The Rook Gone, He Would Drop Once
More Into His Study Of The Buttercups, To Pick From Them
Whatever Unconsidered Trifle In The Way Of Provender He Could
Find.
Once a small bird, a pied wagtail, flew near him, and
he begged from it just as he had done from the rooks:
The
little creature would have run the risk of being itself
swallowed had it attempted to deliver a packet of flies into
that cavernous mouth. I went nearer, moving cautiously, until
I was within about four yards of him, when, half turning, he
opened his mouth and squawked, actually asking me to feed him;
then, growing suspicious, he hopped awkwardly away in the
grass. Eventually he permitted a nearer approach, and slowly
stooping I was just on the point of stroking his back when,
suddenly becoming alarmed, he swung himself into the air and
flapped laboriously off to a low hawthorn, twenty or thirty
yards away, into which he tumbled pell-mell like a bundle of
old black rags.
Then I left him and thought no more about the crows except
that their young have a good deal to learn upon first coming
forth into an unfriendly world. But there was a second nest
and family close by all the time. A day or two later I
discovered it accidentally in a very curious way.
There was one spot where I was accustomed to linger for a few
minutes, sometimes for half an hour or so, during my daily
walks. Here at the foot of the low bank on the treeless side
of the stream there was a scanty patch of sedges, a most
exposed and unsuitable place for any bird to breed in, yet a
venturesome moorhen had her nest there and was now sitting on
seven eggs. First I would take a peep at the eggs, for the
bird always quitted the nest on my approach; then I would gaze
into the dense tangle of tree, bramble, and ivy springing out
of the mass 'of black rock and red clay of the opposite bank.
In the centre of this rough tangle which overhung the stream
there grew an old stunted and crooked fir tree with its tufted
top so shut out from the light by the branches and foliage
round it that it looked almost black. One evening I sat down
on the green bank opposite this tangle when the low sun behind
me shone level into the mass of rock and rough boles and
branches, and fixing my eyes on the black centre of the mass I
encountered a pair of crimson eyes staring back into mine. A
level ray of light had lit up that spot which I had always
seen in deep shadow, revealing its secret. After gazing
steadily for some time I made out a crow's nest in the dwarf
pine top and the vague black forms of three young fully
fledged crows sitting or standing in it. The middle bird had
the shining crimson eyes; but in a few moments the illusory
colour was gone and the eyes were black.
It was certainly an extraordinary thing: the ragged-looking
black-plumaged bird on its ragged nest of sticks in the deep
shade, with one ray of intense sunlight on its huge nose-like
beak and blood-red eyes, a sight to be remembered for a
lifetime! It recalled Zurbaran's picture of the "Kneeling
Monk," in which the man with everything about him is steeped
in the deepest gloom except his nose, on which one ray of
strong light has fallen. The picture of the monk is gloomy
and austere in a wonderful degree: the crow in his interior
with sunlit big beak and crimson eyes looked nothing less than
diabolical.
I paid other visits to the spot at the same hour, and sat long
and watched the crows while they watched me, occasionally
tossing pebbles on to them to make them shift their positions,
but the magical effect was not produced again.
As to the cause of that extraordinary colour in the crow's
eyes, one might say that it was merely the reflected red light
of the level sun. We are familiar with the effect when
polished and wet surfaces, such as glass, stone, and water,
shine crimson in the light of a setting sun; but there is also
the fact, which is not well known, that the eye may show its
own hidden red - the crimson colour which is at the back of the
retina and which is commonly supposed to be seen only with the
ophthalmoscope. Nevertheless I find on inquiry among friends
and acquaintances that there are instances of persons in which
the iris when directly in front of the observer with the light
behind him, always looks crimson, and in several of these
cases. the persons exhibiting this colour, or danger signal,
as it may be called, were subject to brain trouble. It is
curious to find that the crimson colour or light has also been
observed in dogs: one friend has told me of a pet King
Charles, a lively good-tempered little dog with brown eyes
like any other dog, which yet when they looked up, into yours
in a room always shone ruby-red instead of hyaline blue, or
green, as is usually the case. From other friends I heard of
many other cases: one was of a child, an infant in arms, whose
eyes sometimes appeared crimson, another of a cat with yellow
eyes which shone crimson-red in certain lights. Of human
adults, I heard of two men great in the world of science, both
dead now, in whose eyes the red light had been seen just
before and during attacks of nervous breakdown. I heard also
of four other persons, not distinguished in any way, two of
them sisters, who showed the red light in the eyes: all of
them suffered, from brain trouble and two of them ended their
lives in asylums for the insane.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 49 of 81
Words from 49144 to 50148
of 82198
