Come hither! bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally
abhorred and abhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death.
Come hither! put up thy grave-stone, too, within the churchyard,
and come hither, till we marry thee!"
Hearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sunrise,
and by fall of eve, the blacksmith's soul responded, Aye, I come!
And so Perth went a-whaling.
CHAPTER 113
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.
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