the opening of\r\nthat fatal cork, forth flew the fiend, and shrivelled up his home. Now,\r\nfor prudent, most wise, and economic reasons, the blacksmith’s shop was\r\nin the basement of his dwelling, but with a separate entrance to it; so\r\nthat always had the young and loving healthy wife listened with no\r\nunhappy nervousness, but with vigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing\r\nof her young-armed old husband’s hammer; whose reverberations, muffled\r\nby passing through the floors and walls, came up to her, not unsweetly,\r\nin her nursery; and so, to stout Labor’s iron lullaby, the blacksmith’s\r\ninfants were rocked to slumber.\r\n\r\nOh, woe on woe! Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely?\r\nHadst thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came\r\nupon him, then had the young widow had a delicious grief, and her\r\norphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their after\r\nyears; and all of them a care-killing competency. But Death plucked\r\ndown some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily toil solely\r\nhung the responsibilities of some other family, and left the worse than\r\nuseless old man standing, till the hideous rot of life should make him\r\neasier to harvest.\r\n\r\nWhy tell the whole? The blows of the basement hammer every day grew\r\nmore and more between; and each blow every day grew fainter than the\r\nlast; the wife sat frozen at the window, with tearless eyes,\r\nglitteringly gazing into the weeping faces of her children; the bellows\r\nfell; the forge choked up with cinders; the house was sold; the mother\r\ndived down into the long church-yard grass; her children twice followed\r\nher thither; and the houseless, familyless old man staggered off a\r\nvagabond in crape; his every woe unreverenced; his grey head a scorn to\r\nflaxen curls!\r\n\r\nDeath seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this; but Death\r\nis only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but\r\nthe first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the\r\nWild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing eyes of\r\nsuch men, who still have left in them some interior compunctions\r\nagainst suicide, does the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean\r\nalluringly 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."},"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"}}