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 ironwork 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 anyone'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