But there it was. The sky was blood-red. At first it was black, a somber black. Not a coal-black but a slate black. Then suddenly just at the edge of the horizon a crack began to appear. It was a slit of blood. It looked more like a wound than anything else I ever saw. The slit of blood grew larger and larger in the slate-black clouds.
Then suddenly all over the horizon these wounds began to break through the mass of black clouds. Some of these slits were horizontal slits, and some of them ran in graceful curves. Some of them looked as if a bayonet had been lunged into the body of that somber cloud and a great crimson gash was made with ragged edges as big as a house. Then it looked as if some ruthless Japanese gendarme had taken his sword and slashed a rip in the abdomen of that sky; and from side to side like a crescent moon appeared this great crimson wound.
I had never seen a sunset just like it. But there it was. It seemed that there was back of that great black cloud a blood-red planet, pouring its crimson tides like a great waterfall down back of that slate-black mass until finally the curtain of black began to tear, and the blood poured through to run along the horizon, and splash against the clouds, and slit its way like wounds through the clouds of night.
And I thought of something else. I thought how a Man once was crucified. I thought how dark the skies were on that afternoon. I thought how slate-colored and somber all life seemed, especially to that little group of disciples. I thought of the wounds in His hands and feet and side. I thought of the wounds the thorns in His crown made, and of the blood that ran over His face. I could see Him there back of that cloud in Korea. I could see His Christian people being crucified again because of their religion. I could see Japanese bayonets thrust into His side and Japanese nails through His feet and His hands. I could see a Japanese crown of thorns on His head because He said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me." And I could see the blood of his wounds breaking through that nation's clouds on that wonder evening of the "sunset of wounds" back of the Korean mountains in December.
CHAPTER VI
FEMININE FLASH-LIGHTS
"Oriental women are fascinating to Occidental men," said a newspaper reporter in a Shanghai hotel lobby, a year ago.
"All women are fascinating to Occidental men. Take the French girls and the way they captured our American soldiers; of course, these brown-eyed, brown-skinned, graceful, mysterious——"
"It's just as I said," replied the first speaker interrupting the second speaker, "Oriental girls are more fascinating to Occidental men than white girls."