The Blacksmith — Moby-Dick

In the mild Pacific weather Perth the blacksmith keeps his portable forge on deck. It stays lashed to the foremast after he finished Ahab's ivory leg. Harpooneers and bowsmen crowd around him all day. They bring harpoons, lances, and pike-heads to be fixed. Perth works slowly with a patient hammer. His back is always bent. He never complains. The narrator says his hammer beats like his heart. And he is most miserable.

The crew wondered about his odd, yawing walk. At last Perth told his shameful story. One bitter winter night he was late on the road between two towns. Deadly numbness stole over him. He hid in a broken barn and lost parts of both feet. Before that he had been a happy blacksmith with a house, garden, wife, and three children. Then a disguised burglar entered his home. It was the Bottle Conjuror, alcohol. Opening that fatal cork freed a fiend that shrivelled everything. The hammer faded, his wife died, the children followed, and he wandered off scorned.

Death would seem the right ending, but Death is only a doorway to something unknown. The ocean spreads out and offers a new life without suicide. Mermaid voices sing to broken men: bury yourself in the sea, which forgets more than death. Perth listened at sunrise and sunset and answered, Aye, I come. And so he went a-whaling.