five o’clock
The effect was startling ; for in this pale beginning of light , and the atmosphere of tingling exaltation which steeped the town , it was difficult not to believe that the terrible carved figures of wood had life , and that with the eyes of one 's flesh one beheld the world 's great tragedy . Somehow the impression of horror was but deepened by the fact that the bearers had come out from under the curtains of the _ paso _ , to take off the large pads they wore on their heads , to drink water , and smoke cigarettes with the penitents who had rolled up the masks from their pale , damp faces . They might have been comrades of the Roman soldiers , in their obliviousness of that tortured form on the cross . It was not yet five o'clock when Dick and I plunged into the cool gloom of the cathedral , passing the spot where Carmona had struck at me , and the chapel where I had taken Monica . The stones were slippery as the floor of a ballroom , with wax dropped from innumerable candles , and the air was heavy with the smoke of stale incense . The searchlight of dawn could scarcely penetrate the black curtains which throughout Holy Week had draped the cathedral ; therefore a solitary beam , like a bar of gold , slanted in through one superb window . The amethysts , emeralds , and rubies of incomparable painted glass transformed the yellow bar into a rainbow which streamed down the length of the majestic aisle and struck full upon a golden altar .