Moby Dick: or, the White Whale eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 769 pages of information about Moby Dick.
Related Topics

Moby Dick: or, the White Whale eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 769 pages of information about Moby Dick.

“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.”

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Moby Dick: or, the White Whale from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.