"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.
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