The chief attendant of the three dynamos that buzzed and rattled¹ at Camberwell, and kept the electric railway going, came out of Yorkshire, and his name was James Holroyd. He was a practical electrician, but fond of whisky, a heavy red-haired brute² with irregular teeth. He doubted the existence of the deity³, but accepted Carnot’s cycle, and he had read Shakespeare and found him weak in chemistry. His helper came out of the mysterious East, and his name was Azuma-zi. But Holroyd called him Pooh-bah. Holroyd liked a nigger because he would stand kicking—a habit with Holroyd—and did not pry⁴ into the machinery⁵ and try to learn the ways of it. Certain odd possibilities of the negro mind brought into abrupt⁶ contact with the crown of our civilisation⁷ Holroyd never fully⁸ realised, though just at the end he got some inkling of them.  
To define Azuma-zi was beyond ethnology. He was, perhaps, more negroid than anything else, though his hair was curly rather than frizzy, and his nose had a bridge. Moreover, his skin was brown rather than black, and the whites of his eyes were yellow. His broad cheekbones and narrow chin gave his face something of the viperine⁹ V. His head, too, was broad behind, and low and narrow at the forehead, as if his brain had been twisted round in the reverse way to a European’s. He was short of stature¹⁰ and still shorter of English. In conversation he made numerous odd noises of no known marketable value, and his infrequent words were carved and wrought¹¹ into heraldic grotesqueness¹². Holroyd tried to elucidate¹³ his religious beliefs, and—especially after whisky—lectured to him against superstition¹⁴ and missionaries¹⁵. Azuma-zi, however, shirked the discussion of his gods, even though he was kicked for it.
 
Azuma-zi had come, clad in white but insufficient¹⁶ raiment, out of the stokehole of the Lord Clive, from the Straits Settlements, and beyond, into London. He had heard even in his youth of the greatness and riches of London, where all the women are white and fair, and even the beggars in the streets are white, and he arrived, with newly earned gold coins in his pocket, to worship at the shrine¹⁷ of civilisation. The day of his landing was a dismal¹⁹ one; the sky was dun, and a wind-worried drizzle²⁰ filtered down to the greasy²¹ streets, but he plunged²² boldly into the delights of Shadwell, and was presently cast up, shattered in health, civilised in costume, penniless and, except in matters of the direst necessity, practically a dumb animal, to toil²³ for James Holroyd and to be bullied²⁴ by him in the dynamo shed at Camberwell. And to James Holroyd bullying²⁵ was a labour of love.
 
There were three dynamos with their engines at Camberwell. The two that had been there since the beginning were small machines; the larger one was new. The smaller machines made a reasonable noise; their straps²⁶ hummed over the drums, every now and then the brushes buzzed and fizzled, and the air churned steadily²⁷, whoo! whoo! whoo! between their poles. One was loose in its foundations and kept the shed vibrating. But the big dynamo drowned these little noises altogether with the sustained drone of its iron core, which somehow set part of the ironwork humming. The place made the visitor’s head reel with the throb²⁸, throb, throb of the engines, the rotation²⁹ of the big wheels, the spinning ball-valves, the occasional spittings of the steam, and over all the deep, unceasing, surging note of the big dynamo. This last noise was from an engineering point of view a defect, but Azuma-zi accounted it unto the monster for mightiness³⁰ and pride.
 
If it were possible we would have the noises of that shed always about the reader as he reads, we would tell all our story to such an accompaniment. It was a steady stream of din¹⁸, from which the ear picked out first one thread and then another; there was the intermittent³¹ snorting, panting, and seething³² of the steam engines, the suck and thud of their pistons³³, the dull beat on the air as the spokes³⁵ of the great driving-wheels came round, a note the leather straps made as they ran tighter and looser, and a fretful tumult³⁶ 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 zigzags³⁷. 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 mere³⁸ black, were never out of the stir and eddy³⁹ of it, but slept and fed in the little wooden shanty⁴⁰ 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 idol⁴¹ 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 expatiated⁴² upon its size and power to Azuma-zi until heaven knows what odd currents of thought that and the incessant⁴³ whirling and shindy set up within the curly black cranium. He would explain in the most graphic⁴⁴ 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 rhythmic⁴⁵ as breathing. The band ran shouting over the shaft⁴⁶, and ever behind one as one watched was the complacent⁴⁷ thud of the piston³⁴. 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 privately⁴⁸ christened the Lord of the Dynamos. They were fretful and irregular, but the big dynamo was steady. How great it was! How serene⁴⁹ and easy in its working! Greater and calmer even than the Buddhas⁵⁰ he had seen at Rangoon, and yet not motionless, but living! The great black coils spun⁵¹, spun, spun, the rings ran round under the brushes, and the deep note of its coil steadied the whole. It affected⁵² Azuma-zi queerly.
 
Azuma-zi was not fond of labour. He would sit about and watch the Lord of the Dynamos while Holroyd went away to persuade the yard porter to get whisky, although his proper place was not in the dynamo shed but behind the engines, and, moreover, if Holroyd caught him skulking⁵³ he got hit for it with a rod of stout⁵⁴ copper⁵⁵ wire. He would go and stand close to the colossus and look up at the great leather band running overhead. There was a black patch on the band that came round, and it pleased him somehow among all the clatter⁵⁶ to watch this return again and again. Odd thoughts spun with the whirl of it. Scientific people tell us that savages⁵⁸ give souls to rocks and trees—and a machine is a thousand times more alive than a rock or a tree. And Azuma-zi was practically a savage⁵⁷ still; the veneer⁵⁹ of civilisation lay no deeper than his slop suit, his bruises⁶⁰, and the coal grime on his face and hands. His father before him had worshipped a meteoric⁶¹ stone, kindred blood it may be had splashed the broad wheels of Juggernaut.
 
He took every opportunity Holroyd gave him of touching⁶² and handling the great dynamo that was fascinating him. He polished and cleaned it until the metal parts were blinding in the sun. He felt a mysterious sense of service in doing this. He would go up to it and touch its spinning coils gently. The gods he had worshipped were all far away. The people in London hid their gods.
 
At last his dim feelings grew more distinct, and took shape in thoughts and at last in acts. When he came into the roaring shed one morning he salaamed⁶⁴ to the Lord of the Dynamos, and then when Holroyd was away, he went and whispered to the thundering machine that he was its servant, and prayed it to have pity on him and save him from Holroyd. As he did so a ............