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
viperine 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 stature and still shorter of
English. In conversation he made numerous odd noises of no known
marketable value, and his infrequent words were carved and wrought
into heraldic grotesqueness. Holroyd tried to elucidate his
religious beliefs, and--especially after whisky--lectured to him
against superstition and missionaries. Azuma-zi, however, shirked
the discussion of his gods, even though he was kicked for it.
Azuma-zi had come, clad in white but insufficient 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 shrine of civilisation. The day of his landing was
a dismal one; the sky was dun, and a wind-worried drizzle filtered
down to the greasy streets, but he plunged 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 toil for James
Holroyd and to be bullied by him in the dynamo shed at Camberwell.
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