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 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.  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 clatter to watch this return again and again.  Odd thoughts spun with the whirl of it.  Scientific people tell us that savages 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 savage still; the veneer of civilisation lay no deeper than his slop suit, his bruises, and the coal grime on his face and hands.  His father before him had worshipped a meteoric stone, kindred blood it may be had splashed the broad wheels of Juggernaut.