448 
MOBY DICK; OR 
is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, 
the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing 
eyes of such men, who still have left in them some interior compunc- 
tions against suicide, does the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean 
alluringly spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable, taking terrors, 
and wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of infinite 
Pacifies, the thousand mermaids sing to them — “Come hither, broken- 
hearted; here is another life without the guilt of intermediate death; 
here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. Come hither ! 
bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred and abhor- 
ring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither! put 
up thy gravestone, 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 CXII 
THE FORGE 
With matted beard, and swathed in a bristling sharkskin apron, about 
midday, 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 hover- 
ing 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.” 
“Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab,” answered Perth, 
resting for a moment on his hammer; “I am past scorching; not easily 
canst thou scorch a scar.” 
