Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

RED SUNSETS 289
the change of hospital. {Entre nous, the King is really
dead in his house, but no "red sunset" can take place
while the enemy, in the form of my messengers, is
ambushed within the sacred atmosphere of death.) But
they have been outwitted, sure enough ; and when all
is in train for a start, out they spring like panthers
from the dead King's hut, blood having already begun to
flow in the death of the weary old nurse who got sudden
death as her nursing fee. Silently as suddenly they
now slam the door of the harem, wherein a dozen wives
are cooped up like animals for the sacrifice ; and the
slam of that door is answered by their moan. The " red
sunset" begins. As, however, it is all ceremonial in
character, this " charnel-house " work has a " method
in its madness." There is, first of all, we have seen,
that sacrifice of the old nurse ;
then comes another human
sacrifice before the royal corpse can cross the threshold.
Then the whole Via Dolorosa to the tomb is "painted
red"—another human life has perforce to pay toll for
the corpse to pass the town gate ; then, en route, by
a sort of " minute-gun " arrangement, death follows death
till the tomb is reached. Of course, old scores are wiped
out in blood along that "path of thorns" (sic), and
the man or woman who on that day has no brothers
or cousins among the wire-pullers is in peril of his
carcass being given to the fowls of the air. But these
things are only the beginning of sorrows and the end
is not yet—the end, in fact, is indescribable. For the
tomb itself is the climax in a double sense. Down in