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 Buddhas he had seen at
Rangoon, and yet not motionless, but living! The great black coils
spun, spun, spun, the rings ran round under the brushes, and the
deep note of its coil steadied the whole. It affected 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 skulking he got hit for it with a rod of stout copper
wire.
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