446 
MOBY DICK; OR 
CHAPTER CXI 
THE BLACKSMITH 
Availing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that now reigned 
in these latitudes, and in preparation for the peculiarly active pursuits 
shortly to be anticipated, Perth, the begrimed, blistered old blacksmith, 
had not removed his portable forge to the hold again, after concluding 
his contributory work for Ahab’s leg, but still retained it on deck, 
fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast ; being now almost incessantly 
invoked by the headsmen, and harpooneers, and bowsmen to do some 
little job for them; altering, or repairing, or new shaping their various 
weapons and boat furniture. Often he would be surrounded by an 
eager circle, all waiting to he served; holding boat-spades, pike-heads, 
harpoons, and lances, and jealously watching his every sooty move- 
ment, as he toiled. Nevertheless, this old man’s was a patient ham- 
mer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur, no impatience, no petu- 
lance did come from him. Silent, slow, and solemn ; bowing over still 
further his chronically broken back, he toiled away, as if toil were 
life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating of 
his heart. And so it was. — Most miserable! 
A peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight hut painful ap- 
pearing yawing in his gait, had at an early period of the voyage ex- 
cited the curiosity of the mariners. And to the importunity of their 
persisted questionings he had finally given in; and so it came to 
pass that every one now knew the shameful story of his wretched 
fate. 
Belated and not innocently, one hitter winter’s midnight, on the 
road running between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidlv 
felt the deadly numbness stealing over him and sought refuge in a 
leaning, dilapidated barn. The issue was, the loss of the extremities 
of both feet. Out of this revelation, part by part, at last came out 
the four acts of the gladness, and the one long, and as yet uncatastro- 
phied fifth act of the grief of his life’s drama. 
He was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had postponedlv 
encountered that thing in sorrow’s technicals called ruin. He had 
been an artisan of famed excellence, and with plenty to do; owned a 
