riving-wheels came round, a note the leather straps made
as they ran tighter and looser, and a fretful tumult from the dynamos;
and over all, sometimes inaudible, as the ear tired of it, and then
creeping back upon the senses again, was this trombone note of the big
machine. The floor never felt steady and quiet beneath one's feet, but
quivered and jarred. It was a confusing, unsteady place, and enough to
send anyone's thoughts jerking into odd zigzags. And for three months,
while the big strike of the engineers was in progress, Holroyd, who
was a blackleg, and Azuma-zi, who was a mere black, were never out of
the stir and eddy of it, but slept and fed in the little wooden shanty
between the shed and the gates.

Holroyd delivered a theological lecture on the text of his big machine
soon after Azuma-zi came. He had to shout to be heard in the din.
"Look at that," said Holroyd; "where's your 'eathen idol to match
'im?" And Azuma-zi looked. For a moment Holroyd was inaudible, and
then Azuma-zi heard: "Kill a hundred men. Twelve per cent, on the
ordinary shares," said Holroyd, "and that's something like a Gord!"

Holroyd was proud of his big dynamo, and expatiated upon its size and
power to Azuma-zi until heaven knows what odd currents of thought that
and the incessant whirling and shindy set up within the curly black
cranium. He would explain in the most graphic manner the dozen or so
ways in which a man might be killed by it, and once he gave Azuma-zi a
shock as a sample of its quality. After that, in the breathing-times
of his labour--it was heavy labour, being not only his own, but most
of Holroyd's--Azuma-zi would sit and watch the big machine. Now and
then the brushes would sparkle and spit blue flashes, at which Holroyd
would swear, but all the rest was as smooth and rhythmic as breathing.
The band ran shouting over the shaft, and ever behind one as one
watched was the complacent thud of the piston. So it lived all day in
this big airy shed, with him and Holroyd to wait upon it; not prisoned
up and slaving to drive a ship as the other engines he knew--mere
captive devils of the British Solomon--had been, but a machine
enthroned. Those two smaller dynamos, Azuma-zi by force of contrast
despised; the large one he privately christened the Lord of the
Dynamos. They were fretful and irregular, but the big dynamo was
steady. How great it was! How serene and easy in its working! Greater
and calmer even than the Buddahs he