IV
The Goblin Blacksmith
Colin could just perceive something suggestive of a track, which he followed till the sun went down. Then he saw a dim light before him, keeping his eye upon which, he came at last to a smithy where, looking in at the open door, he saw a huge humpbacked smith working a forehammer in each hand.
He grinned out of the middle of his breast when he saw Colin, and said, “Come in; come in, my youngsters will be glad of you.”
He was an awful looking creature, with a great hare lip, and a red ball for a nose. Whatever he did—speak, or laugh, or sneeze—he did not stop working one moment. As often as the sparks flew in his face he snapped at them with his eyes (which were the colour of a half-dead coal), now with this one, now with that; and the more sparks they got into them the brighter his eyes grew. The moment Colin entered, he took a huge bar of iron from the furnace and began laying on it so with his two forehammers that he disappeared in a cloud of sparks, and Colin had to shut his eyes and be glad to escape with a few burns on his face and hands. When he had beaten the iron till it was nearly black, the smith put it in the fire again, and called out a hundred odd names:
“Here Gob, Shag, Latchit, Licker, Freestone, Greywhackit, Mousetrap, Potatoe-pot, Blob, Blotch, Blunker—”
And ever as he called, one dwarf after another came tumbling out of the chimney in the corner of which the fire was roaring. They crowded about Colin and began to make hideous faces and spit fire at him. But he kept a bold countenance. At length one pinched him, and he could not stand that, but struck him hard on the head. He thought he had knocked his own hand to pieces, it gave him such a jar; and the head rung like an iron pot.
“Come, come, young man,” cried the smith; “you keep your hands off my children.”
“Tell them to keep their hands off me, then,” said Colin.
And calling to mind his message, just as they began to crowd about him again with yet more spiteful looks, he added—
“Here, you imps! I won’t stand it longer. Get to your work directly. The old woman with the spindle says you’re to lift Cumberbone Crag a yard higher, and to send a flue under Stonestarvit Moss.”
In a moment they had vanished in the chimney. In a moment more the smithy rocked to its foundations. But the smith took no notice, only worked more furiously than ever. Then came a great crack and a shock that threw Colin on the floor. The smith reeled, but never lost hold of his hammers or missed a blow on the anvil.
“Those boys will do themselves a mischief,” he said; then turning to Colin, “Here, you sir, take that hammer. This is no safe place for idle people. If you don’t work you’ll be knocked to pieces in no time.”
The same moment there came a wind from the chimney that blew all the fire into the middle of the smithy. The smith dashed up upon the forge, and rushed out of sight. Presently he returned with one of the goblins under his arm kicking and screaming, laid his ugly head down on the anvil, where he held him by the neck, and hit him a great blow with his hammer above the ear. The hammer rebounded, the goblin gave a shriek, and the smith flung him into the chimney, saying—
“That’s the only way to serve him. You’ll be more careful for one while, I guess, Slobberkin.”
And thereupon he took up his other hammer and began to work again, saying to Colin,
“Now, young man, as long as you get a blow with your hammer in for every one of mine, you’ll be quite safe; but if you stop, or lose the beat, I won’t be answerable to the old woman with the spindle for the consequences.”
Colin took up the hammer and did his best. But he soon found that he had never known what it was to work. The smith worked a hammer in each hand, and it was all Colin could do to work his little hammer with both his hands; so it was a terrible exertion to put in blow for blow with the smith. Once, when he lost the time, the smith’s forehammer came down on the head of his, beat it flat on the anvil, and flung the handle to the other end of the smithy, where it struck the wall like the report of a cannon.
“I told you,” said the smith. “There’s another. Make haste, for the boys will be in want of you and me too before they get Cumberbone Crag half a foot higher.”
Presently in came the biggest-headed of the family, out of the chimney.
“Six-foot wedges, and a three-yard crowbar!” he said; “or Cumberbone will cumber our bones presently.”
The smith rushed behind the bellows, brought out a bar of iron three inches thick or so, cut off three yards, put the end in the fire, blew with might and main, and brought it out as white as paper. He and Colin then laid upon it till the end was flattened to an edge, which the smith turned up a little. He then handed the tool to the imp.
“Here, Gob,” he said; “run with it, and the wedges will be ready by the time you come back.”
Then to the wedges they set. And Colin worked like three. He never knew how he could work before. Not a moment’s pause, except when the smith was at the forge for another glowing mass! And yet, to Colin’s amazement, the more he worked the stronger he seemed to grow. Instead of being worn out, the moment he had got his breath he wanted to be at it again; and he felt as if he had grown twice the size since he took hammer in hand. And the goblins kept running in and out all the time, now for one thing, now for another. Colin thought if they made use of all the tools they fetched, they must be working very hard indeed: And the convulsions felt in the smithy bore witness to their exertions somewhere in the neighbourhood.
And the longer they worked together, the more friendly grew the smith. At length he said—his words always adding energy to his blows—
“What does the old woman want to improve Stonestarvit Moss for?”
“I didn’t know she did want to improve it,” returned Colin.
“Why, anybody may see that. First, she wants Cumberbone Crag a yard higher—just enough to send the northeast blast over the Moss without touching it. Then she wants a hot flue passed under it. Plain as a forehammer!—What did you ask her to do for you? She’s always doing things for people and making my bones ache.”
“You don’t seem to mind it much, though, sir,” said Colin.
“No more I do,” answered the smith, with a blow that drove the anvil halfway into the earth, from which it took him some trouble to drag it out again. “But I want to know what she is after now.”
So Colin told him all he knew about it, which was merely his own story.
“I see, I see,” said the smith. “It’s all moonshine; but we must do as she says notwithstanding. And now it is my turn to give you a lift, for you have worked well.—As soon as you leave the smithy, go straight to Stonestarvit Moss. Get on the highest part of it; make a circle three yards across, and dig a trench round it. I will give you a spade. At the end of the first day you will see a vine break the earth. By the end of the second, it will be creeping all over the circle. And by the end of the third day, the grapes will be ripe. Squeeze them one by one into a bottle—I will give you a bottle—till it is full. Cork it up tight, and by the time the queen comes for it, it will be Carasoyn.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” cried Colin. “When am I to go?”
“As soon as the boys have lifted Cumberbone Crag, and bored the flue under the Moss. It is of no use till then.”
“Well, I’ll go on with my work,” said Colin, and struck away at the anvil.
In a minute or two in came the same goblin whose head his father had hammered, and said, respectfully,
“It’s all right, sir. The boys are gathering their tools, and will be home to supper directly.”
“Are you sure you have lifted the Crag a yard?” said the smith.
“Slumkin says it’s a half-inch over the yard. Grungle says it’s three-quarters. But that won’t matter—will it?”
“No. I dare say not. But it is much better to be accurate. Is the flue done?”
“Yes, we managed that partly in lifting the crag.”
“Very well. How’s your head?”
“It rings a little.”
“Let it ring you a lesson, then, Slobberkin, in future.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, master, you may go when you like,” said the smith to Colin. “We’ve nothing here you can eat, I am sorry to say.”
“Oh, I don’t mind that. I’m not very hungry. But the old woman with the spindle said I was to work three days without dreaming.”
“Well, you haven’t been dreaming—have you?”
And the smith looked quite furious as he put the question, lifting his forehammer as if he would serve Colin like Slobberkin.
“No, that I haven’t,” answered Colin. “You took good care of that, sir.”
The smith actually smiled.
“Then go along,” he said. “It is all right.”
“But I’ve only worked—”
“Three whole days and nights,” interrupted the smith. “Get along with you. The boys will bother you if you don’t Here’s your spade and here’s your bottle.”