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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
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