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
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.
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