Or it may be a dark night, very dark and stormy, so dark that it is difficult for people who are out in it to find their way, whilst people who only look out of the window, say that it is a pitch-dark night. But now the rain is beginning to fall, and it comes down faster and faster, and there is a muttering in the dull sky, and, all at once, a flash of lightning leaps out of the darkness, cutting it as though with a red, jagged knife, and for an instant it is day, and you see the leaves on the trees, and the rain-drops falling through the air, and the fields with haystacks standing in them, or rivers winding through them, and the distant hills, and the line where the earth meets the heavens. Then, all in a moment—almost before you can say “Oh,” and quite before the great clap of thunder that follows the lightning-flash—it is night—deep, dark, black night—again. The night in which there is a storm like that is a dark night, but it is not dark when the lightning is leaping and flashing.
It is the same with this Black Bird of Paradise. At first when you look at him, all his plumage is of a deep, dark, velvety black, a lovely black, a beautiful, smooth, glossy black, a black that seems almost to gleam and to sparkle as if it were jewellery—black velvet jewellery you may call it, very handsome, very beautiful indeed. Still it is black, but all at once all the colours that have lain asleep in it—blues and greens, and bluey-greens and greeny-blues, and purples and indigos, and wonderful bronzy reflections—wake up together, and flash out of it like the sparkles out of the diamond, like the tongues of fire out of the black cavern, like the lightning out of the dark night. There they all are, flashing and leaping about, meeting and mingling, then shooting apart, playing little games with each other, till all at once they fall asleep again, and there is only the smooth, glossy black, the deep, jetty black, the shining, gleaming, satiny-velvety black, the black velvet, black satin jewellery. That is what a Black Bird of Paradise is like, like a black diamond, like a cavern with a fire lighted in it, like a dark night with flashes of lightning.
But now I will tell you a little more about his appearance, for this that I have told you is only just to give you an idea of how that wonderful material, from which Dame Nature with her scissors cuts out all her children (for all things that are alive are the children of Dame Nature), can be black, and yet have all sorts of colours in it at the same time.
First, you must know—so as not to make any mistake—that this “Black Bird of Paradise” has another name—indeed he has two other names, but one of them is in Latin, so we won't bother about that. There are some birds that have no English names, and when we come to them we will have to call them by their Latin ones—but as long as a bird has an English name we will never trouble our heads about what its Latin name may be, not we, any more than the bird itself does, and no bird that has an English name ever thinks about what its name is in Latin—in fact I really do not believe that it knows. An English name is enough for any bird, if only it is so fortunate as to have one. Now this bird is so fortunate as to have two English names—the Black Bird of Paradise, that you know about—which is what the English people who live in its own country call it—and the Superb Bird of Paradise, which is what naturalists at home in England call it. The Superb Bird of Paradise! Just fancy having a name like that! Supposing a gentleman—some friend of your father and mother, who calls sometimes at the house—were to be called the superb Mr. Jones or the superb Mr. Robinson! Only he would have to be very much more handsome than he is at all likely to be, before he would deserve a name like that.
Well, the two most wonderful things about the Superb or Black Bird of Paradise—after his marvellous black plumage, that has all sorts of colours lying asleep in it—are two wonderful ornaments that he has, one on his head and one on his breast. The one on his head is the most wonderful. It is a sort of crest—at least I think that is the best name for it. Some people, I know, call it a shield, but then that is what they call the other wonderful thing on the breast too; so, if they call that a shield, I think they should call this a helmet, for it is a helmet, and not a shield, that soldiers wear on the head. I shall call it a crest, but it is one of the most extraordinary crests that any bird ever had. It is like a pair of black velvet lappets, so long that they go all down the back and reach half-an-inch beyond the tips of the wings. But at the back of the head, where this crest begins, the two lappets meet, and they are joined together for a little way before they begin to go apart. I tell you what will give you an idea of the shape of this crest. Have you ever seen a pair of trousers that have been washed, and are hanging out on a clothes-line to dry, with the legs very wide apart, so wide they look as if they had been stretched?—I don't know if they really have. Of course you have seen such a thing. Well, that will give you an idea—mind, that is all I can say—of what this wonderful crest that is worn by the Black Bird of Paradise is like. The legs of the trousers are the two lappets, from where they are divided from each other, and, farther up, they join and become all one, just as the legs of a pair of trousers do. Only, of course, I need hardly tell you that a crest of beautiful, black, velvety feathers, glossed with bronze and purple, has a far more elegant appearance than a pair of trousers hanging out to dry, though it may have just a little the same shape.
KING BIRD OF PARADISE
Now I think you will agree with me that this crest is a wonderful thing, even when it is only lying down along the neck and body of the bird. But what would you say when you saw the Black Bird of Paradise lift it right up above its head?—which is what he does, you may be sure, when he wants to show off before the hen bird, who has no crest on her head nor shield on her breast, and whose black feathers, I am afraid, are not nearly so glossy and velvety, and have no colours lying asleep in them and ready to wake up all of a sudden. Ah, you would think the Black Bird of Paradise a wonderful, wonderful bird if you were to see him bowing politely to his hen and lifting up his wonderful, wonderful crest to her.
But I told you this bird had a shield too, and when he lifts up his crest over his head, he shoots out his shield in front of his breast, at the same time, and this shield is something of the same shape as the crest or helmet, only smaller, and always of a lovely bluey-green colour, with a glossy sheen upon it that is just like that upon satin. Yes, always, for the colours that go to sleep in the other parts of the Black Bird of Paradise's plumage, keep wide awake in the shield on its breast, or, if you ever do catch them napping, it is only just for a single instant, and then out they flash again, wider awake than ever. So now, if you were to say—as I am sure you would say—that the Black Bird of Paradise was a wonderful, wonderful bird, even if you were to see him with only his crest lifted up, what, ah, what would you say if you were to see him with his crest lifted up and his shield shot out at the same time? Why, I think that then you could not say less than that he was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful bird—three wonderfuls instead of only two. And indeed you would be right.