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
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.
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