The chief attendant of the three dynamos that buzzed and rattled 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 whiskey, a heavy red-haired brute with irregular teeth. He doubted
the existence of the deity, 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 help because he would stand kicking—a
habit with Holroyd—and did not pry into the machinery and try to learn
the ways of it. Certain odd possibilities of the negro mind brought into
abrupt contact with the crown of our civilisation Holroyd never fully
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 cheek-bones 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 whiskey—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
stoke-hole 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 had 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. And to James
Holroyd bullying was a labour of love.
There were three dynamos with their engines at Camberwell. The two that
have been there since the beginning are small machines; the larger one
was new. The smaller machines made a reasonable noise; their straps
hummed over the drums, every now and then the brushes buzzed and
fizzled, and the air churned steadily, 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 iron-work humming.
The place made the visitor’s head reel with the throb, throb, throb of
the engines, the rotation 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
mightiness 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 din, from which the ear picked
out first one thread and then another; there was the intermittent
snorting, panting, and seething of the steam-engines, the suck and thud
of their pistons, the dull beat on the air as the spokes of the great
driving-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 any one’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 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 whiskey, 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.
He took every opportunity Holroyd gave him of touching 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 acts. When he came into the roaring shed one morning he salaamed 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 rare
gleam of light came in through the open archway of the throbbing
machine-shed, and the Lord of the Dynamos, as he whirled and roared, was
radiant with pale gold. Then Azuma-zi knew that his service was
acceptable to his Lord. After that he did not feel so lonely as he had
done, and he had indeed been very much alone in London. And even when
his work time was over, which was rare, he loitered about the shed.
Then, the next time Holroyd maltreated him, Azuma-zi went presently to
the Lord of the Dynamos and whispered, “Thou seest, O my Lord!” and the
angry whirr of the machinery seemed to answer him. Thereafter it
appeared to him that whenever Holroyd came into the shed a different
note came into the sounds of the great dynamo. “My Lord bides his time,”
said Azuma-zi to himself. “The iniquity of the fool is not yet ripe.”
And he waited and watched for the day of reckoning. One day there was
evidence of short circuiting, and Holroyd, making an unwary
examination—it was in the afternoon—got a rather severe shock. Azuma-zi
from behind the engine saw him jump off and curse at the peccant coil.
“He is warned,” said Azuma-zi to himself. “Surely my Lord is very
patient.”
Holroyd had at first initiated his “nigger” into such elementary
conceptions of the dynamo’s working as would enable him to take
temporary charge of the shed in his absence. But when he noticed the
manner in which Azuma-zi hung about the monster, he became suspicious.
He dimly perceived his assistant was “up to something,” and connecting
him with the anointing of the coils with oil that had rotted the varnish
in one place, he issued an edict, shouted above the confusion of the
machinery, “Don’t ’ee go nigh that big dynamo any more, Pooh-bah, or a
’ll take thy skin off!” Besides, if it pleased Azuma-zi to be near the
big machine, it was plain sense and decency to keep him away from it.
Azuma-zi obeyed at the time, but later he was caught bowing before the
Lord of the Dynamos. At which Holroyd twisted his arm and kicked him as
he turned to go away. As Azuma-zi presently stood behind the engine and
glared at the back of the hated Holroyd, the noises of the machinery
took a new rhythm, and sounded like four words in his native tongue.
It is hard to say exactly what madness is. I fancy Azuma-zi was mad. The
incessant din and whirl of the dynamo shed may have churned up his
little store of knowledge and big store of superstitious fancy, at last,
into something akin to frenzy. At any rate, when the idea of making
Holroyd a sacrifice to the Dynamo Fetich was thus suggested to him, it
filled him with a strange tumult of exultant emotion.
That night the two men and their black shadows were alone in the shed
together. The shed was lit with one big arc light that winked and
flickered purple. The shadows lay black behind the dynamos, the ball
governors of the engines whirled from light to darkness, and their
pistons beat loud and steady. The world outside seen through the open
end of the shed seemed incredibly dim and remote. It seemed absolutely
silent, too, since the riot of the machinery drowned every external
sound. Far away was the black fence of the yard with grey, shadowy
houses behind, and above was the deep blue sky and the pale little
stars. Azuma-zi suddenly walked across the centre of the shed above
which the leather bands were running, and went into the shadow by the
big dynamo. Holroyd heard a click, and the spin of the armature changed.
“What are you dewin’ with that switch?” he bawled in surprise. “Ha’n’t I
told you—”
Then he saw the set expression of Azuma-zi’s eyes as the Asiatic came
out of the shadow towards him.
In another moment the two men were grappling fiercely in front of the
great dynamo.
“You coffee-headed fool!” gasped Holroyd, with a brown hand at his
throat. “Keep off those contact rings.” In another moment he was tripped
and reeling back upon the Lord of the Dynamos. He instinctively loosened
his grip upon his antagonist to save himself from the machine.
The messenger, sent in furious haste from the station to find out what
had happened in the dynamo shed, met Azuma-zi at the porter’s lodge by
the gate. Azuma-zi tried to explain something, but the messenger could
make nothing of the black’s incoherent English, and hurried on to the
shed. The machines were all noisily at work, and nothing seemed to be
disarranged. There was, however, a queer smell of singed hair. Then he
saw an odd-looking, crumpled mass clinging to the front of the big
dynamo, and, approaching, recognised the distorted remains of Holroyd.
The man stared and hesitated a moment. Then he saw the face and shut his
eyes convulsively. He turned on his heel before he opened them, so that
he should not see Holroyd again, and went out of the shed to get advice
and help.
When Azuma-zi saw Holroyd die in the grip of the Great Dynamo he had
been a little scared about the consequences of his act. Yet he felt
strangely elated, and knew that the favour of the Lord Dynamo was upon
him. His plan was already settled when he met the man coming from the
station, and the scientific manager who speedily arrived on the scene
jumped at the obvious conclusion of suicide. This expert scarcely
noticed Azuma-zi except to ask a few questions. Did he see Holroyd kill
himself? Azuma-zi explained he had been out of sight at the engine
furnace until he heard a difference in the noise from the dynamo. It was
not a difficult examination, being untinctured by suspicion.
The distorted remains of Holroyd, which the electrician removed from the
machine, were hastily covered by the porter with a coffee-stained
table-cloth. Somebody, by a happy inspiration, fetched a medical man.
The expert was chiefly anxious to get the machine at work again, for
seven or eight trains had stopped midway in the stuffy tunnels of the
electric railway. Azuma-zi, answering or misunderstanding the questions
of the people who had by authority or impudence come into the shed, was
presently sent back to the stoke-hole by the scientific manager. Of
course a crowd collected outside the gates of the yard,—a crowd, for no
known reason, always hovers for a day or two near the scene of a sudden
death in London; two or three reporters percolated somehow into the
engine-shed, and one even got to Azuma-zi; but the scientific expert
cleared them out again, being himself an amateur journalist.
Presently the body was carried away, and public interest departed with
it. Azuma-zi remained very quietly at his furnace, seeing over and over
again in the coals a figure that wriggled violently and became still. An
hour after the murder, to any one coming into the shed it would have
looked exactly as if nothing remarkable had ever happened there. Peeping
presently from his engine-room the black saw the Lord Dynamo spin and
whirl beside his little brothers, the driving wheels were beating round,
and the steam in the pistons went thud, thud, exactly as it had been
earlier in the evening. After all, from the mechanical point of view, it
had been a most insignificant incident—the mere temporary deflection of
a current. But now the slender form and slender shadow of the scientific
manager replaced the sturdy outline of Holroyd travelling up and down
the lane of light upon the vibrating floor under the straps between the
engines and the dynamos.
“Have I not served my Lord?” said Azuma-zi, inaudibly, from his shadow,
and the note of the great dynamo rang out full and clear. As he looked
at the big, whirling mechanism the strange fascination of it that had
been a little in abeyance since Holroyd’s death resumed its sway.
Never had Azuma-zi seen a man killed so swiftly and pitilessly. The big,
humming machine had slain its victim without wavering for a second from
its steady beating. It was indeed a mighty god.
The unconscious scientific manager stood with his back to him,
scribbling on a piece of paper. His shadow lay at the foot of the
monster.
“Was the Lord Dynamo still hungry? His servant was ready.”
Azuma-zi made a stealthy step forward, then stopped. The scientific
manager suddenly stopped writing, and walked down the shed to the
endmost of the dynamos, and began to examine the brushes.
Azuma-zi hesitated, and then slipped across noiselessly into the shadow
by the switch. There he waited. Presently the manager’s footsteps could
be heard returning. He stopped in his old position, unconscious of the
stoker crouching ten feet away from him. Then the big dynamo suddenly
fizzled, and in another moment Azuma-zi had sprung out of the darkness
upon him.
First, the scientific manager was gripped round the body and swung
towards the big dynamo, then, kicking with his knee and forcing his
antagonist’s head down with his hands, he loosened the grip on his waist
and swung round away from the machine. Then the black grasped him again,
putting a curly head against his chest, and they swayed and panted as it
seemed for an age or so. Then the scientific manager was impelled to
catch a black ear in his teeth and bite furiously. The black yelled
hideously.
They rolled over on the floor, and the black, who had apparently slipped
from the vice of the teeth or parted with some ear—the scientific
manager wondered which at the time—tried to throttle him. The scientific
manager was making some ineffectual efforts to claw something with his
hands and to kick, when the welcome sound of quick footsteps sounded on
the floor. The next moment Azuma-zi had left him and darted towards the
big dynamo. There was a splutter amid the roar.
The officer of the company, who had entered, stood staring as Azuma-zi
caught the naked terminals in his hands, gave one horrible convulsion,
and then hung motionless from the machine, his face violently distorted.
“I’m jolly glad you came in when you did,” said the scientific manager,
still sitting on the floor.
He looked at the still quivering figure. “It is not a nice death to die,
apparently—but it is quick.”
The official was still staring at the body. He was a man of slow
apprehension.
There was a pause.
The scientific manager got up on his feet rather awkwardly. He ran his
fingers along his collar thoughtfully, and moved his head to and fro
several times.
“Poor Holroyd! I see now.” Then almost mechanically he went towards the
switch in the shadow and turned the current into the railway circuit
again. As he did so the singed body loosened its grip upon the machine
and fell forward on its face. The cone of the dynamo roared out loud and
clear, and the armature beat the air.
So ended prematurely the Worship of the Dynamo Deity, perhaps the most
short-lived of all religions. Yet withal it could boast a Martyrdom and
a Human Sacrifice.