Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy) / James Matthew Barrie

Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy)
Barrie, J.M.
Published: 1911
Categorie(s): Fiction, Fantasy
Source: http://www.gutenberg.org
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About Barrie:
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet OM (9 May 1860 – 19
June 1937), more commonly known as J. M. Barrie, was a Scottish
novelist and dramatist. He is best remembered for creating
Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up, whom he based
on his friends, the Llewelyn Davies boys. He is also credited
with popularising the name "Wendy", which was very uncommon
before he gave it to the heroine of Peter Pan. He was
made a baronet in 1913; his baronetcy was not inherited. He
was made a member of the Order of Merit in 1922. Source:
Wikipedia
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Chapter 1
PETER BREAKS THROUGH
All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they
will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when
she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she
plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose
she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling
put her hand to her heart and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain
like this for ever!" This was all that passed between them on
the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow
up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of
the end.
Of course they lived at 14 [their house number on their
street], and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one.
She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet
mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes,
one within the other, that come from the puzzling East,
however many you discover there is always one more; and her
sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never
get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the righthand
corner.
The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen
who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously
that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose
to her except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in
first, and so he got her. He got all of her, except the innermost
box and the kiss. He never knew about the box, and in time he
gave up trying for the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleon could
have got it, but I can picture him trying, and then going off in a
passion, slamming the door.
Mr. Darling used to boast to Wendy that her mother not only
loved him but respected him. He was one of those deep ones
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who know about stocks and shares. Of course no one really
knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks
were up and shares were down in a way that would have made
any woman respect him.
Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept the
books perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so
much as a Brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole
cauliflowers dropped out, and instead of them there were pictures
of babies without faces. She drew them when she should
have been totting up. They were Mrs. Darling's guesses.
Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.
For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether
they would be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to
feed. Mr. Darling was frightfully proud of her, but he was very
honourable, and he sat on the edge of Mrs. Darling's bed, holding
her hand and calculating expenses, while she looked at him
imploringly. She wanted to risk it, come what might, but that
was not his way; his way was with a pencil and a piece of paper,
and if she confused him with suggestions he had to begin
at the beginning again.
"Now don't interrupt," he would beg of her.
"I have one pound seventeen here, and two and six at the office;
I can cut off my coffee at the office, say ten shillings, making
two nine and six, with your eighteen and three makes three
nine seven, with five naught naught in my cheque-book makes
eight nine seven—who is that moving?—eight nine seven, dot
and carry seven—don't speak, my own—and the pound you lent
to that man who came to the door—quiet, child—dot and carry
child—there, you've done it!—did I say nine nine seven? yes, I
said nine nine seven; the question is, can we try it for a year on
nine nine seven?"
"Of course we can, George," she cried. But she was prejudiced
in Wendy's favour, and he was really the grander character
of the two.
"Remember mumps," he warned her almost threateningly,
and off he went again. "Mumps one pound, that is what I have
put down, but I daresay it will be more like thirty shillings—
don't speak—measles one five, German measles half a
guinea, makes two fifteen six—don't waggle your
finger—whooping-cough, say fifteen shillings"—and so on it
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went, and it added up differently each time; but at last Wendy
just got through, with mumps reduced to twelve six, and the
two kinds of measles treated as one.
There was the same excitement over John, and Michael had
even a narrower squeak; but both were kept, and soon, you
might have seen the three of them going in a row to Miss
Fulsom's Kindergarten school, accompanied by their nurse.
Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr.
Darling had a passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so,
of course, they had a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the
amount of milk the children drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland
dog, called Nana, who had belonged to no one in
particular until the Darlings engaged her. She had always
thought children important, however, and the Darlings had become
acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she
spent most of her spare time peeping into perambulators, and
was much hated by careless nursemaids, whom she followed to
their homes and complained of to their mistresses. She proved
to be quite a treasure of a nurse. How thorough she was at
bath-time, and up at any moment of the night if one of her
charges made the slightest cry. Of course her kennel was in
the nursery. She had a genius for knowing when a cough is a
thing to have no patience with and when it needs stocking
around your throat. She believed to her last day in old-fashioned
remedies like rhubarb leaf, and made sounds of contempt
over all this new-fangled talk about germs, and so on. It
was a lesson in propriety to see her escorting the children to
school, walking sedately by their side when they were well behaved,
and butting them back into line if they strayed. On
John's footer [in England soccer was called football, "footer"
for short] days she never once forgot his sweater, and she usually
carried an umbrella in her mouth in case of rain. There is a
room in the basement of Miss Fulsom's school where the
nurses wait. They sat on forms, while Nana lay on the floor, but
that was the only difference. They affected to ignore her as of
an inferior social status to themselves, and she despised their
light talk. She resented visits to the nursery from Mrs.
Darling's friends, but if they did come she first whipped off
Michael's pinafore and put him into the one with blue braiding,
and smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John's hair.
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No nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly,
and Mr. Darling knew it, yet he sometimes wondered
uneasily whether the neighbours talked.
He had his position in the city to consider.
Nana also troubled him in another way. He had sometimes a
feeling that she did not admire him. "I know she admires you
tremendously, George," Mrs. Darling would assure him, and
then she would sign to the children to be specially nice to father.
Lovely dances followed, in which the only other servant,
Liza, was sometimes allowed to join. Such a midget she looked
in her long skirt and maid's cap, though she had sworn, when
engaged, that she would never see ten again. The gaiety of
those romps! And gayest of all was Mrs. Darling, who would pirouette
so wildly that all you could see of her was the kiss, and
then if you had dashed at her you might have got it. There never
was a simpler happier family until the coming of Peter Pan.
Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her
children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother
after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and
put things straight for next morning, repacking into their proper
places the many articles that have wandered during the day.
If you could keep awake (but of course you can't) you would
see your own mother doing this, and you would find it very interesting
to watch her. It is quite like tidying up drawers. You
would see her on her knees, I expect, lingering humorously
over some of your contents, wondering where on earth you had
picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not so
sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a kitten,
and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in
the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you
went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom
of your mind and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread
out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.
I don't know whether you have ever seen a map of a person's
mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and
your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch
them trying to draw a map of a child's mind, which is not only
confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag
lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are
probably roads in the island, for the Neverland is always more
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or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and
there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing,
and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors,
and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six
elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very
small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if
that were all, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers,
the round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs
that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into
braces, say ninety-nine, three-pence for pulling out your tooth
yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island or
they are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing,
especially as nothing will stand still.
Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's, for instance,
had a lagoon with flamingoes flying over it at which
John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a
flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned
upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a
house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael
had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by
its parents, but on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance,
and if they stood still in a row you could say of
them that they have each other's nose, and so forth. On these
magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles
[simple boat]. We too have been there; we can still hear
the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.
Of all delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and
most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious
distances between one adventure and another, but nicely
crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and tablecloth,
it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before
you go to sleep it becomes very real. That is why there are
night-lights.
Occasionally in her travels through her children's minds Mrs.
Darling found things she could not understand, and of these
quite the most perplexing was the word Peter. She knew of no
Peter, and yet he was here and there in John and Michael's
minds, while Wendy's began to be scrawled all over with him.
The name stood out in bolder letters than any of the other
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words, and as Mrs. Darling gazed she felt that it had an oddly
cocky appearance.
"Yes, he is rather cocky," Wendy admitted with regret. Her
mother had been questioning her.
"But who is he, my pet?"
"He is Peter Pan, you know, mother."
At first Mrs. Darling did not know, but after thinking back into
her childhood she just remembered a Peter Pan who was
said to live with the fairies. There were odd stories about him,
as that when children died he went part of the way with them,
so that they should not be frightened. She had believed in him
at the time, but now that she was married and full of sense she
quite doubted whether there was any such person.
"Besides," she said to Wendy, "he would be grown up by this
time."
"Oh no, he isn't grown up," Wendy assured her confidently,
"and he is just my size." She meant that he was her size in both
mind and body; she didn't know how she knew, she just knew
it.
Mrs. Darling consulted Mr. Darling, but he smiled poohpooh.
"Mark my words," he said, "it is some nonsense Nana has
been putting into their heads; just the sort of idea a dog would
have. Leave it alone, and it will blow over."
But it would not blow over and soon the troublesome boy
gave Mrs. Darling quite a shock.
Children have the strangest adventures without being
troubled by them. For instance, they may remember to mention,
a week after the event happened, that when they were in
the wood they had met their dead father and had a game with
him. It was in this casual way that Wendy one morning made a
disquieting revelation. Some leaves of a tree had been found
on the nursery floor, which certainly were not there when the
children went to bed, and Mrs. Darling was puzzling over them
when Wendy said with a tolerant smile:
"I do believe it is that Peter again!"
"Whatever do you mean, Wendy?"
"It is so naughty of him not to wipe his feet," Wendy said,
sighing. She was a tidy child.
She explained in quite a matter-of-fact way that she thought
Peter sometimes came to the nursery in the night and sat on
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the foot of her bed and played on his pipes to her. Unfortunately
she never woke, so she didn't know how she knew, she
just knew.
"What nonsense you talk, precious. No one can get into the
house without knocking."
"I think he comes in by the window," she said.
"My love, it is three floors up."
"Were not the leaves at the foot of the window, mother?"
It was quite true; the leaves had been found very near the
window.
Mrs. Darling did not know what to think, for it all seemed so
natural to Wendy that you could not dismiss it by saying she
had been dreaming.
"My child," the mother cried, "why did you not tell me of this
before?"
"I forgot," said Wendy lightly. She was in a hurry to get her
breakfast.
Oh, surely she must have been dreaming.
But, on the other hand, there were the leaves. Mrs. Darling
examined them very carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but
she was sure they did not come from any tree that grew in
England. She crawled about the floor, peering at it with a
candle for marks of a strange foot. She rattled the poker up the
chimney and tapped the walls. She let down a tape from the
window to the pavement, and it was a sheer drop of thirty feet,
without so much as a spout to climb up by.
Certainly Wendy had been dreaming.
But Wendy had not been dreaming, as the very next night
showed, the night on which the extraordinary adventures of
these children may be said to have begun.
On the night we speak of all the children were once more in
bed. It happened to be Nana's evening off, and Mrs. Darling
had bathed them and sung to them till one by one they had let
go her hand and slid away into the land of sleep.
All were looking so safe and cosy that she smiled at her fears
now and sat down tranquilly by the fire to sew.
It was something for Michael, who on his birthday was getting
into shirts. The fire was warm, however, and the nursery
dimly lit by three night-lights, and presently the sewing lay on
Mrs. Darling's lap. Then her head nodded, oh, so gracefully.
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She was asleep. Look at the four of them, Wendy and Michael
over there, John here, and Mrs. Darling by the fire. There
should have been a fourth night-light.
While she slept she had a dream. She dreamt that the Neverland
had come too near and that a strange boy had broken
through from it. He did not alarm her, for she thought she had
seen him before in the faces of many women who have no children.
Perhaps he is to be found in the faces of some mothers
also. But in her dream he had rent the film that obscures the
Neverland, and she saw Wendy and John and Michael peeping
through the gap.
The dream by itself would have been a trifle, but while she
was dreaming the window of the nursery blew open, and a boy
did drop on the floor. He was accompanied by a strange light,
no bigger than your fist, which darted about the room like a living
thing and I think it must have been this light that wakened
Mrs. Darling.
She started up with a cry, and saw the boy, and somehow she
knew at once that he was Peter Pan. If you or I or Wendy had
been there we should have seen that he was very like Mrs.
Darling's kiss. He was a lovely boy, clad in skeleton leaves and
the juices that ooze out of trees but the most entrancing thing
about him was that he had all his first teeth. When he saw she
was a grown-up, he gnashed the little pearls at her.
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Chapter 2
THE SHADOW
Mrs. Darling screamed, and, as if in answer to a bell, the door
opened, and Nana entered, returned from her evening out. She
growled and sprang at the boy, who leapt lightly through the
window. Again Mrs. Darling screamed, this time in distress for
him, for she thought he was killed, and she ran down into the
street to look for his little body, but it was not there; and she
looked up, and in the black night she could see nothing but
what she thought was a shooting star.
She returned to the nursery, and found Nana with something
in her mouth, which proved to be the boy's shadow. As he leapt
at the window Nana had closed it quickly, too late to catch him,
but his shadow had not had time to get out; slam went the window
and snapped it off.
You may be sure Mrs. Darling examined the shadow carefully,
but it was quite the ordinary kind.
Nana had no doubt of what was the best thing to do with this
shadow. She hung it out at the window, meaning "He is sure to
come back for it; let us put it where he can get it easily without
disturbing the children."
But unfortunately Mrs. Darling could not leave it hanging out
at the window, it looked so like the washing and lowered the
whole tone of the house. She thought of showing it to Mr.
Darling, but he was totting up winter great-coats for John and
Michael, with a wet towel around his head to keep his brain
clear, and it seemed a shame to trouble him; besides, she knew
exactly what he would say: "It all comes of having a dog for a
nurse."
She decided to roll the shadow up and put it away carefully
in a drawer, until a fitting opportunity came for telling her husband.
Ah me!
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The opportunity came a week later, on that never-to-be-forgotten
Friday. Of course it was a Friday.
"I ought to have been specially careful on a Friday," she used
to say afterwards to her husband, while perhaps Nana was on
the other side of her, holding her hand.
"No, no," Mr. Darling always said, "I am responsible for it all.
I, George Darling, did it. MEA CULPA, MEA CULPA." He had
had a classical education.
They sat thus night after night recalling that fatal Friday, till
every detail of it was stamped on their brains and came
through on the other side like the faces on a bad coinage.
"If only I had not accepted that invitation to dine at 27," Mrs.
Darling said.
"If only I had not poured my medicine into Nana's bowl," said
Mr. Darling.
"If only I had pretended to like the medicine," was what
Nana's wet eyes said.
"My liking for parties, George."
"My fatal gift of humour, dearest."
"My touchiness about trifles, dear master and mistress."
Then one or more of them would break down altogether;
Nana at the thought, "It's true, it's true, they ought not to have
had a dog for a nurse." Many a time it was Mr. Darling who put
the handkerchief to Nana's eyes.
"That fiend!" Mr. Darling would cry, and Nana's bark was the
echo of it, but Mrs. Darling never upbraided Peter; there was
something in the right-hand corner of her mouth that wanted
her not to call Peter names.
They would sit there in the empty nursery, recalling fondly
every smallest detail of that dreadful evening. It had begun so
uneventfully, so precisely like a hundred other evenings, with
Nana putting on the water for Michael's bath and carrying him
to it on her back.
"I won't go to bed," he had shouted, like one who still believed
that he had the last word on the subject, "I won't, I
won't. Nana, it isn't six o'clock yet. Oh dear, oh dear, I shan't
love you any more, Nana. I tell you I won't be bathed, I won't, I
won't!"
Then Mrs. Darling had come in, wearing her white eveninggown.
She had dressed early because Wendy so loved to see
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her in her evening-gown, with the necklace George had given
her. She was wearing Wendy's bracelet on her arm; she had
asked for the loan of it. Wendy loved to lend her bracelet to her
mother.
She had found her two older children playing at being herself
and father on the occasion of Wendy's birth, and John was
saying:
"I am happy to inform you, Mrs. Darling, that you are now a
mother," in just such a tone as Mr. Darling himself may have
used on the real occasion.
Wendy had danced with joy, just as the real Mrs. Darling
must have done.
Then John was born, with the extra pomp that he conceived
due to the birth of a male, and Michael came from his bath to
ask to be born also, but John said brutally that they did not
want any more.
Michael had nearly cried. "Nobody wants me," he said, and
of course the lady in the evening-dress could not stand that.
"I do," she said, "I so want a third child."
"Boy or girl?" asked Michael, not too hopefully.
"Boy."
Then he had leapt into her arms. Such a little thing for Mr.
and Mrs. Darling and Nana to recall now, but not so little if
that was to be Michael's last night in the nursery.
They go on with their recollections.
"It was then that I rushed in like a tornado, wasn't it?" Mr.
Darling would say, scorning himself; and indeed he had been
like a tornado.
Perhaps there was some excuse for him. He, too, had been
dressing for the party, and all had gone well with him until he
came to his tie. It is an astounding thing to have to tell, but this
man, though he knew about stocks and shares, had no real
mastery of his tie. Sometimes the thing yielded to him without
a contest, but there were occasions when it would have been
better for the house if he had swallowed his pride and used a
made-up tie.
This was such an occasion. He came rushing into the nursery
with the crumpled little brute of a tie in his hand.
"Why, what is the matter, father dear?"
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"Matter!" he yelled; he really yelled. "This tie, it will not tie."
He became dangerously sarcastic. "Not round my neck! Round
the bed-post! Oh yes, twenty times have I made it up round the
bed-post, but round my neck, no! Oh dear no! begs to be
excused!"
He thought Mrs. Darling was not sufficiently impressed, and
he went on sternly, "I warn you of this, mother, that unless this
tie is round my neck we don't go out to dinner to-night, and if I
don't go out to dinner to-night, I never go to the office again,
and if I don't go to the office again, you and I starve, and our
children will be flung into the streets."
Even then Mrs. Darling was placid. "Let me try, dear," she
said, and indeed that was what he had come to ask her to do,
and with her nice cool hands she tied his tie for him, while the
children stood around to see their fate decided. Some men
would have resented her being able to do it so easily, but Mr.
Darling had far too fine a nature for that; he thanked her carelessly,
at once forgot his rage, and in another moment was dancing
round the room with Michael on his back.
"How wildly we romped!" says Mrs. Darling now, recalling it.
"Our last romp!" Mr. Darling groaned.
"O George, do you remember Michael suddenly said to me,
'How did you get to know me, mother?'"
"I remember!"
"They were rather sweet, don't you think, George?"
"And they were ours, ours! and now they are gone."
The romp had ended with the appearance of Nana, and most
unluckily Mr. Darling collided against her, covering his
trousers with hairs. They were not only new trousers, but they
were the first he had ever had with braid on them, and he had
had to bite his lip to prevent the tears coming. Of course Mrs.
Darling brushed him, but he began to talk again about its being
a mistake to have a dog for a nurse.
"George, Nana is a treasure."
"No doubt, but I have an uneasy feeling at times that she
looks upon the children as puppies."
"Oh no, dear one, I feel sure she knows they have souls."
"I wonder," Mr. Darling said thoughtfully, "I wonder." It was
an opportunity, his wife felt, for telling him about the boy. At
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first he pooh-poohed the story, but he became thoughtful when
she showed him the shadow.
"It is nobody I know," he said, examining it carefully, "but it
does look a scoundrel."
"We were still discussing it, you remember," says Mr.
Darling, "when Nana came in with Michael's medicine. You will
never carry the bottle in your mouth again, Nana, and it is all
my fault."
Strong man though he was, there is no doubt that he had behaved
rather foolishly over the medicine. If he had a weakness,
it was for thinking that all his life he had taken medicine
boldly, and so now, when Michael dodged the spoon in Nana's
mouth, he had said reprovingly, "Be a man, Michael."
"Won't; won't!" Michael cried naughtily. Mrs. Darling left the
room to get a chocolate for him, and Mr. Darling thought this
showed want of firmness.
"Mother, don't pamper him," he called after her. "Michael,
when I was your age I took medicine without a murmur. I said,
'Thank you, kind parents, for giving me bottles to make we
well.'"
He really thought this was true, and Wendy, who was now in
her night-gown, believed it also, and she said, to encourage Michael,
"That medicine you sometimes take, father, is much nastier,
isn't it?"
"Ever so much nastier," Mr. Darling said bravely, "and I
would take it now as an example to you, Michael, if I hadn't
lost the bottle."
He had not exactly lost it; he had climbed in the dead of
night to the top of the wardrobe and hidden it there. What he
did not know was that the faithful Liza had found it, and put it
back on his wash-stand.
"I know where it is, father," Wendy cried, always glad to be
of service. "I'll bring it," and she was off before he could stop
her. Immediately his spirits sank in the strangest way.
"John," he said, shuddering, "it's most beastly stuff. It's that
nasty, sticky, sweet kind."
"It will soon be over, father," John said cheerily, and then in
rushed Wendy with the medicine in a glass.
"I have been as quick as I could," she panted.
15
"You have been wonderfully quick," her father retorted, with
a vindictive politeness that was quite thrown away upon her.
"Michael first," he said doggedly.
"Father first," said Michael, who was of a suspicious nature.
"I shall be sick, you know," Mr. Darling said threateningly.
"Come on, father," said John.
"Hold your tongue, John," his father rapped out.
Wendy was quite puzzled. "I thought you took it quite easily,
father."
"That is not the point," he retorted. "The point is, that there
is more in my glass than in Michael's spoon." His proud heart
was nearly bursting. "And it isn't fair: I would say it though it
were with my last breath; it isn't fair."
"Father, I am waiting," said Michael coldly.
"It's all very well to say you are waiting; so am I waiting."
"Father's a cowardly custard."
"So are you a cowardly custard."
"I'm not frightened."
"Neither am I frightened."
"Well, then, take it."
"Well, then, you take it."
Wendy had a splendid idea. "Why not both take it at the same
time?"
"Certainly," said Mr. Darling. "Are you ready, Michael?"
Wendy gave the words, one, two, three, and Michael took his
medicine, but Mr. Darling slipped his behind his back.
There was a yell of rage from Michael, and "O father!"
Wendy exclaimed.
"What do you mean by 'O father'?" Mr. Darling demanded.
"Stop that row, Michael. I meant to take mine, but I—I missed
it."
It was dreadful the way all the three were looking at him,
just as if they did not admire him. "Look here, all of you," he
said entreatingly, as soon as Nana had gone into the bathroom.
"I have just thought of a splendid joke. I shall pour my medicine
into Nana's bowl, and she will drink it, thinking it is milk!"
It was the colour of milk; but the children did not have their
father's sense of humour, and they looked at him reproachfully
as he poured the medicine into Nana's bowl. "What fun!" he
16
said doubtfully, and they did not dare expose him when Mrs.
Darling and Nana returned.
"Nana, good dog," he said, patting her, "I have put a little
milk into your bowl, Nana."
Nana wagged her tail, ran to the medicine, and began lapping
it. Then she gave Mr. Darling such a look, not an angry
look: she showed him the great red tear that makes us so sorry
for noble dogs, and crept into her kennel.
Mr. Darling was frightfully ashamed of himself, but he would
not give in. In a horrid silence Mrs. Darling smelt the bowl. "O
George," she said, "it's your medicine!"
"It was only a joke," he roared, while she comforted her boys,
and Wendy hugged Nana. "Much good," he said bitterly, "my
wearing myself to the bone trying to be funny in this house."
And still Wendy hugged Nana. "That's right," he shouted.
"Coddle her! Nobody coddles me. Oh dear no! I am only the
breadwinner, why should I be coddled—why, why, why!"
"George," Mrs. Darling entreated him, "not so loud; the servants
will hear you." Somehow they had got into the way of
calling Liza the servants.
"Let them!" he answered recklessly. "Bring in the whole
world. But I refuse to allow that dog to lord it in my nursery for
an hour longer."
The children wept, and Nana ran to him beseechingly, but he
waved her back. He felt he was a strong man again. "In vain, in
vain," he cried; "the proper place for you is the yard, and there
you go to be tied up this instant."
"George, George," Mrs. Darling whispered, "remember what
I told you about that boy."
Alas, he would not listen. He was determined to show who
was master in that house, and when commands would not draw
Nana from the kennel, he lured her out of it with honeyed
words, and seizing her roughly, dragged her from the nursery.
He was ashamed of himself, and yet he did it. It was all owing
to his too affectionate nature, which craved for admiration.
When he had tied her up in the back-yard, the wretched father
went and sat in the passage, with his knuckles to his eyes.
In the meantime Mrs. Darling had put the children to bed in
unwonted silence and lit their night-lights. They could hear
17
Nana barking, and John whimpered, "It is because he is chaining
her up in the yard," but Wendy was wiser.
"That is not Nana's unhappy bark," she said, little guessing
what was about to happen; "that is her bark when she smells
danger."
Danger!
"Are you sure, Wendy?"
"Oh, yes."
Mrs. Darling quivered and went to the window. It was securely
fastened. She looked out, and the night was peppered
with stars. They were crowding round the house, as if curious
to see what was to take place there, but she did not notice this,
nor that one or two of the smaller ones winked at her. Yet a
nameless fear clutched at her heart and made her cry, "Oh,
how I wish that I wasn't going to a party to-night!"
Even Michael, already half asleep, knew that she was perturbed,
and he asked, "Can anything harm us, mother, after the
night-lights are lit?"
"Nothing, precious," she said; "they are the eyes a mother
leaves behind her to guard her children."
She went from bed to bed singing enchantments over them,
and little Michael flung his arms round her. "Mother," he cried,
"I'm glad of you." They were the last words she was to hear
from him for a long time.
No. 27 was only a few yards distant, but there had been a
slight fall of snow, and Father and Mother Darling picked their
way over it deftly not to soil their shoes. They were already the
only persons in the street, and all the stars were watching
them. Stars are beautiful, but they may not take an active part
in anything, they must just look on for ever. It is a punishment
put on them for something they did so long ago that no star
now knows what it was. So the older ones have become glassyeyed
and seldom speak (winking is the star language), but the
little ones still wonder. They are not really friendly to Peter,
who had a mischievous way of stealing up behind them and trying
to blow them out; but they are so fond of fun that they were
on his side to-night, and anxious to get the grown-ups out of
the way. So as soon as the door of 27 closed on Mr. and Mrs.
Darling there was a commotion in the firmament, and the smallest
of all the stars in the Milky Way screamed out:
18
"Now, Peter!"
19
Chapter 3
COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
For a moment after Mr. and Mrs. Darling left the house the
night-lights by the beds of the three children continued to burn
clearly. They were awfully nice little night-lights, and one cannot
help wishing that they could have kept awake to see Peter;
but Wendy's light blinked and gave such a yawn that the other
two yawned also, and before they could close their mouths all
the three went out.
There was another light in the room now, a thousand times
brighter than the night-lights, and in the time we have taken to
say this, it had been in all the drawers in the nursery, looking
for Peter's shadow, rummaged the wardrobe and turned every
pocket inside out. It was not really a light; it made this light by
flashing about so quickly, but when it came to rest for a second
you saw it was a fairy, no longer than your hand, but still growing.
It was a girl called Tinker Bell exquisitely gowned in a
skeleton leaf, cut low and square, through which her figure
could be seen to the best advantage. She was slightly inclined
to EMBONPOINT. [plump hourglass figure]
A moment after the fairy's entrance the window was blown
open by the breathing of the little stars, and Peter dropped in.
He had carried Tinker Bell part of the way, and his hand was
still messy with the fairy dust.
"Tinker Bell," he called softly, after making sure that the children
were asleep, "Tink, where are you?" She was in a jug for
the moment, and liking it extremely; she had never been in a
jug before.
"Oh, do come out of that jug, and tell me, do you know where
they put my shadow?"
The loveliest tinkle as of golden bells answered him. It is the
fairy language. You ordinary children can never hear it, but if
20
you were to hear it you would know that you had heard it once
before.
Tink said that the shadow was in the big box. She meant the
chest of drawers, and Peter jumped at the drawers, scattering
their contents to the floor with both hands, as kings toss
ha'pence to the crowd. In a moment he had recovered his shadow,
and in his delight he forgot that he had shut Tinker Bell up
in the drawer.
If he thought at all, but I don't believe he ever thought, it was
that he and his shadow, when brought near each other, would
join like drops of water, and when they did not he was appalled.
He tried to stick it on with soap from the bathroom, but
that also failed. A shudder passed through Peter, and he sat on
the floor and cried.
His sobs woke Wendy, and she sat up in bed. She was not
alarmed to see a stranger crying on the nursery floor; she was
only pleasantly interested.
"Boy," she said courteously, "why are you crying?"
Peter could be exceeding polite also, having learned the
grand manner at fairy ceremonies, and he rose and bowed to
her beautifully. She was much pleased, and bowed beautifully
to him from the bed.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Wendy Moira Angela Darling," she replied with some satisfaction.
"What is your name?"
"Peter Pan."
She was already sure that he must be Peter, but it did seem a
comparatively short name.
"Is that all?"
"Yes," he said rather sharply. He felt for the first time that it
was a shortish name.
"I'm so sorry," said Wendy Moira Angela.
"It doesn't matter," Peter gulped.
She asked where he lived.
"Second to the right," said Peter, "and then straight on till
morning."
"What a funny address!"
Peter had a sinking. For the first time he felt that perhaps it
was a funny address.
"No, it isn't," he said.
21
"I mean," Wendy said nicely, remembering that she was hostess,
"is that what they put on the letters?"
He wished she had not mentioned letters.
"Don't get any letters," he said contemptuously.
"But your mother gets letters?"
"Don't have a mother," he said. Not only had he no mother,
but he had not the slightest desire to have one. He thought
them very over-rated persons. Wendy, however, felt at once
that she was in the presence of a tragedy.
"O Peter, no wonder you were crying," she said, and got out
of bed and ran to him.
"I wasn't crying about mothers," he said rather indignantly.
"I was crying because I can't get my shadow to stick on.
Besides, I wasn't crying."
"It has come off?"
"Yes."
Then Wendy saw the shadow on the floor, looking so
draggled, and she was frightfully sorry for Peter. "How awful!"
she said, but she could not help smiling when she saw that he
had been trying to stick it on with soap. How exactly like a boy!
Fortunately she knew at once what to do. "It must be sewn
on," she said, just a little patronisingly.
"What's sewn?" he asked.
"You're dreadfully ignorant."
"No, I'm not."
But she was exulting in his ignorance. "I shall sew it on for
you, my little man," she said, though he was tall as herself, and
she got out her housewife [sewing bag], and sewed the shadow
on to Peter's foot.
"I daresay it will hurt a little," she warned him.
"Oh, I shan't cry," said Peter, who was already of the opinion
that he had never cried in his life. And he clenched his teeth
and did not cry, and soon his shadow was behaving properly,
though still a little creased.
"Perhaps I should have ironed it," Wendy said thoughtfully,
but Peter, boylike, was indifferent to appearances, and he was
now jumping about in the wildest glee. Alas, he had already
forgotten that he owed his bliss to Wendy. He thought he had
attached the shadow himself. "How clever I am!" he crowed
rapturously, "oh, the cleverness of me!"
22
It is humiliating to have to confess that this conceit of Peter
was one of his most fascinating qualities. To put it with brutal
frankness, there never was a cockier boy.
But for the moment Wendy was shocked. "You conceit [braggart],"
she exclaimed, with frightful sarcasm; "of course I did
nothing!"
"You did a little," Peter said carelessly, and continued to
dance.
"A little!" she replied with hauteur [pride]; "if I am no use I
can at least withdraw," and she sprang in the most dignified
way into bed and covered her face with the blankets.
To induce her to look up he pretended to be going away, and
when this failed he sat on the end of the bed and tapped her
gently with his foot. "Wendy," he said, "don't withdraw. I can't
help crowing, Wendy, when I'm pleased with myself." Still she
would not look up, though she was listening eagerly. "Wendy,"
he continued, in a voice that no woman has ever yet been able
to resist, "Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys."
Now Wendy was every inch a woman, though there were not
very many inches, and she peeped out of the bed-clothes.
"Do you really think so, Peter?"
"Yes, I do."
"I think it's perfectly sweet of you," she declared, "and I'll get
up again," and she sat with him on the side of the bed. She also
said she would give him a kiss if he liked, but Peter did not
know what she meant, and he held out his hand expectantly.
"Surely you know what a kiss is?" she asked, aghast.
"I shall know when you give it to me," he replied stiffly, and
not to hurt his feeling she gave him a thimble.
"Now," said he, "shall I give you a kiss?" and she replied with
a slight primness, "If you please." She made herself rather
cheap by inclining her face toward him, but he merely dropped
an acorn button into her hand, so she slowly returned her face
to where it had been before, and said nicely that she would
wear his kiss on the chain around her neck. It was lucky that
she did put it on that chain, for it was afterwards to save her
life.
When people in our set are introduced, it is customary for
them to ask each other's age, and so Wendy, who always liked
to do the correct thing, asked Peter how old he was. It was not
23
really a happy question to ask him; it was like an examination
paper that asks grammar, when what you want to be asked is
Kings of England.
"I don't know," he replied uneasily, "but I am quite young."
He really knew nothing about it, he had merely suspicions, but
he said at a venture, "Wendy, I ran away the day I was born."
Wendy was quite surprised, but interested; and she indicated
in the charming drawing-room manner, by a touch on her
night-gown, that he could sit nearer her.
"It was because I heard father and mother," he explained in a
low voice, "talking about what I was to be when I became a
man." He was extraordinarily agitated now. "I don't want ever
to be a man," he said with passion. "I want always to be a little
boy and to have fun. So I ran away to Kensington Gardens and
lived a long long time among the fairies."
She gave him a look of the most intense admiration, and he
thought it was because he had run away, but it was really because
he knew fairies. Wendy had lived such a home life that to
know fairies struck her as quite delightful. She poured out
questions about them, to his surprise, for they were rather a
nuisance to him, getting in his way and so on, and indeed he
sometimes had to give them a hiding [spanking]. Still, he liked
them on the whole, and he told her about the beginning of
fairies.
"You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first
time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went
skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies."
Tedious talk this, but being a stay-at-home she liked it.
"And so," he went on good-naturedly, "there ought to be one
fairy for every boy and girl."
"Ought to be? Isn't there?"
"No. You see children know such a lot now, they soon don't
believe in fairies, and every time a child says, 'I don't believe in
fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead."
Really, he thought they had now talked enough about fairies,
and it struck him that Tinker Bell was keeping very quiet. "I
can't think where she has gone to," he said, rising, and he
called Tink by name. Wendy's heart went flutter with a sudden
thrill.
24
"Peter," she cried, clutching him, "you don't mean to tell me
that there is a fairy in this room!"
"She was here just now," he said a little impatiently. "You
don't hear her, do you?" and they both listened.
"The only sound I hear," said Wendy, "is like a tinkle of
bells."
"Well, that's Tink, that's the fairy language. I think I hear her
too."
The sound come from the chest of drawers, and Peter made a
merry face. No one could ever look quite so merry as Peter,
and the loveliest of gurgles was his laugh. He had his first
laugh still.
"Wendy," he whispered gleefully, "I do believe I shut her up
in the drawer!"
He let poor Tink out of the drawer, and she flew about the
nursery screaming with fury. "You shouldn't say such things,"
Peter retorted. "Of course I'm very sorry, but how could I know
you were in the drawer?"
Wendy was not listening to him. "O Peter," she cried, "if she
would only stand still and let me see her!"
"They hardly ever stand still," he said, but for one moment
Wendy saw the romantic figure come to rest on the cuckoo
clock. "O the lovely!" she cried, though Tink's face was still distorted
with passion.
"Tink," said Peter amiably, "this lady says she wishes you
were her fairy."
Tinker Bell answered insolently.
"What does she say, Peter?"
He had to translate. "She is not very polite. She says you are
a great [huge] ugly girl, and that she is my fairy."
He tried to argue with Tink. "You know you can't be my fairy,
Tink, because I am an gentleman and you are a lady."
To this Tink replied in these words, "You silly ass," and disappeared
into the bathroom. "She is quite a common fairy," Peter
explained apologetically, "she is called Tinker Bell because she
mends the pots and kettles [tinker = tin worker]." [Similar to
"cinder" plus "elle" to get Cinderella]
They were together in the armchair by this time, and Wendy
plied him with more questions.
"If you don't live in Kensington Gardens now—"
25
"Sometimes I do still."
"But where do you live mostly now?"
"With the lost boys."
"Who are they?"
"They are the children who fall out of their perambulators
when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not
claimed in seven days they are sent far away to the Neverland
to defray expenses. I'm captain."
"What fun it must be!"
"Yes," said cunning Peter, "but we are rather lonely. You see
we have no female companionship."
"Are none of the others girls?"
"Oh, no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of
their prams."
This flattered Wendy immensely. "I think," she said, "it is perfectly
lovely the way you talk about girls; John there just despises
us."
For reply Peter rose and kicked John out of bed, blankets and
all; one kick. This seemed to Wendy rather forward for a first
meeting, and she told him with spirit that he was not captain in
her house. However, John continued to sleep so placidly on the
floor that she allowed him to remain there. "And I know you
meant to be kind," she said, relenting, "so you may give me a
kiss."
For the moment she had forgotten his ignorance about
kisses. "I thought you would want it back," he said a little bitterly,
and offered to return her the thimble.
"Oh dear," said the nice Wendy, "I don't mean a kiss, I mean
a thimble."
"What's that?"
"It's like this." She kissed him.
"Funny!" said Peter gravely. "Now shall I give you a
thimble?"
"If you wish to," said Wendy, keeping her head erect this
time.
Peter thimbled her, and almost immediately she screeched.
"What is it, Wendy?"
"It was exactly as if someone were pulling my hair."
"That must have been Tink. I never knew her so naughty
before."
26
And indeed Tink was darting about again, using offensive
language.
"She says she will do that to you, Wendy, every time I give
you a thimble."
"But why?"
"Why, Tink?"
Again Tink replied, "You silly ass." Peter could not understand
why, but Wendy understood, and she was just slightly
disappointed when he admitted that he came to the nursery
window not to see her but to listen to stories.
"You see, I don't know any stories. None of the lost boys
knows any stories."
"How perfectly awful," Wendy said.
"Do you know," Peter asked "why swallows build in the eaves
of houses? It is to listen to the stories. O Wendy, your mother
was telling you such a lovely story."
"Which story was it?"
"About the prince who couldn't find the lady who wore the
glass slipper."
"Peter," said Wendy excitedly, "that was Cinderella, and he
found her, and they lived happily ever after."
Peter was so glad that he rose from the floor, where they had
been sitting, and hurried to the window.
"Where are you going?" she cried with misgiving.
"To tell the other boys."
"Don't go Peter," she entreated, "I know such lots of stories."
Those were her precise words, so there can be no denying
that it was she who first tempted him.
He came back, and there was a greedy look in his eyes now
which ought to have alarmed her, but did not.
"Oh, the stories I could tell to the boys!" she cried, and then
Peter gripped her and began to draw her toward the window.
"Let me go!" she ordered him.
"Wendy, do come with me and tell the other boys."
Of course she was very pleased to be asked, but she said,
"Oh dear, I can't. Think of mummy! Besides, I can't fly."
"I'll teach you."
"Oh, how lovely to fly."
"I'll teach you how to jump on the wind's back, and then
away we go."
27
"Oo!" she exclaimed rapturously.
"Wendy, Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you
might be flying about with me saying funny things to the
stars."
"Oo!"
"And, Wendy, there are mermaids."
"Mermaids! With tails?"
"Such long tails."
"Oh," cried Wendy, "to see a mermaid!"
He had become frightfully cunning. "Wendy," he said, "how
we should all respect you."
She was wriggling her body in distress. It was quite as if she
were trying to remain on the nursery floor.
But he had no pity for her.
"Wendy," he said, the sly one, "you could tuck us in at night."
"Oo!"
"None of us has ever been tucked in at night."
"Oo," and her arms went out to him.
"And you could darn our clothes, and make pockets for us.
None of us has any pockets."
How could she resist. "Of course it's awfully fascinating!" she
cried. "Peter, would you teach John and Michael to fly too?"
"If you like," he said indifferently, and she ran to John and
Michael and shook them. "Wake up," she cried, "Peter Pan has
come and he is to teach us to fly."
John rubbed his eyes. "Then I shall get up," he said. Of
course he was on the floor already. "Hallo," he said, "I am up!"
Michael was up by this time also, looking as sharp as a knife
with six blades and a saw, but Peter suddenly signed silence.
Their faces assumed the awful craftiness of children listening
for sounds from the grown-up world. All was as still as salt.
Then everything was right. No, stop! Everything was wrong.
Nana, who had been barking distressfully all the evening, was
quiet now. It was her silence they had heard.
"Out with the light! Hide! Quick!" cried John, taking command
for the only time throughout the whole adventure. And
thus when Liza entered, holding Nana, the nursery seemed
quite its old self, very dark, and you would have sworn you
heard its three wicked inmates breathing angelically as they
28
slept. They were really doing it artfully from behind the window
curtains.
Liza was in a bad temper, for she was mixing the Christmas
puddings in the kitchen, and had been drawn from them, with
a raisin still on her cheek, by Nana's absurd suspicions. She
thought the best way of getting a little quiet was to take Nana
to the nursery for a moment, but in custody of course.
"There, you suspicious brute," she said, not sorry that Nana
was in disgrace. "They are perfectly safe, aren't they? Every
one of the little angels sound asleep in bed. Listen to their
gentle breathing."
Here Michael, encouraged by his success, breathed so loudly
that they were nearly detected. Nana knew that kind of breathing,
and she tried to drag herself out of Liza's clutches.
But Liza was dense. "No more of it, Nana," she said sternly,
pulling her out of the room. "I warn you if bark again I shall go
straight for master and missus and bring them home from the
party, and then, oh, won't master whip you, just."
She tied the unhappy dog up again, but do you think Nana
ceased to bark? Bring master and missus home from the party!
Why, that was just what she wanted. Do you think she cared
whether she was whipped so long as her charges were safe?
Unfortunately Liza returned to her puddings, and Nana, seeing
that no help would come from her, strained and strained at the
chain until at last she broke it. In another moment she had
burst into the dining-room of 27 and flung up her paws to heaven,
her most expressive way of making a communication. Mr.
and Mrs. Darling knew at once that something terrible was
happening in their nursery, and without a good-bye to their
hostess they rushed into the street.
But it was now ten minutes since three scoundrels had been
breathing behind the curtains, and Peter Pan can do a great
deal in ten minutes.
We now return to the nursery.
"It's all right," John announced, emerging from his hidingplace.
"I say, Peter, can you really fly?"
Instead of troubling to answer him Peter flew around the
room, taking the mantelpiece on the way.
"How topping!" said John and Michael.
"How sweet!" cried Wendy.
29
"Yes, I'm sweet, oh, I am sweet!" said Peter, forgetting his
manners again.
It looked delightfully easy, and they tried it first from the
floor and then from the beds, but they always went down instead
of up.
"I say, how do you do it?" asked John, rubbing his knee. He
was quite a practical boy.
"You just think lovely wonderful thoughts," Peter explained,
"and they lift you up in the air."
He showed them again.
"You're so nippy at it," John said, "couldn't you do it very
slowly once?"
Peter did it both slowly and quickly. "I've got it now, Wendy!"
cried John, but soon he found he had not. Not one of them
could fly an inch, though even Michael was in words of two syllables,
and Peter did not know A from Z.
Of course Peter had been trifling with them, for no one can
fly unless the fairy dust has been blown on him. Fortunately, as
we have mentioned, one of his hands was messy with it, and he
blew some on each of them, with the most superb results.
"Now just wiggle your shoulders this way," he said, "and let
go."
They were all on their beds, and gallant Michael let go first.
He did not quite mean to let go, but he did it, and immediately
he was borne across the room.
"I flewed!" he screamed while still in mid-air.
John let go and met Wendy near the bathroom.
"Oh, lovely!"
"Oh, ripping!"
"Look at me!"
"Look at me!"
"Look at me!"
They were not nearly so elegant as Peter, they could not help
kicking a little, but their heads were bobbing against the ceiling,
and there is almost nothing so delicious as that. Peter gave
Wendy a hand at first, but had to desist, Tink was so indignant.
Up and down they went, and round and round. Heavenly was
Wendy's word.
"I say," cried John, "why shouldn't we all go out?"
Of course it was to this that Peter had been luring them.
30
Michael was ready: he wanted to see how long it took him to
do a billion miles. But Wendy hesitated.
"Mermaids!" said Peter again.
"Oo!"
"And there are pirates."
"Pirates," cried John, seizing his Sunday hat, "let us go at
once."
It was just at this moment that Mr. and Mrs. Darling hurried
with Nana out of 27. They ran into the middle of the street to
look up at the nursery window; and, yes, it was still shut, but
the room was ablaze with light, and most heart-gripping sight
of all, they could see in shadow on the curtain three little figures
in night attire circling round and round, not on the floor
but in the air.
Not three figures, four!
In a tremble they opened the street door. Mr. Darling would
have rushed upstairs, but Mrs. Darling signed him to go softly.
She even tried to make her heart go softly.
Will they reach the nursery in time? If so, how delightful for
them, and we shall all breathe a sigh of relief, but there will be
no story. On the other hand, if they are not in time, I solemnly
promise that it will all come right in the end.
They would have reached the nursery in time had it not been
that the little stars were watching them. Once again the stars
blew the window open, and that smallest star of all called out:
"Cave, Peter!"
Then Peter knew that there was not a moment to lose.
"Come," he cried imperiously, and soared out at once into the
night, followed by John and Michael and Wendy.
Mr. and Mrs. Darling and Nana rushed into the nursery too
late. The birds were flown.
31
Chapter 4
THE FLIGHT
"Second to the right, and straight on till morning."
That, Peter had told Wendy, was the way to the Neverland;
but even birds, carrying maps and consulting them at windy
corners, could not have sighted it with these instructions.
Peter, you see, just said anything that came into his head.
At first his companions trusted him implicitly, and so great
were the delights of flying that they wasted time circling round
church spires or any other tall objects on the way that took
their fancy.
John and Michael raced, Michael getting a start.
They recalled with contempt that not so long ago they had
thought themselves fine fellows for being able to fly round a
room.
Not long ago. But how long ago? They were flying over the
sea before this thought began to disturb Wendy seriously. John
thought it was their second sea and their third night.
Sometimes it was dark and sometimes light, and now they
were very cold and again too warm. Did they really feel hungry
at times, or were they merely pretending, because Peter had
such a jolly new way of feeding them? His way was to pursue
birds who had food in their mouths suitable for humans and
snatch it from them; then the birds would follow and snatch it
back; and they would all go chasing each other gaily for miles,
parting at last with mutual expressions of good-will. But Wendy
noticed with gentle concern that Peter did not seem to know
that this was rather an odd way of getting your bread and butter,
nor even that there are other ways.
Certainly they did not pretend to be sleepy, they were sleepy;
and that was a danger, for the moment they popped off, down
they fell. The awful thing was that Peter thought this funny.
32
"There he goes again!" he would cry gleefully, as Michael
suddenly dropped like a stone.
"Save him, save him!" cried Wendy, looking with horror at
the cruel sea far below. Eventually Peter would dive through
the air, and catch Michael just before he could strike the sea,
and it was lovely the way he did it; but he always waited till the
last moment, and you felt it was his cleverness that interested
him and not the saving of human life. Also he was fond of variety,
and the sport that engrossed him one moment would suddenly
cease to engage him, so there was always the possibility
that the next time you fell he would let you go.
He could sleep in the air without falling, by merely lying on
his back and floating, but this was, partly at least, because he
was so light that if you got behind him and blew he went
faster.
"Do be more polite to him," Wendy whispered to John, when
they were playing "Follow my Leader."
"Then tell him to stop showing off," said John.
When playing Follow my Leader, Peter would fly close to the
water and touch each shark's tail in passing, just as in the
street you may run your finger along an iron railing. They
could not follow him in this with much success, so perhaps it
was rather like showing off, especially as he kept looking behind
to see how many tails they missed.
"You must be nice to him," Wendy impressed on her brothers.
"What could we do if he were to leave us!"
"We could go back," Michael said.
"How could we ever find our way back without him?"
"Well, then, we could go on," said John.
"That is the awful thing, John. We should have to go on, for
we don't know how to stop."
This was true, Peter had forgotten to show them how to stop.
John said that if the worst came to the worst, all they had to
do was to go straight on, for the world was round, and so in
time they must come back to their own window.
"And who is to get food for us, John?"
"I nipped a bit out of that eagle's mouth pretty neatly,
Wendy."
33
"After the twentieth try," Wendy reminded him. "And even
though we became good a picking up food, see how we bump
against clouds and things if he is not near to give us a hand."
Indeed they were constantly bumping. They could now fly
strongly, though they still kicked far too much; but if they saw
a cloud in front of them, the more they tried to avoid it, the
more certainly did they bump into it. If Nana had been with
them, she would have had a bandage round Michael's forehead
by this time.
Peter was not with them for the moment, and they felt rather
lonely up there by themselves. He could go so much faster than
they that he would suddenly shoot out of sight, to have some
adventure in which they had no share. He would come down
laughing over something fearfully funny he had been saying to
a star, but he had already forgotten what it was, or he would
come up with mermaid scales still sticking to him, and yet not
be able to say for certain what had been happening. It was
really rather irritating to children who had never seen a
mermaid.
"And if he forgets them so quickly," Wendy argued, "how can
we expect that he will go on remembering us?"
Indeed, sometimes when he returned he did not remember
them, at least not well. Wendy was sure of it. She saw recognition
come into his eyes as he was about to pass them the time
of day and go on; once even she had to call him by name.
"I'm Wendy," she said agitatedly.
He was very sorry. "I say, Wendy," he whispered to her, "always
if you see me forgetting you, just keep on saying 'I'm
Wendy,' and then I'll remember."
Of course this was rather unsatisfactory. However, to make
amends he showed them how to lie out flat on a strong wind
that was going their way, and this was such a pleasant change
that they tried it several times and found that they could sleep
thus with security. Indeed they would have slept longer, but
Peter tired quickly of sleeping, and soon he would cry in his
captain voice, "We get off here." So with occasional tiffs, but
on the whole rollicking, they drew near the Neverland; for
after many moons they did reach it, and, what is more, they
had been going pretty straight all the time, not perhaps so
much owing to the guidance of Peter or Tink as because the
34
island was looking for them. It is only thus that any one may
sight those magic shores.
"There it is," said Peter calmly.
"Where, where?"
"Where all the arrows are pointing."
Indeed a million golden arrows were pointing it out to the
children, all directed by their friend the sun, who wanted them
to be sure of their way before leaving them for the night.
Wendy and John and Michael stood on tip-toe in the air to get
their first sight of the island. Strange to say, they all recognized
it at once, and until fear fell upon them they hailed it, not
as something long dreamt of and seen at last, but as a familiar
friend to whom they were returning home for the holidays.
"John, there's the lagoon."
"Wendy, look at the turtles burying their eggs in the sand."
"I say, John, I see your flamingo with the broken leg!"
"Look, Michael, there's your cave!"
"John, what's that in the brushwood?"
"It's a wolf with her whelps. Wendy, I do believe that's your
little whelp!"
"There's my boat, John, with her sides stove in!"
"No, it isn't. Why, we burned your boat."
"That's her, at any rate. I say, John, I see the smoke of the
redskin camp!"
"Where? Show me, and I'll tell you by the way smoke curls
whether they are on the war-path."
"There, just across the Mysterious River."
"I see now. Yes, they are on the war-path right enough."
Peter was a little annoyed with them for knowing so much,
but if he wanted to lord it over them his triumph was at hand,
for have I not told you that anon fear fell upon them?
It came as the arrows went, leaving the island in gloom.
In the old days at home the Neverland had always begun to
look a little dark and threatening by bedtime. Then unexplored
patches arose in it and spread, black shadows moved about in
them, the roar of the beasts of prey was quite different now,
and above all, you lost the certainty that you would win. You
were quite glad that the night-lights were on. You even liked
Nana to say that this was just the mantelpiece over here, and
that the Neverland was all make-believe.
35
Of course the Neverland had been make-believe in those
days, but it was real now, and there were no night-lights, and it
was getting darker every moment, and where was Nana?
They had been flying apart, but they huddled close to Peter
now. His careless manner had gone at last, his eyes were
sparkling, and a tingle went through them every time they
touched his body. They were now over the fearsome island, flying
so low that sometimes a tree grazed their feet. Nothing
horrid was visible in the air, yet their progress had become
slow and laboured, exactly as if they were pushing their way
through hostile forces. Sometimes they hung in the air until
Peter had beaten on it with his fists.
"They don't want us to land," he explained.
"Who are they?" Wendy whispered, shuddering.
But he could not or would not say. Tinker Bell had been
asleep on his shoulder, but now he wakened her and sent her
on in front.
Sometimes he poised himself in the air, listening intently,
with his hand to his ear, and again he would stare down with
eyes so bright that they seemed to bore two holes to earth.
Having done these things, he went on again.
His courage was almost appalling. "Would you like an adventure
now," he said casually to John, "or would you like to have
your tea first?"
Wendy said "tea first" quickly, and Michael pressed her hand
in gratitude, but the braver John hesitated.
"What kind of adventure?" he asked cautiously.
"There's a pirate asleep in the pampas just beneath us,"
Peter told him. "If you like, we'll go down and kill him."
"I don't see him," John said after a long pause.
"I do."
"Suppose," John said, a little huskily, "he were to wake up."
Peter spoke indignantly. "You don't think I would kill him
while he was sleeping! I would wake him first, and then kill
him. That's the way I always do."
"I say! Do you kill many?"
"Tons."
John said "How ripping," but decided to have tea first. He
asked if there were many pirates on the island just now, and
Peter said he had never known so many.
36
"Who is captain now?"
"Hook," answered Peter, and his face became very stern as
he said that hated word.
"Jas. Hook?"
"Ay."
Then indeed Michael began to cry, and even John could
speak in gulps only, for they knew Hook's reputation.
"He was Blackbeard's bo'sun," John whispered huskily. "He is
the worst of them all. He is the only man of whom Barbecue
was afraid."
"That's him," said Peter.
"What is he like? Is he big?"
"He is not so big as he was."
"How do you mean?"
"I cut off a bit of him."
"You!"
"Yes, me," said Peter sharply.
"I wasn't meaning to be disrespectful."
"Oh, all right."
"But, I say, what bit?"
"His right hand."
"Then he can't fight now?"
"Oh, can't he just!"
"Left-hander?"
"He has an iron hook instead of a right hand, and he claws
with it."
"Claws!"
"I say, John," said Peter.
"Yes."
"Say, 'Ay, ay, sir.'"
"Ay, ay, sir."
"There is one thing," Peter continued, "that every boy who
serves under me has to promise, and so must you."
John paled.
"It is this, if we meet Hook in open fight, you must leave him
to me."
"I promise," John said loyally.
For the moment they were feeling less eerie, because Tink
was flying with them, and in her light they could distinguish
each other. Unfortunately she could not fly so slowly as they,
37
and so she had to go round and round them in a circle in which
they moved as in a halo. Wendy quite liked it, until Peter pointed
out the drawbacks.
"She tells me," he said, "that the pirates sighted us before
the darkness came, and got Long Tom out."
"The big gun?"
"Yes. And of course they must see her light, and if they guess
we are near it they are sure to let fly."
"Wendy!"
"John!"
"Michael!"
"Tell her to go away at once, Peter," the three cried simultaneously,
but he refused.
"She thinks we have lost the way," he replied stiffly, "and she
is rather frightened. You don't think I would send her away all
by herself when she is frightened!"
For a moment the circle of light was broken, and something
gave Peter a loving little pinch.
"Then tell her," Wendy begged, "to put out her light."
"She can't put it out. That is about the only thing fairies can't
do. It just goes out of itself when she falls asleep, same as the
stars."
"Then tell her to sleep at once," John almost ordered.
"She can't sleep except when she's sleepy. It is the only other
thing fairies can't do."
"Seems to me," growled John, "these are the only two things
worth doing."
Here he got a pinch, but not a loving one.
"If only one of us had a pocket," Peter said, "we could carry
her in it." However, they had set off in such a hurry that there
was not a pocket between the four of them.
He had a happy idea. John's hat!
Tink agreed to travel by hat if it was carried in the hand.
John carried it, though she had hoped to be carried by Peter.
Presently Wendy took the hat, because John said it struck
against his knee as he flew; and this, as we shall see, led to
mischief, for Tinker Bell hated to be under an obligation to
Wendy.
In the black topper the light was completely hidden, and they
flew on in silence. It was the stillest silence they had ever
38
known, broken once by a distant lapping, which Peter explained
was the wild beasts drinking at the ford, and again by a
rasping sound that might have been the branches of trees rubbing
together, but he said it was the redskins sharpening their
knives.
Even these noises ceased. To Michael the loneliness was
dreadful. "If only something would make a sound!" he cried.
As if in answer to his request, the air was rent by the most
tremendous crash he had ever heard. The pirates had fired
Long Tom at them.
The roar of it echoed through the mountains, and the echoes
seemed to cry savagely, "Where are they, where are they,
where are they?"
Thus sharply did the terrified three learn the difference
between an island of make-believe and the same island come
true.
When at last the heavens were steady again, John and Michael
found themselves alone in the darkness. John was treading
the air mechanically, and Michael without knowing how to
float was floating.
"Are you shot?" John whispered tremulously.
"I haven't tried [myself out] yet," Michael whispered back.
We know now that no one had been hit. Peter, however, had
been carried by the wind of the shot far out to sea, while
Wendy was blown upwards with no companion but Tinker Bell.
It would have been well for Wendy if at that moment she had
dropped the hat.
I don't know whether the idea came suddenly to Tink, or
whether she had planned it on the way, but she at once popped
out of the hat and began to lure Wendy to her destruction.
Tink was not all bad; or, rather, she was all bad just now,
but, on the other hand, sometimes she was all good. Fairies
have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they
unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time. They
are, however, allowed to change, only it must be a complete
change. At present she was full of jealousy of Wendy. What she
said in her lovely tinkle Wendy could not of course understand,
and I believe some of it was bad words, but it sounded kind,
and she flew back and forward, plainly meaning "Follow me,
and all will be well."
39
What else could poor Wendy do? She called to Peter and John
and Michael, and got only mocking echoes in reply. She did not
yet know that Tink hated her with the fierce hatred of a very
woman. And so, bewildered, and now staggering in her flight,
she followed Tink to her doom.
40
Chapter 5
THE ISLAND COME TRUE
Feeling that Peter was on his way back, the Neverland had
again woke into life. We ought to use the pluperfect and say
wakened, but woke is better and was always used by Peter.
In his absence things are usually quiet on the island. The
fairies take an hour longer in the morning, the beasts attend to
their young, the redskins feed heavily for six days and nights,
and when pirates and lost boys meet they merely bite their
thumbs at each other. But with the coming of Peter, who hates
lethargy, they are under way again: if you put your ear to the
ground now, you would hear the whole island seething with
life.
On this evening the chief forces of the island were disposed
as follows. The lost boys were out looking for Peter, the pirates
were out looking for the lost boys, the redskins were out looking
for the pirates, and the beasts were out looking for the redskins.
They were going round and round the island, but they
did not meet because all were going at the same rate.
All wanted blood except the boys, who liked it as a rule, but
to-night were out to greet their captain. The boys on the island
vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so
on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the
rules, Peter thins them out; but at this time there were six of
them, counting the twins as two. Let us pretend to lie here
among the sugar-cane and watch them as they steal by in
single file, each with his hand on his dagger.
They are forbidden by Peter to look in the least like him, and
they wear the skins of the bears slain by themselves, in which
they are so round and furry that when they fall they roll. They
have therefore become very sure-footed.
41
The first to pass is Tootles, not the least brave but the most
unfortunate of all that gallant band. He had been in fewer adventures
than any of them, because the big things constantly
happened just when he had stepped round the corner; all
would be quiet, he would take the opportunity of going off to
gather a few sticks for firewood, and then when he returned
the others would be sweeping up the blood. This ill-luck had
given a gentle melancholy to his countenance, but instead of
souring his nature had sweetened it, so that he was quite the
humblest of the boys. Poor kind Tootles, there is danger in the
air for you to-night. Take care lest an adventure is now offered
you, which, if accepted, will plunge you in deepest woe.
Tootles, the fairy Tink, who is bent on mischief this night is
looking for a tool [for doing her mischief], and she thinks you
are the most easily tricked of the boys. 'Ware Tinker Bell.
Would that he could hear us, but we are not really on the island,
and he passes by, biting his knuckles.
Next comes Nibs, the gay and debonair, followed by Slightly,
who cuts whistles out of the trees and dances ecstatically to his
own tunes. Slightly is the most conceited of the boys. He thinks
he remembers the days before he was lost, with their manners
and customs, and this has given his nose an offensive tilt. Curly
is fourth; he is a pickle, [a person who gets in pickles-predicaments]
and so often has he had to deliver up his person when
Peter said sternly, "Stand forth the one who did this thing,"
that now at the command he stands forth automatically whether
he has done it or not. Last come the Twins, who cannot be
described because we should be sure to be describing the
wrong one. Peter never quite knew what twins were, and his
band were not allowed to know anything he did not know, so
these two were always vague about themselves, and did their
best to give satisfaction by keeping close together in an apologetic
sort of way.
The boys vanish in the gloom, and after a pause, but not a
long pause, for things go briskly on the island, come the pirates
on their track. We hear them before they are seen, and it
is always the same dreadful song:
"Avast belay, yo ho, heave to,
A-pirating we go,
42
And if we're parted by a shot
We're sure to meet below!"
A more villainous-looking lot never hung in a row on Execution
dock. Here, a little in advance, ever and again with his
head to the ground listening, his great arms bare, pieces of
eight in his ears as ornaments, is the handsome Italian Cecco,
who cut his name in letters of blood on the back of the governor
of the prison at Gao. That gigantic black behind him has
had many names since he dropped the one with which dusky
mothers still terrify their children on the banks of the Guadjomo.
Here is Bill Jukes, every inch of him tattooed, the same Bill
Jukes who got six dozen on the WALRUS from Flint before he
would drop the bag of moidores [Portuguese gold pieces]; and
Cookson, said to be Black Murphy's brother (but this was never
proved), and Gentleman Starkey, once an usher in a public
school and still dainty in his ways of killing; and Skylights
(Morgan's Skylights); and the Irish bo'sun Smee, an oddly genial
man who stabbed, so to speak, without offence, and was the
only Non-conformist in Hook's crew; and Noodler, whose hands
were fixed on backwards; and Robt. Mullins and Alf Mason and
many another ruffian long known and feared on the Spanish
Main.
In the midst of them, the blackest and largest in that dark
setting, reclined James Hook, or as he wrote himself, Jas.
Hook, of whom it is said he was the only man that the Sea-
Cook feared. He lay at his ease in a rough chariot drawn and
propelled by his men, and instead of a right hand he had the
iron hook with which ever and anon he encouraged them to increase
their pace. As dogs this terrible man treated and addressed
them, and as dogs they obeyed him. In person he was
cadaverous [dead looking] and blackavized [dark faced], and
his hair was dressed in long curls, which at a little distance
looked like black candles, and gave a singularly threatening expression
to his handsome countenance. His eyes were of the
blue of the forget-me-not, and of a profound melancholy, save
when he was plunging his hook into you, at which time two red
spots appeared in them and lit them up horribly. In manner,
something of the grand seigneur still clung to him, so that he
even ripped you up with an air, and I have been told that he
43
was a RACONTEUR [storyteller] of repute. He was never more
sinister than when he was most polite, which is probably the
truest test of breeding; and the elegance of his diction, even
when he was swearing, no less than the distinction of his demeanour,
showed him one of a different cast from his crew. A
man of indomitable courage, it was said that the only thing he
shied at was the sight of his own blood, which was thick and of
an unusual colour. In dress he somewhat aped the attire associated
with the name of Charles II, having heard it said in some
earlier period of his career that he bore a strange resemblance
to the ill-fated Stuarts; and in his mouth he had a holder of his
own contrivance which enabled him to smoke two cigars at
once. But undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron
claw.
Let us now kill a pirate, to show Hook's method. Skylights
will do. As they pass, Skylights lurches clumsily against him,
ruffling his lace collar; the hook shoots forth, there is a tearing
sound and one screech, then the body is kicked aside, and the
pirates pass on. He has not even taken the cigars from his
mouth.
Such is the terrible man against whom Peter Pan is pitted.
Which will win?
On the trail of the pirates, stealing noiselessly down the warpath,
which is not visible to inexperienced eyes, come the redskins,
every one of them with his eyes peeled. They carry tomahawks
and knives, and their naked bodies gleam with paint and
oil. Strung around them are scalps, of boys as well as of pirates,
for these are the Piccaninny tribe, and not to be confused
with the softer-hearted Delawares or the Hurons. In the van,
on all fours, is Great Big Little Panther, a brave of so many
scalps that in his present position they somewhat impede his
progress. Bringing up the rear, the place of greatest danger,
comes Tiger Lily, proudly erect, a princess in her own right.
She is the most beautiful of dusky Dianas [Diana = goddess of
the woods] and the belle of the Piccaninnies, coquettish [flirting],
cold and amorous [loving] by turns; there is not a brave
who would not have the wayward thing to wife, but she staves
off the altar with a hatchet. Observe how they pass over fallen
twigs without making the slightest noise. The only sound to be
heard is their somewhat heavy breathing. The fact is that they
44
are all a little fat just now after the heavy gorging, but in time
they will work this off. For the moment, however, it constitutes
their chief danger.
The redskins disappear as they have come like shadows, and
soon their place is taken by the beasts, a great and motley procession:
lions, tigers, bears, and the innumerable smaller savage
things that flee from them, for every kind of beast, and,
more particularly, all the man-eaters, live cheek by jowl on the
favoured island. Their tongues are hanging out, they are
hungry to-night.
When they have passed, comes the last figure of all, a gigantic
crocodile. We shall see for whom she is looking presently.
The crocodile passes, but soon the boys appear again, for the
procession must continue indefinitely until one of the parties
stops or changes its pace. Then quickly they will be on top of
each other.
All are keeping a sharp look-out in front, but none suspects
that the danger may be creeping up from behind. This shows
how real the island was.
The first to fall out of the moving circle was the boys. They
flung themselves down on the sward [turf], close to their underground
home.
"I do wish Peter would come back," every one of them said
nervously, though in height and still more in breadth they were
all larger than their captain.
"I am the only one who is not afraid of the pirates," Slightly
said, in the tone that prevented his being a general favourite;
but perhaps some distant sound disturbed him, for he added
hastily, "but I wish he would come back, and tell us whether he
has heard anything more about Cinderella."
They talked of Cinderella, and Tootles was confident that his
mother must have been very like her.
It was only in Peter's absence that they could speak of mothers,
the subject being forbidden by him as silly.
"All I remember about my mother," Nibs told them, "is that
she often said to my father, 'Oh, how I wish I had a chequebook
of my own!' I don't know what a cheque-book is, but I
should just love to give my mother one."
45
While they talked they heard a distant sound. You or I, not
being wild things of the woods, would have heard nothing, but
they heard it, and it was the grim song:
"Yo ho, yo ho, the pirate life,
The flag o' skull and bones,
A merry hour, a hempen rope,
And hey for Davy Jones."
At once the lost boys—but where are they? They are no
longer there. Rabbits could not have disappeared more quickly.
I will tell you where they are. With the exception of Nibs,
who has darted away to reconnoitre [look around], they are
already in their home under the ground, a very delightful residence
of which we shall see a good deal presently. But how have
they reached it? for there is no entrance to be seen, not so
much as a large stone, which if rolled away, would disclose the
mouth of a cave. Look closely, however, and you may note that
there are here seven large trees, each with a hole in its hollow
trunk as large as a boy. These are the seven entrances to the
home under the ground, for which Hook has been searching in
vain these many moons. Will he find it tonight?
As the pirates advanced, the quick eye of Starkey sighted
Nibs disappearing through the wood, and at once his pistol
flashed out. But an iron claw gripped his shoulder.
"Captain, let go!" he cried, writhing.
Now for the first time we hear the voice of Hook. It was a
black voice. "Put back that pistol first," it said threateningly.
"It was one of those boys you hate. I could have shot him
dead."
"Ay, and the sound would have brought Tiger Lily's redskins
upon us. Do you want to lose your scalp?"
"Shall I after him, Captain," asked pathetic Smee, "and tickle
him with Johnny Corkscrew?" Smee had pleasant names for
everything, and his cutlass was Johnny Corkscrew, because he
wiggled it in the wound. One could mention many lovable traits
in Smee. For instance, after killing, it was his spectacles he
wiped instead of his weapon.
"Johnny's a silent fellow," he reminded Hook.
46
"Not now, Smee," Hook said darkly. "He is only one, and I
want to mischief all the seven. Scatter and look for them."
The pirates disappeared among the trees, and in a moment
their Captain and Smee were alone. Hook heaved a heavy sigh,
and I know not why it was, perhaps it was because of the soft
beauty of the evening, but there came over him a desire to confide
to his faithful bo'sun the story of his life. He spoke long
and earnestly, but what it was all about Smee, who was rather
stupid, did not know in the least.
Anon [later] he caught the word Peter.
"Most of all," Hook was saying passionately, "I want their
captain, Peter Pan. 'Twas he cut off my arm." He brandished
the hook threateningly. "I've waited long to shake his hand
with this. Oh, I'll tear him!"
"And yet," said Smee, "I have often heard you say that hook
was worth a score of hands, for combing the hair and other
homely uses."
"Ay," the captain answered, "if I was a mother I would pray
to have my children born with this instead of that," and he cast
a look of pride upon his iron hand and one of scorn upon the
other. Then again he frowned.
"Peter flung my arm," he said, wincing, "to a crocodile that
happened to be passing by."
"I have often," said Smee, "noticed your strange dread of
crocodiles."
"Not of crocodiles," Hook corrected him, "but of that one crocodile."
He lowered his voice. "It liked my arm so much, Smee,
that it has followed me ever since, from sea to sea and from
land to land, licking its lips for the rest of me."
"In a way," said Smee, "it's sort of a compliment."
"I want no such compliments," Hook barked petulantly. "I
want Peter Pan, who first gave the brute its taste for me."
He sat down on a large mushroom, and now there was a
quiver in his voice. "Smee," he said huskily, "that crocodile
would have had me before this, but by a lucky chance it swallowed
a clock which goes tick tick inside it, and so before it can
reach me I hear the tick and bolt." He laughed, but in a hollow
way.
"Some day," said Smee, "the clock will run down, and then
he'll get you."
47
Hook wetted his dry lips. "Ay," he said, "that's the fear that
haunts me."
Since sitting down he had felt curiously warm. "Smee," he
said, "this seat is hot." He jumped up. "Odds bobs, hammer and
tongs I'm burning."
They examined the mushroom, which was of a size and solidity
unknown on the mainland; they tried to pull it up, and it
came away at once in their hands, for it had no root. Stranger
still, smoke began at once to ascend. The pirates looked at
each other. "A chimney!" they both exclaimed.
They had indeed discovered the chimney of the home under
the ground. It was the custom of the boys to stop it with a
mushroom when enemies were in the neighbourhood.
Not only smoke came out of it. There came also children's
voices, for so safe did the boys feel in their hiding-place that
they were gaily chattering. The pirates listened grimly, and
then replaced the mushroom. They looked around them and
noted the holes in the seven trees.
"Did you hear them say Peter Pan's from home?" Smee
whispered, fidgeting with Johnny Corkscrew.
Hook nodded. He stood for a long time lost in thought, and at
last a curdling smile lit up his swarthy face. Smee had been
waiting for it. "Unrip your plan, captain," he cried eagerly.
"To return to the ship," Hook replied slowly through his
teeth, "and cook a large rich cake of a jolly thickness with
green sugar on it. There can be but one room below, for there
is but one chimney. The silly moles had not the sense to see
that they did not need a door apiece. That shows they have no
mother. We will leave the cake on the shore of the Mermaids'
Lagoon. These boys are always swimming about there, playing
with the mermaids. They will find the cake and they will gobble
it up, because, having no mother, they don't know how dangerous
'tis to eat rich damp cake." He burst into laughter, not hollow
laughter now, but honest laughter. "Aha, they will die."
Smee had listened with growing admiration.
"It's the wickedest, prettiest policy ever I heard of!" he cried,
and in their exultation they danced and sang:
"Avast, belay, when I appear,
By fear they're overtook;
48
Nought's left upon your bones when you
Have shaken claws with Hook."
They began the verse, but they never finished it, for another
sound broke in and stilled them. There was at first such a tiny
sound that a leaf might have fallen on it and smothered it, but
as it came nearer it was more distinct.
Tick tick tick tick!
Hook stood shuddering, one foot in the air.
"The crocodile!" he gasped, and bounded away, followed by
his bo'sun.
It was indeed the crocodile. It had passed the redskins, who
were now on the trail of the other pirates. It oozed on after
Hook.
Once more the boys emerged into the open; but the dangers
of the night were not yet over, for presently Nibs rushed
breathless into their midst, pursued by a pack of wolves. The
tongues of the pursuers were hanging out; the baying of them
was horrible.
"Save me, save me!" cried Nibs, falling on the ground.
"But what can we do, what can we do?"
It was a high compliment to Peter that at that dire moment
their thoughts turned to him.
"What would Peter do?" they cried simultaneously.
Almost in the same breath they cried, "Peter would look at
them through his legs."
And then, "Let us do what Peter would do."
It is quite the most successful way of defying wolves, and as
one boy they bent and looked through their legs. The next moment
is the long one, but victory came quickly, for as the boys
advanced upon them in the terrible attitude, the wolves
dropped their tails and fled.
Now Nibs rose from the ground, and the others thought that
his staring eyes still saw the wolves. But it was not wolves he
saw.
"I have seen a wonderfuller thing," he cried, as they gathered
round him eagerly. "A great white bird. It is flying this way."
"What kind of a bird, do you think?"
"I don't know," Nibs said, awestruck, "but it looks so weary,
and as it flies it moans, 'Poor Wendy,'"
49
"Poor Wendy?"
"I remember," said Slightly instantly, "there are birds called
Wendies."
"See, it comes!" cried Curly, pointing to Wendy in the
heavens.
Wendy was now almost overhead, and they could hear her
plaintive cry. But more distinct came the shrill voice of Tinker
Bell. The jealous fairy had now cast off all disguise of friendship,
and was darting at her victim from every direction, pinching
savagely each time she touched.
"Hullo, Tink," cried the wondering boys.
Tink's reply rang out: "Peter wants you to shoot the Wendy."
It was not in their nature to question when Peter ordered.
"Let us do what Peter wishes!" cried the simple boys. "Quick,
bows and arrows!"
All but Tootles popped down their trees. He had a bow and
arrow with him, and Tink noted it, and rubbed her little hands.
"Quick, Tootles, quick," she screamed. "Peter will be so
pleased."
Tootles excitedly fitted the arrow to his bow. "Out of the way,
Tink," he shouted, and then he fired, and Wendy fluttered to
the ground with an arrow in her breast.
50
Chapter 6
THE LITTLE HOUSE
Foolish Tootles was standing like a conqueror over Wendy's
body when the other boys sprang, armed, from their trees.
"You are too late," he cried proudly, "I have shot the Wendy.
Peter will be so pleased with me."
Overhead Tinker Bell shouted "Silly ass!" and darted into hiding.
The others did not hear her. They had crowded round
Wendy, and as they looked a terrible silence fell upon the
wood. If Wendy's heart had been beating they would all have
heard it.
Slightly was the first to speak. "This is no bird," he said in a
scared voice. "I think this must be a lady."
"A lady?" said Tootles, and fell a-trembling.
"And we have killed her," Nibs said hoarsely.
They all whipped off their caps.
"Now I see," Curly said: "Peter was bringing her to us." He
threw himself sorrowfully on the ground.
"A lady to take care of us at last," said one of the twins, "and
you have killed her!"
They were sorry for him, but sorrier for themselves, and
when he took a step nearer them they turned from him.
Tootles' face was very white, but there was a dignity about
him now that had never been there before.
"I did it," he said, reflecting. "When ladies used to come to
me in dreams, I said, 'Pretty mother, pretty mother.' But when
at last she really came, I shot her."
He moved slowly away.
"Don't go," they called in pity.
"I must," he answered, shaking; "I am so afraid of Peter."
51
It was at this tragic moment that they heard a sound which
made the heart of every one of them rise to his mouth. They
heard Peter crow.
"Peter!" they cried, for it was always thus that he signalled
his return.
"Hide her," they whispered, and gathered hastily around
Wendy. But Tootles stood aloof.
Again came that ringing crow, and Peter dropped in front of
them. "Greetings, boys," he cried, and mechanically they saluted,
and then again was silence.
He frowned.
"I am back," he said hotly, "why do you not cheer?"
They opened their mouths, but the cheers would not come.
He overlooked it in his haste to tell the glorious tidings.
"Great news, boys," he cried, "I have brought at last a mother
for you all."
Still no sound, except a little thud from Tootles as he
dropped on his knees.
"Have you not seen her?" asked Peter, becoming troubled.
"She flew this way."
"Ah me!" once voice said, and another said, "Oh, mournful
day."
Tootles rose. "Peter," he said quietly, "I will show her to you,"
and when the others would still have hidden her he said,
"Back, twins, let Peter see."
So they all stood back, and let him see, and after he had
looked for a little time he did not know what to do next.
"She is dead," he said uncomfortably. "Perhaps she is
frightened at being dead."
He thought of hopping off in a comic sort of way till he was
out of sight of her, and then never going near the spot any
more. They would all have been glad to follow if he had done
this.
But there was the arrow. He took it from her heart and faced
his band.
"Whose arrow?" he demanded sternly.
"Mine, Peter," said Tootles on his knees.
"Oh, dastard hand," Peter said, and he raised the arrow to
use it as a dagger.
52
Tootles did not flinch. He bared his breast. "Strike, Peter," he
said firmly, "strike true."
Twice did Peter raise the arrow, and twice did his hand fall.
"I cannot strike," he said with awe, "there is something stays
my hand."
All looked at him in wonder, save Nibs, who fortunately
looked at Wendy.
"It is she," he cried, "the Wendy lady, see, her arm!"
Wonderful to relate [tell], Wendy had raised her arm. Nibs
bent over her and listened reverently. "I think she said, 'Poor
Tootles,'" he whispered.
"She lives," Peter said briefly.
Slightly cried instantly, "The Wendy lady lives."
Then Peter knelt beside her and found his button. You remember
she had put it on a chain that she wore round her
neck.
"See," he said, "the arrow struck against this. It is the kiss I
gave her. It has saved her life."
"I remember kisses," Slightly interposed quickly, "let me see
it. Ay, that's a kiss."
Peter did not hear him. He was begging Wendy to get better
quickly, so that he could show her the mermaids. Of course she
could not answer yet, being still in a frightful faint; but from
overhead came a wailing note.
"Listen to Tink," said Curly, "she is crying because the
Wendy lives."
Then they had to tell Peter of Tink's crime, and almost never
had they seen him look so stern.
"Listen, Tinker Bell," he cried, "I am your friend no more. Begone
from me for ever."
She flew on to his shoulder and pleaded, but he brushed her
off. Not until Wendy again raised her arm did he relent sufficiently
to say, "Well, not for ever, but for a whole week."
Do you think Tinker Bell was grateful to Wendy for raising
her arm? Oh dear no, never wanted to pinch her so much. Fairies
indeed are strange, and Peter, who understood them best,
often cuffed [slapped] them.
But what to do with Wendy in her present delicate state of
health?
"Let us carry her down into the house," Curly suggested.
53
"Ay," said Slightly, "that is what one does with ladies."
"No, no," Peter said, "you must not touch her. It would not be
sufficiently respectful."
"That," said Slightly, "is what I was thinking."
"But if she lies there," Tootles said, "she will die."
"Ay, she will die," Slightly admitted, "but there is no way
out."
"Yes, there is," cried Peter. "Let us build a little house round
her."
They were all delighted. "Quick," he ordered them, "bring me
each of you the best of what we have. Gut our house. Be
sharp."
In a moment they were as busy as tailors the night before a
wedding. They skurried this way and that, down for bedding,
up for firewood, and while they were at it, who should appear
but John and Michael. As they dragged along the ground they
fell asleep standing, stopped, woke up, moved another step and
slept again.
"John, John," Michael would cry, "wake up! Where is Nana,
John, and mother?"
And then John would rub his eyes and mutter, "It is true, we
did fly."
You may be sure they were very relieved to find Peter.
"Hullo, Peter," they said.
"Hullo," replied Peter amicably, though he had quite forgotten
them. He was very busy at the moment measuring Wendy
with his feet to see how large a house she would need. Of
course he meant to leave room for chairs and a table. John and
Michael watched him.
"Is Wendy asleep?" they asked.
"Yes."
"John," Michael proposed, "let us wake her and get her to
make supper for us," but as he said it some of the other boys
rushed on carrying branches for the building of the house.
"Look at them!" he cried.
"Curly," said Peter in his most captainy voice, "see that these
boys help in the building of the house."
"Ay, ay, sir."
"Build a house?" exclaimed John.
"For the Wendy," said Curly.
54
"For Wendy?" John said, aghast. "Why, she is only a girl!"
"That," explained Curly, "is why we are her servants."
"You? Wendy's servants!"
"Yes," said Peter, "and you also. Away with them."
The astounded brothers were dragged away to hack and hew
and carry. "Chairs and a fender [fireplace] first," Peter
ordered. "Then we shall build a house round them."
"Ay," said Slightly, "that is how a house is built; it all comes
back to me."
Peter thought of everything. "Slightly," he cried, "fetch a
doctor."
"Ay, ay," said Slightly at once, and disappeared, scratching
his head. But he knew Peter must be obeyed, and he returned
in a moment, wearing John's hat and looking solemn.
"Please, sir," said Peter, going to him, "are you a doctor?"
The difference between him and the other boys at such a
time was that they knew it was make-believe, while to him
make-believe and true were exactly the same thing. This sometimes
troubled them, as when they had to make-believe that
they had had their dinners.
If they broke down in their make-believe he rapped them on
the knuckles.
"Yes, my little man," Slightly anxiously replied, who had
chapped knuckles.
"Please, sir," Peter explained, "a lady lies very ill."
She was lying at their feet, but Slightly had the sense not to
see her.
"Tut, tut, tut," he said, "where does she lie?"
"In yonder glade."
"I will put a glass thing in her mouth," said Slightly, and he
made-believe to do it, while Peter waited. It was an anxious
moment when the glass thing was withdrawn.
"How is she?" inquired Peter.
"Tut, tut, tut," said Slightly, "this has cured her."
"I am glad!" Peter cried.
"I will call again in the evening," Slightly said; "give her beef
tea out of a cup with a spout to it;" but after he had returned
the hat to John he blew big breaths, which was his habit on escaping
from a difficulty.
55
In the meantime the wood had been alive with the sound of
axes; almost everything needed for a cosy dwelling already lay
at Wendy's feet.
"If only we knew," said one, "the kind of house she likes
best."
"Peter," shouted another, "she is moving in her sleep."
"Her mouth opens," cried a third, looking respectfully into it.
"Oh, lovely!"
"Perhaps she is going to sing in her sleep," said Peter.
"Wendy, sing the kind of house you would like to have."
Immediately, without opening her eyes, Wendy began to
sing:
"I wish I had a pretty house,
The littlest ever seen,
With funny little red walls
And roof of mossy green."
They gurgled with joy at this, for by the greatest good luck
the branches they had brought were sticky with red sap, and
all the ground was carpeted with moss. As they rattled up the
little house they broke into song themselves:
"We've built the little walls and roof
And made a lovely door,
So tell us, mother Wendy,
What are you wanting more?"
To this she answered greedily:
"Oh, really next I think I'll have
Gay windows all about,
With roses peeping in, you know,
And babies peeping out."
With a blow of their fists they made windows, and large yellow
leaves were the blinds. But roses—?
"Roses," cried Peter sternly.
Quickly they made-believe to grow the loveliest roses up the
walls.
Babies?
56
To prevent Peter ordering babies they hurried into song
again:
"We've made the roses peeping out,
The babes are at the door,
We cannot make ourselves, you know,
'cos we've been made before."
Peter, seeing this to be a good idea, at once pretended that it
was his own. The house was quite beautiful, and no doubt
Wendy was very cosy within, though, of course, they could no
longer see her. Peter strode up and down, ordering finishing
touches. Nothing escaped his eagle eyes. Just when it seemed
absolutely finished:
"There's no knocker on the door," he said.
They were very ashamed, but Tootles gave the sole of his
shoe, and it made an excellent knocker.
Absolutely finished now, they thought.
Not of bit of it. "There's no chimney," Peter said; "we must
have a chimney."
"It certainly does need a chimney," said John importantly.
This gave Peter an idea. He snatched the hat off John's head,
knocked out the bottom [top], and put the hat on the roof. The
little house was so pleased to have such a capital chimney that,
as if to say thank you, smoke immediately began to come out of
the hat.
Now really and truly it was finished. Nothing remained to do
but to knock.
"All look your best," Peter warned them; "first impressions
are awfully important."
He was glad no one asked him what first impressions are;
they were all too busy looking their best.
He knocked politely, and now the wood was as still as the
children, not a sound to be heard except from Tinker Bell, who
was watching from a branch and openly sneering.
What the boys were wondering was, would any one answer
the knock? If a lady, what would she be like?
The door opened and a lady came out. It was Wendy. They all
whipped off their hats.
57
She looked properly surprised, and this was just how they
had hoped she would look.
"Where am I?" she said.
Of course Slightly was the first to get his word in. "Wendy
lady," he said rapidly, "for you we built this house."
"Oh, say you're pleased," cried Nibs.
"Lovely, darling house," Wendy said, and they were the very
words they had hoped she would say.
"And we are your children," cried the twins.
Then all went on their knees, and holding out their arms
cried, "O Wendy lady, be our mother."
"Ought I?" Wendy said, all shining. "Of course it's frightfully
fascinating, but you see I am only a little girl. I have no real
experience."
"That doesn't matter," said Peter, as if he were the only person
present who knew all about it, though he was really the
one who knew least. "What we need is just a nice motherly
person."
"Oh dear!" Wendy said, "you see, I feel that is exactly what I
am."
"It is, it is," they all cried; "we saw it at once."
"Very well," she said, "I will do my best. Come inside at once,
you naughty children; I am sure your feet are damp. And before
I put you to bed I have just time to finish the story of
Cinderella."
In they went; I don't know how there was room for them, but
you can squeeze very tight in the Neverland. And that was the
first of the many joyous evenings they had with Wendy. By and
by she tucked them up in the great bed in the home under the
trees, but she herself slept that night in the little house, and
Peter kept watch outside with drawn sword, for the pirates
could be heard carousing far away and the wolves were on the
prowl. The little house looked so cosy and safe in the darkness,
with a bright light showing through its blinds, and the chimney
smoking beautifully, and Peter standing on guard. After a time
he fell asleep, and some unsteady fairies had to climb over him
on their way home from an orgy. Any of the other boys obstructing
the fairy path at night they would have mischiefed,
but they just tweaked Peter's nose and passed on.
58
Chapter 7
THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND
One of the first things Peter did next day was to measure
Wendy and John and Michael for hollow trees. Hook, you remember,
had sneered at the boys for thinking they needed a
tree apiece, but this was ignorance, for unless your tree fitted
you it was difficult to go up and down, and no two of the boys
were quite the same size. Once you fitted, you drew in [let out]
your breath at the top, and down you went at exactly the right
speed, while to ascend you drew in and let out alternately, and
so wriggled up. Of course, when you have mastered the action
you are able to do these things without thinking of them, and
nothing can be more graceful.
But you simply must fit, and Peter measures you for your
tree as carefully as for a suit of clothes: the only difference being
that the clothes are made to fit you, while you have to be
made to fit the tree. Usually it is done quite easily, as by your
wearing too many garments or too few, but if you are bumpy in
awkward places or the only available tree is an odd shape,
Peter does some things to you, and after that you fit. Once you
fit, great care must be taken to go on fitting, and this, as
Wendy was to discover to her delight, keeps a whole family in
perfect condition.
Wendy and Michael fitted their trees at the first try, but John
had to be altered a little.
After a few days' practice they could go up and down as gaily
as buckets in a well. And how ardently they grew to love their
home under the ground; especially Wendy. It consisted of one
large room, as all houses should do, with a floor in which you
could dig [for worms] if you wanted to go fishing, and in this
floor grew stout mushrooms of a charming colour, which were
used as stools. A Never tree tried hard to grow in the centre of
59
the room, but every morning they sawed the trunk through,
level with the floor. By tea-time it was always about two feet
high, and then they put a door on top of it, the whole thus becoming
a table; as soon as they cleared away, they sawed off
the trunk again, and thus there was more room to play. There
was an enormous fireplace which was in almost any part of the
room where you cared to light it, and across this Wendy
stretched strings, made of fibre, from which she suspended her
washing. The bed was tilted against the wall by day, and let
down at 6:30, when it filled nearly half the room; and all the
boys slept in it, except Michael, lying like sardines in a tin.
There was a strict rule against turning round until one gave
the signal, when all turned at once. Michael should have used
it also, but Wendy would have [desired] a baby, and he was the
littlest, and you know what women are, and the short and long
of it is that he was hung up in a basket.
It was rough and simple, and not unlike what baby bears
would have made of an underground house in the same circumstances.
But there was one recess in the wall, no larger than a
bird-cage, which was the private apartment of Tinker Bell. It
could be shut off from the rest of the house by a tiny curtain,
which Tink, who was most fastidious [particular], always kept
drawn when dressing or undressing. No woman, however
large, could have had a more exquisite boudoir [dressing room]
and bed-chamber combined. The couch, as she always called it,
was a genuine Queen Mab, with club legs; and she varied the
bedspreads according to what fruit-blossom was in season. Her
mirror was a Puss-in-Boots, of which there are now only three,
unchipped, known to fairy dealers; the washstand was Piecrust
and reversible, the chest of drawers an authentic Charming
the Sixth, and the carpet and rugs the best (the early) period
of Margery and Robin. There was a chandelier from Tiddlywinks
for the look of the thing, but of course she lit the residence
herself. Tink was very contemptuous of the rest of the
house, as indeed was perhaps inevitable, and her chamber,
though beautiful, looked rather conceited, having the appearance
of a nose permanently turned up.
I suppose it was all especially entrancing to Wendy, because
those rampagious boys of hers gave her so much to do. Really
there were whole weeks when, except perhaps with a stocking
60
in the evening, she was never above ground. The cooking, I can
tell you, kept her nose to the pot, and even if there was nothing
in it, even if there was no pot, she had to keep watching that it
came aboil just the same. You never exactly knew whether
there would be a real meal or just a make-believe, it all depended
upon Peter's whim: he could eat, really eat, if it was
part of a game, but he could not stodge [cram down the food]
just to feel stodgy [stuffed with food], which is what most children
like better than anything else; the next best thing being to
talk about it. Make-believe was so real to him that during a
meal of it you could see him getting rounder. Of course it was
trying, but you simply had to follow his lead, and if you could
prove to him that you were getting loose for your tree he let
you stodge.
Wendy's favourite time for sewing and darning was after
they had all gone to bed. Then, as she expressed it, she had a
breathing time for herself; and she occupied it in making new
things for them, and putting double pieces on the knees, for
they were all most frightfully hard on their knees.
When she sat down to a basketful of their stockings, every
heel with a hole in it, she would fling up her arms and exclaim,
"Oh dear, I am sure I sometimes think spinsters are to be
envied!"
Her face beamed when she exclaimed this.
You remember about her pet wolf. Well, it very soon discovered
that she had come to the island and it found her out,
and they just ran into each other's arms. After that it followed
her about everywhere.
As time wore on did she think much about the beloved parents
she had left behind her? This is a difficult question, because
it is quite impossible to say how time does wear on in the
Neverland, where it is calculated by moons and suns, and there
are ever so many more of them than on the mainland. But I am
afraid that Wendy did not really worry about her father and
mother; she was absolutely confident that they would always
keep the window open for her to fly back by, and this gave her
complete ease of mind. What did disturb her at times was that
John remembered his parents vaguely only, as people he had
once known, while Michael was quite willing to believe that
she was really his mother. These things scared her a little, and
61
nobly anxious to do her duty, she tried to fix the old life in their
minds by setting them examination papers on it, as like as possible
to the ones she used to do at school. The other boys
thought this awfully interesting, and insisted on joining, and
they made slates for themselves, and sat round the table, writing
and thinking hard about the questions she had written on
another slate and passed round. They were the most ordinary
questions—"What was the colour of Mother's eyes? Which was
taller, Father or Mother? Was Mother blonde or brunette? Answer
all three questions if possible." "(A) Write an essay of not
less than 40 words on How I spent my last Holidays, or The
Characters of Father and Mother compared. Only one of these
to be attempted." Or "(1) Describe Mother's laugh; (2) Describe
Father's laugh; (3) Describe Mother's Party Dress; (4) Describe
the Kennel and its Inmate."
They were just everyday questions like these, and when you
could not answer them you were told to make a cross; and it
was really dreadful what a number of crosses even John made.
Of course the only boy who replied to every question was
Slightly, and no one could have been more hopeful of coming
out first, but his answers were perfectly ridiculous, and he
really came out last: a melancholy thing.
Peter did not compete. For one thing he despised all mothers
except Wendy, and for another he was the only boy on the island
who could neither write nor spell; not the smallest word.
He was above all that sort of thing.
By the way, the questions were all written in the past tense.
What was the colour of Mother's eyes, and so on. Wendy, you
see, had been forgetting, too.
Adventures, of course, as we shall see, were of daily occurrence;
but about this time Peter invented, with Wendy's help, a
new game that fascinated him enormously, until he suddenly
had no more interest in it, which, as you have been told, was
what always happened with his games. It consisted in pretending
not to have adventures, in doing the sort of thing John and
Michael had been doing all their lives, sitting on stools flinging
balls in the air, pushing each other, going out for walks and
coming back without having killed so much as a grizzly. To see
Peter doing nothing on a stool was a great sight; he could not
help looking solemn at such times, to sit still seemed to him
62
such a comic thing to do. He boasted that he had gone walking
for the good of his health. For several suns these were the
most novel of all adventures to him; and John and Michael had
to pretend to be delighted also; otherwise he would have
treated them severely.
He often went out alone, and when he came back you were
never absolutely certain whether he had had an adventure or
not. He might have forgotten it so completely that he said nothing
about it; and then when you went out you found the body;
and, on the other hand, he might say a great deal about it, and
yet you could not find the body. Sometimes he came home with
his head bandaged, and then Wendy cooed over him and
bathed it in lukewarm water, while he told a dazzling tale. But
she was never quite sure, you know. There were, however,
many adventures which she knew to be true because she was
in them herself, and there were still more that were at least
partly true, for the other boys were in them and said they were
wholly true. To describe them all would require a book as large
as an English-Latin, Latin-English Dictionary, and the most we
can do is to give one as a specimen of an average hour on the
island. The difficulty is which one to choose. Should we take
the brush with the redskins at Slightly Gulch? It was a sanguinary
[cheerful] affair, and especially interesting as showing one
of Peter's peculiarities, which was that in the middle of a fight
he would suddenly change sides. At the Gulch, when victory
was still in the balance, sometimes leaning this way and sometimes
that, he called out, "I'm redskin to-day; what are you,
Tootles?" And Tootles answered, "Redskin; what are you,
Nibs?" and Nibs said, "Redskin; what are you Twin?" and so on;
and they were all redskins; and of course this would have
ended the fight had not the real redskins fascinated by Peter's
methods, agreed to be lost boys for that once, and so at it they
all went again, more fiercely than ever.
The extraordinary upshot of this adventure was—but we have
not decided yet that this is the adventure we are to narrate.
Perhaps a better one would be the night attack by the redskins
on the house under the ground, when several of them stuck in
the hollow trees and had to be pulled out like corks. Or we
might tell how Peter saved Tiger Lily's life in the Mermaids' Lagoon,
and so made her his ally.
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Or we could tell of that cake the pirates cooked so that the
boys might eat it and perish; and how they placed it in one cunning
spot after another; but always Wendy snatched it from the
hands of her children, so that in time it lost its succulence, and
became as hard as a stone, and was used as a missile, and
Hook fell over it in the dark.
Or suppose we tell of the birds that were Peter's friends, particularly
of the Never bird that built in a tree overhanging the
lagoon, and how the nest fell into the water, and still the bird
sat on her eggs, and Peter gave orders that she was not to be
disturbed. That is a pretty story, and the end shows how grateful
a bird can be; but if we tell it we must also tell the whole
adventure of the lagoon, which would of course be telling two
adventures rather than just one. A shorter adventure, and
quite as exciting, was Tinker Bell's attempt, with the help of
some street fairies, to have the sleeping Wendy conveyed on a
great floating leaf to the mainland. Fortunately the leaf gave
way and Wendy woke, thinking it was bath-time, and swam
back. Or again, we might choose Peter's defiance of the lions,
when he drew a circle round him on the ground with an arrow
and dared them to cross it; and though he waited for hours,
with the other boys and Wendy looking on breathlessly from
trees, not one of them dared to accept his challenge.
Which of these adventures shall we choose? The best way
will be to toss for it.
I have tossed, and the lagoon has won. This almost makes
one wish that the gulch or the cake or Tink's leaf had won. Of
course I could do it again, and make it best out of three;
however, perhaps fairest to stick to the lagoon.
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Chapter 8
THE MERMAIDS' LAGOON
If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times
a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness;
then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to
take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another
squeeze they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire
you see the lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the
mainland, just one heavenly moment; if there could be two moments
you might see the surf and hear the mermaids singing.
The children often spent long summer days on this lagoon,
swimming or floating most of the time, playing the mermaid
games in the water, and so forth. You must not think from this
that the mermaids were on friendly terms with them: on the
contrary, it was among Wendy's lasting regrets that all the
time she was on the island she never had a civil word from one
of them. When she stole softly to the edge of the lagoon she
might see them by the score, especially on Marooners' Rock,
where they loved to bask, combing out their hair in a lazy way
that quite irritated her; or she might even swim, on tiptoe as it
were, to within a yard of them, but then they saw her and
dived, probably splashing her with their tails, not by accident,
but intentionally.
They treated all the boys in the same way, except of course
Peter, who chatted with them on Marooners' Rock by the hour,
and sat on their tails when they got cheeky. He gave Wendy
one of their combs.
The most haunting time at which to see them is at the turn of
the moon, when they utter strange wailing cries; but the lagoon
is dangerous for mortals then, and until the evening of
which we have now to tell, Wendy had never seen the lagoon
by moonlight, less from fear, for of course Peter would have
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accompanied her, than because she had strict rules about
every one being in bed by seven. She was often at the lagoon,
however, on sunny days after rain, when the mermaids come
up in extraordinary numbers to play with their bubbles. The
bubbles of many colours made in rainbow water they treat as
balls, hitting them gaily from one to another with their tails,
and trying to keep them in the rainbow till they burst. The
goals are at each end of the rainbow, and the keepers only are
allowed to use their hands. Sometimes a dozen of these games
will be going on in the lagoon at a time, and it is quite a pretty
sight.
But the moment the children tried to join in they had to play
by themselves, for the mermaids immediately disappeared.
Nevertheless we have proof that they secretly watched the interlopers,
and were not above taking an idea from them; for
John introduced a new way of hitting the bubble, with the head
instead of the hand, and the mermaids adopted it. This is the
one mark that John has left on the Neverland.
It must also have been rather pretty to see the children resting
on a rock for half an hour after their mid-day meal. Wendy
insisted on their doing this, and it had to be a real rest even
though the meal was make-believe. So they lay there in the
sun, and their bodies glistened in it, while she sat beside them
and looked important.
It was one such day, and they were all on Marooners' Rock.
The rock was not much larger than their great bed, but of
course they all knew how not to take up much room, and they
were dozing, or at least lying with their eyes shut, and pinching
occasionally when they thought Wendy was not looking.
She was very busy, stitching.
While she stitched a change came to the lagoon. Little
shivers ran over it, and the sun went away and shadows stole
across the water, turning it cold. Wendy could no longer see to
thread her needle, and when she looked up, the lagoon that
had always hitherto been such a laughing place seemed formidable
and unfriendly.
It was not, she knew, that night had come, but something as
dark as night had come. No, worse than that. It had not come,
but it had sent that shiver through the sea to say that it was
coming. What was it?
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There crowded upon her all the stories she had been told of
Marooners' Rock, so called because evil captains put sailors on
it and leave them there to drown. They drown when the tide
rises, for then it is submerged.
Of course she should have roused the children at once; not
merely because of the unknown that was stalking toward them,
but because it was no longer good for them to sleep on a rock
grown chilly. But she was a young mother and she did not
know this; she thought you simply must stick to your rule about
half an hour after the mid-day meal. So, though fear was upon
her, and she longed to hear male voices, she would not waken
them. Even when she heard the sound of muffled oars, though
her heart was in her mouth, she did not waken them. She stood
over them to let them have their sleep out. Was it not brave of
Wendy?
It was well for those boys then that there was one among
them who could sniff danger even in his sleep. Peter sprang
erect, as wide awake at once as a dog, and with one warning
cry he roused the others.
He stood motionless, one hand to his ear.
"Pirates!" he cried. The others came closer to him. A strange
smile was playing about his face, and Wendy saw it and
shuddered. While that smile was on his face no one dared address
him; all they could do was to stand ready to obey. The order
came sharp and incisive.
"Dive!"
There was a gleam of legs, and instantly the lagoon seemed
deserted. Marooners' Rock stood alone in the forbidding waters
as if it were itself marooned.
The boat drew nearer. It was the pirate dinghy, with three
figures in her, Smee and Starkey, and the third a captive, no
other than Tiger Lily. Her hands and ankles were tied, and she
knew what was to be her fate. She was to be left on the rock to
perish, an end to one of her race more terrible than death by
fire or torture, for is it not written in the book of the tribe that
there is no path through water to the happy hunting-ground?
Yet her face was impassive; she was the daughter of a chief,
she must die as a chief's daughter, it is enough.
They had caught her boarding the pirate ship with a knife in
her mouth. No watch was kept on the ship, it being Hook's
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boast that the wind of his name guarded the ship for a mile
around. Now her fate would help to guard it also. One more
wail would go the round in that wind by night.
In the gloom that they brought with them the two pirates did
not see the rock till they crashed into it.
"Luff, you lubber," cried an Irish voice that was Smee's;
"here's the rock. Now, then, what we have to do is to hoist the
redskin on to it and leave her here to drown."
It was the work of one brutal moment to land the beautiful
girl on the rock; she was too proud to offer a vain resistance.
Quite near the rock, but out of sight, two heads were bobbing
up and down, Peter's and Wendy's. Wendy was crying, for
it was the first tragedy she had seen. Peter had seen many tragedies,
but he had forgotten them all. He was less sorry than
Wendy for Tiger Lily: it was two against one that angered him,
and he meant to save her. An easy way would have been to
wait until the pirates had gone, but he was never one to choose
the easy way.
There was almost nothing he could not do, and he now imitated
the voice of Hook.
"Ahoy there, you lubbers!" he called. It was a marvellous
imitation.
"The captain!" said the pirates, staring at each other in
surprise.
"He must be swimming out to us," Starkey said, when they
had looked for him in vain.
"We are putting the redskin on the rock," Smee called out.
"Set her free," came the astonishing answer.
"Free!"
"Yes, cut her bonds and let her go."
"But, captain—"
"At once, d'ye hear," cried Peter, "or I'll plunge my hook in
you."
"This is queer!" Smee gasped.
"Better do what the captain orders," said Starkey nervously.
"Ay, ay." Smee said, and he cut Tiger Lily's cords. At once
like an eel she slid between Starkey's legs into the water.
Of course Wendy was very elated over Peter's cleverness; but
she knew that he would be elated also and very likely crow and
thus betray himself, so at once her hand went out to cover his
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mouth. But it was stayed even in the act, for "Boat ahoy!" rang
over the lagoon in Hook's voice, and this time it was not Peter
who had spoken.
Peter may have been about to crow, but his face puckered in
a whistle of surprise instead.
"Boat ahoy!" again came the voice.
Now Wendy understood. The real Hook was also in the
water.
He was swimming to the boat, and as his men showed a light
to guide him he had soon reached them. In the light of the lantern
Wendy saw his hook grip the boat's side; she saw his evil
swarthy face as he rose dripping from the water, and, quaking,
she would have liked to swim away, but Peter would not budge.
He was tingling with life and also top-heavy with conceit. "Am I
not a wonder, oh, I am a wonder!" he whispered to her, and
though she thought so also, she was really glad for the sake of
his reputation that no one heard him except herself.
He signed to her to listen.
The two pirates were very curious to know what had brought
their captain to them, but he sat with his head on his hook in a
position of profound melancholy.
"Captain, is all well?" they asked timidly, but he answered
with a hollow moan.
"He sighs," said Smee.
"He sighs again," said Starkey.
"And yet a third time he sighs," said Smee.
Then at last he spoke passionately.
"The game's up," he cried, "those boys have found a mother."
Affrighted though she was, Wendy swelled with pride.
"O evil day!" cried Starkey.
"What's a mother?" asked the ignorant Smee.
Wendy was so shocked that she exclaimed. "He doesn't
know!" and always after this she felt that if you could have a
pet pirate Smee would be her one.
Peter pulled her beneath the water, for Hook had started up,
crying, "What was that?"
"I heard nothing," said Starkey, raising the lantern over the
waters, and as the pirates looked they saw a strange sight. It
was the nest I have told you of, floating on the lagoon, and the
Never bird was sitting on it.
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"See," said Hook in answer to Smee's question, "that is a
mother. What a lesson! The nest must have fallen into the water,
but would the mother desert her eggs? No."
There was a break in his voice, as if for a moment he recalled
innocent days when—but he brushed away this weakness with
his hook.
Smee, much impressed, gazed at the bird as the nest was
borne past, but the more suspicious Starkey said, "If she is a
mother, perhaps she is hanging about here to help Peter."
Hook winced. "Ay," he said, "that is the fear that haunts me."
He was roused from this dejection by Smee's eager voice.
"Captain," said Smee, "could we not kidnap these boys' mother
and make her our mother?"
"It is a princely scheme," cried Hook, and at once it took
practical shape in his great brain. "We will seize the children
and carry them to the boat: the boys we will make walk the
plank, and Wendy shall be our mother."
Again Wendy forgot herself.
"Never!" she cried, and bobbed.
"What was that?"
But they could see nothing. They thought it must have been a
leaf in the wind. "Do you agree, my bullies?" asked Hook.
"There is my hand on it," they both said.
"And there is my hook. Swear."
They all swore. By this time they were on the rock, and suddenly
Hook remembered Tiger Lily.
"Where is the redskin?" he demanded abruptly.
He had a playful humour at moments, and they thought this
was one of the moments.
"That is all right, captain," Smee answered complacently;
"we let her go."
"Let her go!" cried Hook.
"'Twas your own orders," the bo'sun faltered.
"You called over the water to us to let her go," said Starkey.
"Brimstone and gall," thundered Hook, "what cozening
[cheating] is going on here!" His face had gone black with
rage, but he saw that they believed their words, and he was
startled. "Lads," he said, shaking a little, "I gave no such
order."
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"It is passing queer," Smee said, and they all fidgeted uncomfortably.
Hook raised his voice, but there was a quiver in it.
"Spirit that haunts this dark lagoon to-night," he cried, "dost
hear me?"
Of course Peter should have kept quiet, but of course he did
not. He immediately answered in Hook's voice:
"Odds, bobs, hammer and tongs, I hear you."
In that supreme moment Hook did not blanch, even at the
gills, but Smee and Starkey clung to each other in terror.
"Who are you, stranger? Speak!" Hook demanded.
"I am James Hook," replied the voice, "captain of the JOLLY
ROGER."
"You are not; you are not," Hook cried hoarsely.
"Brimstone and gall," the voice retorted, "say that again, and
I'll cast anchor in you."
Hook tried a more ingratiating manner. "If you are Hook," he
said almost humbly, "come tell me, who am I?"
"A codfish," replied the voice, "only a codfish."
"A codfish!" Hook echoed blankly, and it was then, but not till
then, that his proud spirit broke. He saw his men draw back
from him.
"Have we been captained all this time by a codfish!" they
muttered. "It is lowering to our pride."
They were his dogs snapping at him, but, tragic figure
though he had become, he scarcely heeded them. Against such
fearful evidence it was not their belief in him that he needed, it
was his own. He felt his ego slipping from him. "Don't desert
me, bully," he whispered hoarsely to it.
In his dark nature there was a touch of the feminine, as in all
the great pirates, and it sometimes gave him intuitions. Suddenly
he tried the guessing game.
"Hook," he called, "have you another voice?"
Now Peter could never resist a game, and he answered
blithely in his own voice, "I have."
"And another name?"
"Ay, ay."
"Vegetable?" asked Hook.
"No."
"Mineral?"
"No."
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"Animal?"
"Yes."
"Man?"
"No!" This answer rang out scornfully.
"Boy?"
"Yes."
"Ordinary boy?"
"No!"
"Wonderful boy?"
To Wendy's pain the answer that rang out this time was
"Yes."
"Are you in England?"
"No."
"Are you here?"
"Yes."
Hook was completely puzzled. "You ask him some questions,"
he said to the others, wiping his damp brow.
Smee reflected. "I can't think of a thing," he said regretfully.
"Can't guess, can't guess!" crowed Peter. "Do you give it up?"
Of course in his pride he was carrying the game too far, and
the miscreants [villains] saw their chance.
"Yes, yes," they answered eagerly.
"Well, then," he cried, "I am Peter Pan."
Pan!
In a moment Hook was himself again, and Smee and Starkey
were his faithful henchmen.
"Now we have him," Hook shouted. "Into the water, Smee.
Starkey, mind the boat. Take him dead or alive!"
He leaped as he spoke, and simultaneously came the gay
voice of Peter.
"Are you ready, boys?"
"Ay, ay," from various parts of the lagoon.
"Then lam into the pirates."
The fight was short and sharp. First to draw blood was John,
who gallantly climbed into the boat and held Starkey. There
was fierce struggle, in which the cutlass was torn from the
pirate's grasp. He wriggled overboard and John leapt after him.
The dinghy drifted away.
Here and there a head bobbed up in the water, and there
was a flash of steel followed by a cry or a whoop. In the
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confusion some struck at their own side. The corkscrew of
Smee got Tootles in the fourth rib, but he was himself pinked
[nicked] in turn by Curly. Farther from the rock Starkey was
pressing Slightly and the twins hard.
Where all this time was Peter? He was seeking bigger game.
The others were all brave boys, and they must not be blamed
for backing from the pirate captain. His iron claw made a circle
of dead water round him, from which they fled like affrighted
fishes.
But there was one who did not fear him: there was one prepared
to enter that circle.
Strangely, it was not in the water that they met. Hook rose to
the rock to breathe, and at the same moment Peter scaled it on
the opposite side. The rock was slippery as a ball, and they had
to crawl rather than climb. Neither knew that the other was
coming. Each feeling for a grip met the other's arm: in surprise
they raised their heads; their faces were almost touching; so
they met.
Some of the greatest heroes have confessed that just before
they fell to [began combat] they had a sinking [feeling in the
stomach]. Had it been so with Peter at that moment I would admit
it. After all, he was the only man that the Sea-Cook had
feared. But Peter had no sinking, he had one feeling only, gladness;
and he gnashed his pretty teeth with joy. Quick as
thought he snatched a knife from Hook's belt and was about to
drive it home, when he saw that he was higher up the rock that
his foe. It would not have been fighting fair. He gave the pirate
a hand to help him up.
It was then that Hook bit him.
Not the pain of this but its unfairness was what dazed Peter.
It made him quite helpless. He could only stare, horrified.
Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly.
All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be
yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love
you again, but will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No
one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter. He
often met it, but he always forgot it. I suppose that was the
real difference between him and all the rest.
So when he met it now it was like the first time; and he could
just stare, helpless. Twice the iron hand clawed him.
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A few moments afterwards the other boys saw Hook in the
water striking wildly for the ship; no elation on the pestilent
face now, only white fear, for the crocodile was in dogged pursuit
of him. On ordinary occasions the boys would have swum
alongside cheering; but now they were uneasy, for they had
lost both Peter and Wendy, and were scouring the lagoon for
them, calling them by name. They found the dinghy and went
home in it, shouting "Peter, Wendy" as they went, but no answer
came save mocking laughter from the mermaids. "They
must be swimming back or flying," the boys concluded. They
were not very anxious, because they had such faith in Peter.
They chuckled, boylike, because they would be late for bed;
and it was all mother Wendy's fault!
When their voices died away there came cold silence over
the lagoon, and then a feeble cry.
"Help, help!"
Two small figures were beating against the rock; the girl had
fainted and lay on the boy's arm. With a last effort Peter pulled
her up the rock and then lay down beside her. Even as he also
fainted he saw that the water was rising. He knew that they
would soon be drowned, but he could do no more.
As they lay side by side a mermaid caught Wendy by the feet,
and began pulling her softly into the water. Peter, feeling her
slip from him, woke with a start, and was just in time to draw
her back. But he had to tell her the truth.
"We are on the rock, Wendy," he said, "but it is growing
smaller. Soon the water will be over it."
She did not understand even now.
"We must go," she said, almost brightly.
"Yes," he answered faintly.
"Shall we swim or fly, Peter?"
He had to tell her.
"Do you think you could swim or fly as far as the island,
Wendy, without my help?"
She had to admit that she was too tired.
He moaned.
"What is it?" she asked, anxious about him at once.
"I can't help you, Wendy. Hook wounded me. I can neither fly
nor swim."
"Do you mean we shall both be drowned?"
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"Look how the water is rising."
They put their hands over their eyes to shut out the sight.
They thought they would soon be no more. As they sat thus
something brushed against Peter as light as a kiss, and stayed
there, as if saying timidly, "Can I be of any use?"
It was the tail of a kite, which Michael had made some days
before. It had torn itself out of his hand and floated away.
"Michael's kite," Peter said without interest, but next moment
he had seized the tail, and was pulling the kite toward
him.
"It lifted Michael off the ground," he cried; "why should it not
carry you?"
"Both of us!"
"It can't lift two; Michael and Curly tried."
"Let us draw lots," Wendy said bravely.
"And you a lady; never." Already he had tied the tail round
her. She clung to him; she refused to go without him; but with
a "Good-bye, Wendy," he pushed her from the rock; and in a
few minutes she was borne out of his sight. Peter was alone on
the lagoon.
The rock was very small now; soon it would be submerged.
Pale rays of light tiptoed across the waters; and by and by
there was to be heard a sound at once the most musical and
the most melancholy in the world: the mermaids calling to the
moon.
Peter was not quite like other boys; but he was afraid at last.
A tremour ran through him, like a shudder passing over the
sea; but on the sea one shudder follows another till there are
hundreds of them, and Peter felt just the one. Next moment he
was standing erect on the rock again, with that smile on his
face and a drum beating within him. It was saying, "To die will
be an awfully big adventure."
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Chapter 9
THE NEVER BIRD
The last sound Peter heard before he was quite alone were the
mermaids retiring one by one to their bedchambers under the
sea. He was too far away to hear their doors shut; but every
door in the coral caves where they live rings a tiny bell when it
opens or closes (as in all the nicest houses on the mainland),
and he heard the bells.
Steadily the waters rose till they were nibbling at his feet;
and to pass the time until they made their final gulp, he
watched the only thing on the lagoon. He thought it was a
piece of floating paper, perhaps part of the kite, and wondered
idly how long it would take to drift ashore.
Presently he noticed as an odd thing that it was undoubtedly
out upon the lagoon with some definite purpose, for it was
fighting the tide, and sometimes winning; and when it won,
Peter, always sympathetic to the weaker side, could not help
clapping; it was such a gallant piece of paper.
It was not really a piece of paper; it was the Never bird, making
desperate efforts to reach Peter on the nest. By working
her wings, in a way she had learned since the nest fell into the
water, she was able to some extent to guide her strange craft,
but by the time Peter recognised her she was very exhausted.
She had come to save him, to give him her nest, though there
were eggs in it. I rather wonder at the bird, for though he had
been nice to her, he had also sometimes tormented her. I can
suppose only that, like Mrs. Darling and the rest of them, she
was melted because he had all his first teeth.
She called out to him what she had come for, and he called
out to her what she was doing there; but of course neither of
them understood the other's language. In fanciful stories
people can talk to the birds freely, and I wish for the moment I
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could pretend that this were such a story, and say that Peter
replied intelligently to the Never bird; but truth is best, and I
want to tell you only what really happened. Well, not only could
they not understand each other, but they forgot their manners.
"I—want—you—to—get—into—the—nest," the bird called,
speaking as slowly and distinctly as possible,
"and—then—you—can—drift—ashore,
but—I—am—too—tired—to—bring—it—any—nearer—
so—you—must—try to—swim—to—it."
"What are you quacking about?" Peter answered. "Why don't
you let the nest drift as usual?"
"I—want—you—" the bird said, and repeated it all over.
Then Peter tried slow and distinct.
"What—are—you—quacking—about?" and so on.
The Never bird became irritated; they have very short
tempers.
"You dunderheaded little jay," she screamed, "Why don't you
do as I tell you?"
Peter felt that she was calling him names, and at a venture
he retorted hotly:
"So are you!"
Then rather curiously they both snapped out the same
remark:
"Shut up!"
"Shut up!"
Nevertheless the bird was determined to save him if she
could, and by one last mighty effort she propelled the nest
against the rock. Then up she flew; deserting her eggs, so as to
make her meaning clear.
Then at last he understood, and clutched the nest and waved
his thanks to the bird as she fluttered overhead. It was not to
receive his thanks, however, that she hung there in the sky; it
was not even to watch him get into the nest; it was to see what
he did with her eggs.
There were two large white eggs, and Peter lifted them up
and reflected. The bird covered her face with her wings, so as
not to see the last of them; but she could not help peeping
between the feathers.
I forget whether I have told you that there was a stave on the
rock, driven into it by some buccaneers of long ago to mark the
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site of buried treasure. The children had discovered the glittering
hoard, and when in a mischievous mood used to fling
showers of moidores, diamonds, pearls and pieces of eight to
the gulls, who pounced upon them for food, and then flew
away, raging at the scurvy trick that had been played upon
them. The stave was still there, and on it Starkey had hung his
hat, a deep tarpaulin, watertight, with a broad brim. Peter put
the eggs into this hat and set it on the lagoon. It floated
beautifully.
The Never bird saw at once what he was up to, and screamed
her admiration of him; and, alas, Peter crowed his agreement
with her. Then he got into the nest, reared the stave in it as a
mast, and hung up his shirt for a sail. At the same moment the
bird fluttered down upon the hat and once more sat snugly on
her eggs. She drifted in one direction, and he was borne off in
another, both cheering.
Of course when Peter landed he beached his barque [small
ship, actually the Never Bird's nest in this particular case in
point] in a place where the bird would easily find it; but the hat
was such a great success that she abandoned the nest. It drifted
about till it went to pieces, and often Starkey came to the
shore of the lagoon, and with many bitter feelings watched the
bird sitting on his hat. As we shall not see her again, it may be
worth mentioning here that all Never birds now build in that
shape of nest, with a broad brim on which the youngsters take
an airing.
Great were the rejoicings when Peter reached the home under
the ground almost as soon as Wendy, who had been carried
hither and thither by the kite. Every boy had adventures to tell;
but perhaps the biggest adventure of all was that they were
several hours late for bed. This so inflated them that they did
various dodgy things to get staying up still longer, such as demanding
bandages; but Wendy, though glorying in having them
all home again safe and sound, was scandalised by the lateness
of the hour, and cried, "To bed, to bed," in a voice that had to
be obeyed. Next day, however, she was awfully tender, and
gave out bandages to every one, and they played till bed-time
at limping about and carrying their arms in slings.
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Chapter 10
THE HAPPY HOME
One important result of the brush [with the pirates] on the lagoon
was that it made the redskins their friends. Peter had
saved Tiger Lily from a dreadful fate, and now there was nothing
she and her braves would not do for him. All night they sat
above, keeping watch over the home under the ground and
awaiting the big attack by the pirates which obviously could
not be much longer delayed. Even by day they hung about,
smoking the pipe of peace, and looking almost as if they
wanted tit-bits to eat.
They called Peter the Great White Father, prostrating themselves
[lying down] before him; and he liked this tremendously,
so that it was not really good for him.
"The great white father," he would say to them in a very
lordly manner, as they grovelled at his feet, "is glad to see the
Piccaninny warriors protecting his wigwam from the pirates."
"Me Tiger Lily," that lovely creature would reply. "Peter Pan
save me, me his velly nice friend. Me no let pirates hurt him."
She was far too pretty to cringe in this way, but Peter
thought it his due, and he would answer condescendingly, "It is
good. Peter Pan has spoken."
Always when he said, "Peter Pan has spoken," it meant that
they must now shut up, and they accepted it humbly in that
spirit; but they were by no means so respectful to the other
boys, whom they looked upon as just ordinary braves. They
said "How-do?" to them, and things like that; and what annoyed
the boys was that Peter seemed to think this all right.
Secretly Wendy sympathised with them a little, but she was
far too loyal a housewife to listen to any complaints against
father. "Father knows best," she always said, whatever her
79
private opinion must be. Her private opinion was that the redskins
should not call her a squaw.
We have now reached the evening that was to be known
among them as the Night of Nights, because of its adventures
and their upshot. The day, as if quietly gathering its forces, had
been almost uneventful, and now the redskins in their blankets
were at their posts above, while, below, the children were having
their evening meal; all except Peter, who had gone out to
get the time. The way you got the time on the island was to
find the crocodile, and then stay near him till the clock struck.
The meal happened to be a make-believe tea, and they sat
around the board, guzzling in their greed; and really, what
with their chatter and recriminations, the noise, as Wendy
said, was positively deafening. To be sure, she did not mind
noise, but she simply would not have them grabbing things,
and then excusing themselves by saying that Tootles had
pushed their elbow. There was a fixed rule that they must never
hit back at meals, but should refer the matter of dispute to
Wendy by raising the right arm politely and saying, "I complain
of so-and-so;" but what usually happened was that they forgot
to do this or did it too much.
"Silence," cried Wendy when for the twentieth time she had
told them that they were not all to speak at once. "Is your mug
empty, Slightly darling?"
"Not quite empty, mummy," Slightly said, after looking into
an imaginary mug.
"He hasn't even begun to drink his milk," Nibs interposed.
This was telling, and Slightly seized his chance.
"I complain of Nibs," he cried promptly.
John, however, had held up his hand first.
"Well, John?"
"May I sit in Peter's chair, as he is not here?"
"Sit in father's chair, John!" Wendy was scandalised. "Certainly
not."
"He is not really our father," John answered. "He didn't even
know how a father does till I showed him."
This was grumbling. "We complain of John," cried the twins.
Tootles held up his hand. He was so much the humblest of
them, indeed he was the only humble one, that Wendy was specially
gentle with him.
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"I don't suppose," Tootles said diffidently [bashfully or timidly],
"that I could be father."
"No, Tootles."
Once Tootles began, which was not very often, he had a silly
way of going on.
"As I can't be father," he said heavily, "I don't suppose, Michael,
you would let me be baby?"
"No, I won't," Michael rapped out. He was already in his
basket.
"As I can't be baby," Tootles said, getting heavier and heavier
and heavier, "do you think I could be a twin?"
"No, indeed," replied the twins; "it's awfully difficult to be a
twin."
"As I can't be anything important," said Tootles, "would any
of you like to see me do a trick?"
"No," they all replied.
Then at last he stopped. "I hadn't really any hope," he said.
The hateful telling broke out again.
"Slightly is coughing on the table."
"The twins began with cheese-cakes."
"Curly is taking both butter and honey."
"Nibs is speaking with his mouth full."
"I complain of the twins."
"I complain of Curly."
"I complain of Nibs."
"Oh dear, oh dear," cried Wendy, "I'm sure I sometimes think
that spinsters are to be envied."
She told them to clear away, and sat down to her work-basket,
a heavy load of stockings and every knee with a hole in it
as usual.
"Wendy," remonstrated [scolded] Michael, "I'm too big for a
cradle."
"I must have somebody in a cradle," she said almost tartly,
"and you are the littlest. A cradle is such a nice homely thing to
have about a house."
While she sewed they played around her; such a group of
happy faces and dancing limbs lit up by that romantic fire. It
had become a very familiar scene, this, in the home under the
ground, but we are looking on it for the last time.
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There was a step above, and Wendy, you may be sure, was
the first to recognize it.
"Children, I hear your father's step. He likes you to meet him
at the door."
Above, the redskins crouched before Peter.
"Watch well, braves. I have spoken."
And then, as so often before, the gay children dragged him
from his tree. As so often before, but never again.
He had brought nuts for the boys as well as the correct time
for Wendy.
"Peter, you just spoil them, you know," Wendy simpered [exaggerated
a smile].
"Ah, old lady," said Peter, hanging up his gun.
"It was me told him mothers are called old lady," Michael
whispered to Curly.
"I complain of Michael," said Curly instantly.
The first twin came to Peter. "Father, we want to dance."
"Dance away, my little man," said Peter, who was in high
good humour.
"But we want you to dance."
Peter was really the best dancer among them, but he pretended
to be scandalised.
"Me! My old bones would rattle!"
"And mummy too."
"What," cried Wendy, "the mother of such an armful, dance!"
"But on a Saturday night," Slightly insinuated.
It was not really Saturday night, at least it may have been,
for they had long lost count of the days; but always if they
wanted to do anything special they said this was Saturday
night, and then they did it.
"Of course it is Saturday night, Peter," Wendy said, relenting.
"People of our figure, Wendy!"
"But it is only among our own progeny [children]."
"True, true."
So they were told they could dance, but they must put on
their nighties first.
"Ah, old lady," Peter said aside to Wendy, warming himself
by the fire and looking down at her as she sat turning a heel,
"there is nothing more pleasant of an evening for you and me
82
when the day's toil is over than to rest by the fire with the little
ones near by."
"It is sweet, Peter, isn't it?" Wendy said, frightfully gratified.
"Peter, I think Curly has your nose."
"Michael takes after you."
She went to him and put her hand on his shoulder.
"Dear Peter," she said, "with such a large family, of course, I
have now passed my best, but you don't want to [ex]change
me, do you?"
"No, Wendy."
Certainly he did not want a change, but he looked at her uncomfortably,
blinking, you know, like one not sure whether he
was awake or asleep.
"Peter, what is it?"
"I was just thinking," he said, a little scared. "It is only makebelieve,
isn't it, that I am their father?"
"Oh yes," Wendy said primly [formally and properly].
"You see," he continued apologetically, "it would make me
seem so old to be their real father."
"But they are ours, Peter, yours and mine."
"But not really, Wendy?" he asked anxiously.
"Not if you don't wish it," she replied; and she distinctly
heard his sigh of relief. "Peter," she asked, trying to speak
firmly, "what are your exact feelings to [about] me?"
"Those of a devoted son, Wendy."
"I thought so," she said, and went and sat by herself at the
extreme end of the room.
"You are so queer," he said, frankly puzzled, "and Tiger Lily
is just the same. There is something she wants to be to me, but
she says it is not my mother."
"No, indeed, it is not," Wendy replied with frightful emphasis.
Now we know why she was prejudiced against the redskins.
"Then what is it?"
"It isn't for a lady to tell."
"Oh, very well," Peter said, a little nettled. "Perhaps Tinker
Bell will tell me."
"Oh yes, Tinker Bell will tell you," Wendy retorted scornfully.
"She is an abandoned little creature."
Here Tink, who was in her bedroom, eavesdropping,
squeaked out something impudent.
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"She says she glories in being abandoned," Peter interpreted.
He had a sudden idea. "Perhaps Tink wants to be my
mother?"
"You silly ass!" cried Tinker Bell in a passion.
She had said it so often that Wendy needed no translation.
"I almost agree with her," Wendy snapped. Fancy Wendy
snapping! But she had been much tried, and she little knew
what was to happen before the night was out. If she had known
she would not have snapped.
None of them knew. Perhaps it was best not to know. Their
ignorance gave them one more glad hour; and as it was to be
their last hour on the island, let us rejoice that there were sixty
glad minutes in it. They sang and danced in their night-gowns.
Such a deliciously creepy song it was, in which they pretended
to be frightened at their own shadows, little witting that so
soon shadows would close in upon them, from whom they
would shrink in real fear. So uproariously gay was the dance,
and how they buffeted each other on the bed and out of it! It
was a pillow fight rather than a dance, and when it was finished,
the pillows insisted on one bout more, like partners who
know that they may never meet again. The stories they told,
before it was time for Wendy's good-night story! Even Slightly
tried to tell a story that night, but the beginning was so fearfully
dull that it appalled not only the others but himself, and
he said happily:
"Yes, it is a dull beginning. I say, let us pretend that it is the
end."
And then at last they all got into bed for Wendy's story, the
story they loved best, the story Peter hated. Usually when she
began to tell this story he left the room or put his hands over
his ears; and possibly if he had done either of those things this
time they might all still be on the island. But to-night he remained
on his stool; and we shall see what happened.
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Chapter 11
WENDY'S STORY
"Listen, then," said Wendy, settling down to her story, with Michael
at her feet and seven boys in the bed. "There was once a
gentleman—"
"I had rather he had been a lady," Curly said.
"I wish he had been a white rat," said Nibs.
"Quiet," their mother admonished [cautioned] them. "There
was a lady also, and—"
"Oh, mummy," cried the first twin, "you mean that there is a
lady also, don't you? She is not dead, is she?"
"Oh, no."
"I am awfully glad she isn't dead," said Tootles. "Are you
glad, John?"
"Of course I am."
"Are you glad, Nibs?"
"Rather."
"Are you glad, Twins?"
"We are glad."
"Oh dear," sighed Wendy.
"Little less noise there," Peter called out, determined that
she should have fair play, however beastly a story it might be
in his opinion.
"The gentleman's name," Wendy continued, "was Mr.
Darling, and her name was Mrs. Darling."
"I knew them," John said, to annoy the others.
"I think I knew them," said Michael rather doubtfully.
"They were married, you know," explained Wendy, "and what
do you think they had?"
"White rats," cried Nibs, inspired.
"No."
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"It's awfully puzzling," said Tootles, who knew the story by
heart.
"Quiet, Tootles. They had three descendants."
"What is descendants?"
"Well, you are one, Twin."
"Did you hear that, John? I am a descendant."
"Descendants are only children," said John.
"Oh dear, oh dear," sighed Wendy. "Now these three children
had a faithful nurse called Nana; but Mr. Darling was angry
with her and chained her up in the yard, and so all the children
flew away."
"It's an awfully good story," said Nibs.
"They flew away," Wendy continued, "to the Neverland,
where the lost children are."
"I just thought they did," Curly broke in excitedly. "I don't
know how it is, but I just thought they did!"
"O Wendy," cried Tootles, "was one of the lost children called
Tootles?"
"Yes, he was."
"I am in a story. Hurrah, I am in a story, Nibs."
"Hush. Now I want you to consider the feelings of the unhappy
parents with all their children flown away."
"Oo!" they all moaned, though they were not really considering
the feelings of the unhappy parents one jot.
"Think of the empty beds!"
"Oo!"
"It's awfully sad," the first twin said cheerfully.
"I don't see how it can have a happy ending," said the second
twin. "Do you, Nibs?"
"I'm frightfully anxious."
"If you knew how great is a mother's love," Wendy told them
triumphantly, "you would have no fear." She had now come to
the part that Peter hated.
"I do like a mother's love," said Tootles, hitting Nibs with a
pillow. "Do you like a mother's love, Nibs?"
"I do just," said Nibs, hitting back.
"You see," Wendy said complacently, "our heroine knew that
the mother would always leave the window open for her children
to fly back by; so they stayed away for years and had a
lovely time."
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"Did they ever go back?"
"Let us now," said Wendy, bracing herself up for her finest
effort, "take a peep into the future;" and they all gave themselves
the twist that makes peeps into the future easier. "Years
have rolled by, and who is this elegant lady of uncertain age
alighting at London Station?"
"O Wendy, who is she?" cried Nibs, every bit as excited as if
he didn't know.
"Can it be—yes—no—it is—the fair Wendy!"
"Oh!"
"And who are the two noble portly figures accompanying her,
now grown to man's estate? Can they be John and Michael?
They are!"
"Oh!"
"'See, dear brothers,' says Wendy pointing upwards, 'there is
the window still standing open. Ah, now we are rewarded for
our sublime faith in a mother's love.' So up they flew to their
mummy and daddy, and pen cannot describe the happy scene,
over which we draw a veil."
That was the story, and they were as pleased with it as the
fair narrator herself. Everything just as it should be, you see.
Off we skip like the most heartless things in the world, which is
what children are, but so attractive; and we have an entirely
selfish time, and then when we have need of special attention
we nobly return for it, confident that we shall be rewarded instead
of smacked.
So great indeed was their faith in a mother's love that they
felt they could afford to be callous for a bit longer.
But there was one there who knew better, and when Wendy
finished he uttered a hollow groan.
"What is it, Peter?" she cried, running to him, thinking he
was ill. She felt him solicitously, lower down than his chest.
"Where is it, Peter?"
"It isn't that kind of pain," Peter replied darkly.
"Then what kind is it?"
"Wendy, you are wrong about mothers."
They all gathered round him in affright, so alarming was his
agitation; and with a fine candour he told them what he had
hitherto concealed.
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"Long ago," he said, "I thought like you that my mother
would always keep the window open for me, so I stayed away
for moons and moons and moons, and then flew back; but the
window was barred, for mother had forgotten all about me, and
there was another little boy sleeping in my bed."
I am not sure that this was true, but Peter thought it was
true; and it scared them.
"Are you sure mothers are like that?"
"Yes."
So this was the truth about mothers. The toads!
Still it is best to be careful; and no one knows so quickly as a
child when he should give in. "Wendy, let us [let's] go home,"
cried John and Michael together.
"Yes," she said, clutching them.
"Not to-night?" asked the lost boys bewildered. They knew in
what they called their hearts that one can get on quite well
without a mother, and that it is only the mothers who think you
can't.
"At once," Wendy replied resolutely, for the horrible thought
had come to her: "Perhaps mother is in half mourning by this
time."
This dread made her forgetful of what must be Peter's feelings,
and she said to him rather sharply, "Peter, will you make
the necessary arrangements?"
"If you wish it," he replied, as coolly as if she had asked him
to pass the nuts.
Not so much as a sorry-to-lose-you between them! If she did
not mind the parting, he was going to show her, was Peter,
that neither did he.
But of course he cared very much; and he was so full of
wrath against grown-ups, who, as usual, were spoiling
everything, that as soon as he got inside his tree he breathed
intentionally quick short breaths at the rate of about five to a
second. He did this because there is a saying in the Neverland
that, every time you breathe, a grown-up dies; and Peter was
killing them off vindictively as fast as possible.
Then having given the necessary instructions to the redskins
he returned to the home, where an unworthy scene had been
enacted in his absence. Panic-stricken at the thought of losing
Wendy the lost boys had advanced upon her threateningly.
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"It will be worse than before she came," they cried.
"We shan't let her go."
"Let's keep her prisoner."
"Ay, chain her up."
In her extremity an instinct told her to which of them to turn.
"Tootles," she cried, "I appeal to you."
Was it not strange? She appealed to Tootles, quite the silliest
one.
Grandly, however, did Tootles respond. For that one moment
he dropped his silliness and spoke with dignity.
"I am just Tootles," he said, "and nobody minds me. But the
first who does not behave to Wendy like an English gentleman
I will blood him severely."
He drew back his hanger; and for that instant his sun was at
noon. The others held back uneasily. Then Peter returned, and
they saw at once that they would get no support from him. He
would keep no girl in the Neverland against her will.
"Wendy," he said, striding up and down, "I have asked the
redskins to guide you through the wood, as flying tires you so."
"Thank you, Peter."
"Then," he continued, in the short sharp voice of one accustomed
to be obeyed, "Tinker Bell will take you across the sea.
Wake her, Nibs."
Nibs had to knock twice before he got an answer, though
Tink had really been sitting up in bed listening for some time.
"Who are you? How dare you? Go away," she cried.
"You are to get up, Tink," Nibs called, "and take Wendy on a
journey."
Of course Tink had been delighted to hear that Wendy was
going; but she was jolly well determined not to be her courier,
and she said so in still more offensive language. Then she pretended
to be asleep again.
"She says she won't!" Nibs exclaimed, aghast at such insubordination,
whereupon Peter went sternly toward the young
lady's chamber.
"Tink," he rapped out, "if you don't get up and dress at once I
will open the curtains, and then we shall all see you in your
negligee [nightgown]."
This made her leap to the floor. "Who said I wasn't getting
up?" she cried.
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In the meantime the boys were gazing very forlornly at
Wendy, now equipped with John and Michael for the journey.
By this time they were dejected, not merely because they were
about to lose her, but also because they felt that she was going
off to something nice to which they had not been invited.
Novelty was beckoning to them as usual.
Crediting them with a nobler feeling Wendy melted.
"Dear ones," she said, "if you will all come with me I feel almost
sure I can get my father and mother to adopt you."
The invitation was meant specially for Peter, but each of the
boys was thinking exclusively of himself, and at once they
jumped with joy.
"But won't they think us rather a handful?" Nibs asked in the
middle of his jump.
"Oh no," said Wendy, rapidly thinking it out, "it will only
mean having a few beds in the drawing-room; they can be hidden
behind the screens on first Thursdays."
"Peter, can we go?" they all cried imploringly. They took it
for granted that if they went he would go also, but really they
scarcely cared. Thus children are ever ready, when novelty
knocks, to desert their dearest ones.
"All right," Peter replied with a bitter smile, and immediately
they rushed to get their things.
"And now, Peter," Wendy said, thinking she had put
everything right, "I am going to give you your medicine before
you go." She loved to give them medicine, and undoubtedly
gave them too much. Of course it was only water, but it was
out of a bottle, and she always shook the bottle and counted
the drops, which gave it a certain medicinal quality. On this occasion,
however, she did not give Peter his draught [portion],
for just as she had prepared it, she saw a look on his face that
made her heart sink.
"Get your things, Peter," she cried, shaking.
"No," he answered, pretending indifference, "I am not going
with you, Wendy."
"Yes, Peter."
"No."
To show that her departure would leave him unmoved, he
skipped up and down the room, playing gaily on his heartless
90
pipes. She had to run about after him, though it was rather
undignified.
"To find your mother," she coaxed.
Now, if Peter had ever quite had a mother, he no longer
missed her. He could do very well without one. He had thought
them out, and remembered only their bad points.
"No, no," he told Wendy decisively; "perhaps she would say I
was old, and I just want always to be a little boy and to have
fun."
"But, Peter—"
"No."
And so the others had to be told.
"Peter isn't coming."
Peter not coming! They gazed blankly at him, their sticks
over their backs, and on each stick a bundle. Their first
thought was that if Peter was not going he had probably
changed his mind about letting them go.
But he was far too proud for that. "If you find your mothers,"
he said darkly, "I hope you will like them."
The awful cynicism of this made an uncomfortable impression,
and most of them began to look rather doubtful. After all,
their faces said, were they not noodles to want to go?
"Now then," cried Peter, "no fuss, no blubbering; good-bye,
Wendy;" and he held out his hand cheerily, quite as if they
must really go now, for he had something important to do.
She had to take his hand, and there was no indication that he
would prefer a thimble.
"You will remember about changing your flannels, Peter?"
she said, lingering over him. She was always so particular
about their flannels.
"Yes."
"And you will take your medicine?"
"Yes."
That seemed to be everything, and an awkward pause followed.
Peter, however, was not the kind that breaks down before
other people. "Are you ready, Tinker Bell?" he called out.
"Ay, ay."
"Then lead the way."
Tink darted up the nearest tree; but no one followed her, for
it was at this moment that the pirates made their dreadful
91
attack upon the redskins. Above, where all had been so still,
the air was rent with shrieks and the clash of steel. Below,
there was dead silence. Mouths opened and remained open.
Wendy fell on her knees, but her arms were extended toward
Peter. All arms were extended to him, as if suddenly blown in
his direction; they were beseeching him mutely not to desert
them. As for Peter, he seized his sword, the same he thought
he had slain Barbecue with, and the lust of battle was in his
eye.
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Chapter 12
THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED OFF
The pirate attack had been a complete surprise: a sure proof
that the unscrupulous Hook had conducted it improperly, for to
surprise redskins fairly is beyond the wit of the white man.
By all the unwritten laws of savage warfare it is always the
redskin who attacks, and with the wiliness of his race he does
it just before the dawn, at which time he knows the courage of
the whites to be at its lowest ebb. The white men have in the
meantime made a rude stockade on the summit of yonder undulating
ground, at the foot of which a stream runs, for it is destruction
to be too far from water. There they await the onslaught,
the inexperienced ones clutching their revolvers and
treading on twigs, but the old hands sleeping tranquilly until
just before the dawn. Through the long black night the savage
scouts wriggle, snake-like, among the grass without stirring a
blade. The brushwood closes behind them, as silently as sand
into which a mole has dived. Not a sound is to be heard, save
when they give vent to a wonderful imitation of the lonely call
of the coyote. The cry is answered by other braves; and some
of them do it even better than the coyotes, who are not very
good at it. So the chill hours wear on, and the long suspense is
horribly trying to the paleface who has to live through it for the
first time; but to the trained hand those ghastly calls and still
ghastlier silences are but an intimation of how the night is
marching.
That this was the usual procedure was so well known to
Hook that in disregarding it he cannot be excused on the plea
of ignorance.
The Piccaninnies, on their part, trusted implicitly to his honour,
and their whole action of the night stands out in marked
contrast to his. They left nothing undone that was consistent
93
with the reputation of their tribe. With that alertness of the
senses which is at once the marvel and despair of civilised
peoples, they knew that the pirates were on the island from the
moment one of them trod on a dry stick; and in an incredibly
short space of time the coyote cries began. Every foot of
ground between the spot where Hook had landed his forces
and the home under the trees was stealthily examined by
braves wearing their mocassins with the heels in front. They
found only one hillock with a stream at its base, so that Hook
had no choice; here he must establish himself and wait for just
before the dawn. Everything being thus mapped out with almost
diabolical cunning, the main body of the redskins folded
their blankets around them, and in the phlegmatic manner that
is to them, the pearl of manhood squatted above the children's
home, awaiting the cold moment when they should deal pale
death.
Here dreaming, though wide-awake, of the exquisite tortures
to which they were to put him at break of day, those confiding
savages were found by the treacherous Hook. From the accounts
afterwards supplied by such of the scouts as escaped
the carnage, he does not seem even to have paused at the
rising ground, though it is certain that in that grey light he
must have seen it: no thought of waiting to be attacked appears
from first to last to have visited his subtle mind; he
would not even hold off till the night was nearly spent; on he
pounded with no policy but to fall to [get into combat]. What
could the bewildered scouts do, masters as they were of every
war-like artifice save this one, but trot helplessly after him, exposing
themselves fatally to view, while they gave pathetic utterance
to the coyote cry.
Around the brave Tiger Lily were a dozen of her stoutest
warriors, and they suddenly saw the perfidious pirates bearing
down upon them. Fell from their eyes then the film through
which they had looked at victory. No more would they torture
at the stake. For them the happy hunting-grounds was now.
They knew it; but as their father's sons they acquitted themselves.
Even then they had time to gather in a phalanx [dense
formation] that would have been hard to break had they risen
quickly, but this they were forbidden to do by the traditions of
their race. It is written that the noble savage must never
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express surprise in the presence of the white. Thus terrible as
the sudden appearance of the pirates must have been to them,
they remained stationary for a moment, not a muscle moving;
as if the foe had come by invitation. Then, indeed, the tradition
gallantly upheld, they seized their weapons, and the air was
torn with the war-cry; but it was now too late.
It is no part of ours to describe what was a massacre rather
than a fight. Thus perished many of the flower of the Piccaninny
tribe. Not all unavenged did they die, for with Lean Wolf
fell Alf Mason, to disturb the Spanish Main no more, and
among others who bit the dust were Geo. Scourie, Chas. Turley,
and the Alsatian Foggerty. Turley fell to the tomahawk of
the terrible Panther, who ultimately cut a way through the pirates
with Tiger Lily and a small remnant of the tribe.
To what extent Hook is to blame for his tactics on this occasion
is for the historian to decide. Had he waited on the rising
ground till the proper hour he and his men would probably
have been butchered; and in judging him it is only fair to take
this into account. What he should perhaps have done was to acquaint
his opponents that he proposed to follow a new method.
On the other hand, this, as destroying the element of surprise,
would have made his strategy of no avail, so that the whole
question is beset with difficulties. One cannot at least withhold
a reluctant admiration for the wit that had conceived so bold a
scheme, and the fell [deadly] genius with which it was carried
out.
What were his own feelings about himself at that triumphant
moment? Fain [gladly] would his dogs have known, as breathing
heavily and wiping their cutlasses, they gathered at a discreet
distance from his hook, and squinted through their ferret
eyes at this extraordinary man. Elation must have been in his
heart, but his face did not reflect it: ever a dark and solitary
enigma, he stood aloof from his followers in spirit as in
substance.
The night's work was not yet over, for it was not the redskins
he had come out to destroy; they were but the bees to be
smoked, so that he should get at the honey. It was Pan he
wanted, Pan and Wendy and their band, but chiefly Pan.
Peter was such a small boy that one tends to wonder at the
man's hatred of him. True he had flung Hook's arm to the
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crocodile, but even this and the increased insecurity of life to
which it led, owing to the crocodile's pertinacity [persistance],
hardly account for a vindictiveness so relentless and malignant.
The truth is that there was a something about Peter
which goaded the pirate captain to frenzy. It was not his courage,
it was not his engaging appearance, it was not—. There is
no beating about the bush, for we know quite well what it was,
and have got to tell. It was Peter's cockiness.
This had got on Hook's nerves; it made his iron claw twitch,
and at night it disturbed him like an insect. While Peter lived,
the tortured man felt that he was a lion in a cage into which a
sparrow had come.
The question now was how to get down the trees, or how to
get his dogs down? He ran his greedy eyes over them, searching
for the thinnest ones. They wriggled uncomfortably, for
they knew he would not scruple [hesitate] to ram them down
with poles.
In the meantime, what of the boys? We have seen them at the
first clang of the weapons, turned as it were into stone figures,
open-mouthed, all appealing with outstretched arms to Peter;
and we return to them as their mouths close, and their arms
fall to their sides. The pandemonium above has ceased almost
as suddenly as it arose, passed like a fierce gust of wind; but
they know that in the passing it has determined their fate.
Which side had won?
The pirates, listening avidly at the mouths of the trees, heard
the question put by every boy, and alas, they also heard Peter's
answer.
"If the redskins have won," he said, "they will beat the tomtom;
it is always their sign of victory."
Now Smee had found the tom-tom, and was at that moment
sitting on it. "You will never hear the tom-tom again," he
muttered, but inaudibly of course, for strict silence had been
enjoined [urged]. To his amazement Hook signed him to beat
the tom-tom, and slowly there came to Smee an understanding
of the dreadful wickedness of the order. Never, probably, had
this simple man admired Hook so much.
Twice Smee beat upon the instrument, and then stopped to
listen gleefully.
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"The tom-tom," the miscreants heard Peter cry; "an Indian
victory!"
The doomed children answered with a cheer that was music
to the black hearts above, and almost immediately they repeated
their good-byes to Peter. This puzzled the pirates, but
all their other feelings were swallowed by a base delight that
the enemy were about to come up the trees. They smirked at
each other and rubbed their hands. Rapidly and silently Hook
gave his orders: one man to each tree, and the others to arrange
themselves in a line two yards apart.
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Chapter 13
DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?
The more quickly this horror is disposed of the better. The first
to emerge from his tree was Curly. He rose out of it into the
arms of Cecco, who flung him to Smee, who flung him to Starkey,
who flung him to Bill Jukes, who flung him to Noodler, and
so he was tossed from one to another till he fell at the feet of
the black pirate. All the boys were plucked from their trees in
this ruthless manner; and several of them were in the air at a
time, like bales of goods flung from hand to hand.
A different treatment was accorded to Wendy, who came
last. With ironical politeness Hook raised his hat to her, and,
offering her his arm, escorted her to the spot where the others
were being gagged. He did it with such an air, he was so frightfully
DISTINGUE [imposingly distinguished], that she was too
fascinated to cry out. She was only a little girl.
Perhaps it is tell-tale to divulge that for a moment Hook entranced
her, and we tell on her only because her slip led to
strange results. Had she haughtily unhanded him (and we
should have loved to write it of her), she would have been
hurled through the air like the others, and then Hook would
probably not have been present at the tying of the children;
and had he not been at the tying he would not have discovered
Slightly's secret, and without the secret he could not presently
have made his foul attempt on Peter's life.
They were tied to prevent their flying away, doubled up with
their knees close to their ears; and for the trussing of them the
black pirate had cut a rope into nine equal pieces. All went well
until Slightly's turn came, when he was found to be like those
irritating parcels that use up all the string in going round and
leave no tags [ends] with which to tie a knot. The pirates
kicked him in their rage, just as you kick the parcel (though in
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fairness you should kick the string); and strange to say it was
Hook who told them to belay their violence. His lip was curled
with malicious triumph. While his dogs were merely sweating
because every time they tried to pack the unhappy lad tight in
one part he bulged out in another, Hook's master mind had
gone far beneath Slightly's surface, probing not for effects but
for causes; and his exultation showed that he had found them.
Slightly, white to the gills, knew that Hook had surprised [discovered]
his secret, which was this, that no boy so blown out
could use a tree wherein an average man need stick. Poor
Slightly, most wretched of all the children now, for he was in a
panic about Peter, bitterly regretted what he had done. Madly
addicted to the drinking of water when he was hot, he had
swelled in consequence to his present girth, and instead of reducing
himself to fit his tree he had, unknown to the others,
whittled his tree to make it fit him.
Sufficient of this Hook guessed to persuade him that Peter at
last lay at his mercy, but no word of the dark design that now
formed in the subterranean caverns of his mind crossed his
lips; he merely signed that the captives were to be conveyed to
the ship, and that he would be alone.
How to convey them? Hunched up in their ropes they might
indeed be rolled down hill like barrels, but most of the way lay
through a morass. Again Hook's genius surmounted difficulties.
He indicated that the little house must be used as a conveyance.
The children were flung into it, four stout pirates raised
it on their shoulders, the others fell in behind, and singing the
hateful pirate chorus the strange procession set off through
the wood. I don't know whether any of the children were crying;
if so, the singing drowned the sound; but as the little
house disappeared in the forest, a brave though tiny jet of
smoke issued from its chimney as if defying Hook.
Hook saw it, and it did Peter a bad service. It dried up any
trickle of pity for him that may have remained in the pirate's
infuriated breast.
The first thing he did on finding himself alone in the fast falling
night was to tiptoe to Slightly's tree, and make sure that it
provided him with a passage. Then for long he remained brooding;
his hat of ill omen on the sward, so that any gentle breeze
which had arisen might play refreshingly through his hair.
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Dark as were his thoughts his blue eyes were as soft as the
periwinkle. Intently he listened for any sound from the nether
world, but all was as silent below as above; the house under
the ground seemed to be but one more empty tenement in the
void. Was that boy asleep, or did he stand waiting at the foot of
Slightly's tree, with his dagger in his hand?
There was no way of knowing, save by going down. Hook let
his cloak slip softly to the ground, and then biting his lips till a
lewd blood stood on them, he stepped into the tree. He was a
brave man, but for a moment he had to stop there and wipe his
brow, which was dripping like a candle. Then, silently, he let
himself go into the unknown.
He arrived unmolested at the foot of the shaft, and stood still
again, biting at his breath, which had almost left him. As his
eyes became accustomed to the dim light various objects in the
home under the trees took shape; but the only one on which his
greedy gaze rested, long sought for and found at last, was the
great bed. On the bed lay Peter fast asleep.
Unaware of the tragedy being enacted above, Peter had continued,
for a little time after the children left, to play gaily on
his pipes: no doubt rather a forlorn attempt to prove to himself
that he did not care. Then he decided not to take his medicine,
so as to grieve Wendy. Then he lay down on the bed outside
the coverlet, to vex her still more; for she had always tucked
them inside it, because you never know that you may not grow
chilly at the turn of the night. Then he nearly cried; but it
struck him how indignant she would be if he laughed instead;
so he laughed a haughty laugh and fell asleep in the middle of
it.
Sometimes, though not often, he had dreams, and they were
more painful than the dreams of other boys. For hours he could
not be separated from these dreams, though he wailed
piteously in them. They had to do, I think, with the riddle of his
existence. At such times it had been Wendy's custom to take
him out of bed and sit with him on her lap, soothing him in
dear ways of her own invention, and when he grew calmer to
put him back to bed before he quite woke up, so that he should
not know of the indignity to which she had subjected him. But
on this occasion he had fallen at once into a dreamless sleep.
One arm dropped over the edge of the bed, one leg was
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arched, and the unfinished part of his laugh was stranded on
his mouth, which was open, showing the little pearls.
Thus defenceless Hook found him. He stood silent at the foot
of the tree looking across the chamber at his enemy. Did no
feeling of compassion disturb his sombre breast? The man was
not wholly evil; he loved flowers (I have been told) and sweet
music (he was himself no mean performer on the harpsichord);
and, let it be frankly admitted, the idyllic nature of the scene
stirred him profoundly. Mastered by his better self he would
have returned reluctantly up the tree, but for one thing.
What stayed him was Peter's impertinent appearance as he
slept. The open mouth, the drooping arm, the arched knee:
they were such a personification of cockiness as, taken together,
will never again, one may hope, be presented to eyes so
sensitive to their offensiveness. They steeled Hook's heart. If
his rage had broken him into a hundred pieces every one of
them would have disregarded the incident, and leapt at the
sleeper.
Though a light from the one lamp shone dimly on the bed,
Hook stood in darkness himself, and at the first stealthy step
forward he discovered an obstacle, the door of Slightly's tree.
It did not entirely fill the aperture, and he had been looking
over it. Feeling for the catch, he found to his fury that it was
low down, beyond his reach. To his disordered brain it seemed
then that the irritating quality in Peter's face and figure visibly
increased, and he rattled the door and flung himself against it.
Was his enemy to escape him after all?
But what was that? The red in his eye had caught sight of
Peter's medicine standing on a ledge within easy reach. He
fathomed what it was straightaway, and immediately knew that
the sleeper was in his power.
Lest he should be taken alive, Hook always carried about his
person a dreadful drug, blended by himself of all the deathdealing
rings that had come into his possession. These he had
boiled down into a yellow liquid quite unknown to science,
which was probably the most virulent poison in existence.
Five drops of this he now added to Peter's cup. His hand
shook, but it was in exultation rather than in shame. As he did
it he avoided glancing at the sleeper, but not lest pity should
unnerve him; merely to avoid spilling. Then one long gloating
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look he cast upon his victim, and turning, wormed his way with
difficulty up the tree. As he emerged at the top he looked the
very spirit of evil breaking from its hole. Donning his hat at its
most rakish angle, he wound his cloak around him, holding one
end in front as if to conceal his person from the night, of which
it was the blackest part, and muttering strangely to himself,
stole away through the trees.
Peter slept on. The light guttered [burned to edges] and went
out, leaving the tenement in darkness; but still he slept. It must
have been not less than ten o'clock by the crocodile, when he
suddenly sat up in his bed, wakened by he knew not what. It
was a soft cautious tapping on the door of his tree.
Soft and cautious, but in that stillness it was sinister. Peter
felt for his dagger till his hand gripped it. Then he spoke.
"Who is that?"
For long there was no answer: then again the knock.
"Who are you?"
No answer.
He was thrilled, and he loved being thrilled. In two strides he
reached the door. Unlike Slightly's door, it filled the aperture
[opening], so that he could not see beyond it, nor could the one
knocking see him.
"I won't open unless you speak," Peter cried.
Then at last the visitor spoke, in a lovely bell-like voice.
"Let me in, Peter."
It was Tink, and quickly he unbarred to her. She flew in excitedly,
her face flushed and her dress stained with mud.
"What is it?"
"Oh, you could never guess!" she cried, and offered him
three guesses. "Out with it!" he shouted, and in one ungrammatical
sentence, as long as the ribbons that conjurers [magicians]
pull from their mouths, she told of the capture of Wendy
and the boys.
Peter's heart bobbed up and down as he listened. Wendy
bound, and on the pirate ship; she who loved everything to be
just so!
"I'll rescue her!" he cried, leaping at his weapons. As he leapt
he thought of something he could do to please her. He could
take his medicine.
His hand closed on the fatal draught.
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"No!" shrieked Tinker Bell, who had heard Hook mutter
about his deed as he sped through the forest.
"Why not?"
"It is poisoned."
"Poisoned? Who could have poisoned it?"
"Hook."
"Don't be silly. How could Hook have got down here?"
Alas, Tinker Bell could not explain this, for even she did not
know the dark secret of Slightly's tree. Nevertheless Hook's
words had left no room for doubt. The cup was poisoned.
"Besides," said Peter, quite believing himself "I never fell
asleep."
He raised the cup. No time for words now; time for deeds;
and with one of her lightning movements Tink got between his
lips and the draught, and drained it to the dregs.
"Why, Tink, how dare you drink my medicine?"
But she did not answer. Already she was reeling in the air.
"What is the matter with you?" cried Peter, suddenly afraid.
"It was poisoned, Peter," she told him softly; "and now I am
going to be dead."
"O Tink, did you drink it to save me?"
"Yes."
"But why, Tink?"
Her wings would scarcely carry her now, but in reply she
alighted on his shoulder and gave his nose a loving bite. She
whispered in his ear "You silly ass," and then, tottering to her
chamber, lay down on the bed.
His head almost filled the fourth wall of her little room as he
knelt near her in distress. Every moment her light was growing
fainter; and he knew that if it went out she would be no more.
She liked his tears so much that she put out her beautiful finger
and let them run over it.
Her voice was so low that at first he could not make out what
she said. Then he made it out. She was saying that she thought
she could get well again if children believed in fairies.
Peter flung out his arms. There were no children there, and it
was night time; but he addressed all who might be dreaming of
the Neverland, and who were therefore nearer to him than you
think: boys and girls in their nighties, and naked papooses in
their baskets hung from trees.
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"Do you believe?" he cried.
Tink sat up in bed almost briskly to listen to her fate.
She fancied she heard answers in the affirmative, and then
again she wasn't sure.
"What do you think?" she asked Peter.
"If you believe," he shouted to them, "clap your hands; don't
let Tink die."
Many clapped.
Some didn't.
A few beasts hissed.
The clapping stopped suddenly; as if countless mothers had
rushed to their nurseries to see what on earth was happening;
but already Tink was saved. First her voice grew strong, then
she popped out of bed, then she was flashing through the room
more merry and impudent than ever. She never thought of
thanking those who believed, but she would have like to get at
the ones who had hissed.
"And now to rescue Wendy!"
The moon was riding in a cloudy heaven when Peter rose
from his tree, begirt [belted] with weapons and wearing little
else, to set out upon his perilous quest. It was not such a night
as he would have chosen. He had hoped to fly, keeping not far
from the ground so that nothing unwonted should escape his
eyes; but in that fitful light to have flown low would have
meant trailing his shadow through the trees, thus disturbing
birds and acquainting a watchful foe that he was astir.
He regretted now that he had given the birds of the island
such strange names that they are very wild and difficult of
approach.
There was no other course but to press forward in redskin
fashion, at which happily he was an adept [expert]. But in what
direction, for he could not be sure that the children had been
taken to the ship? A light fall of snow had obliterated all footmarks;
and a deathly silence pervaded the island, as if for a
space Nature stood still in horror of the recent carnage. He
had taught the children something of the forest lore that he
had himself learned from Tiger Lily and Tinker Bell, and knew
that in their dire hour they were not likely to forget it. Slightly,
if he had an opportunity, would blaze [cut a mark in] the trees,
for instance, Curly would drop seeds, and Wendy would leave
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her handkerchief at some important place. The morning was
needed to search for such guidance, and he could not wait. The
upper world had called him, but would give no help.
The crocodile passed him, but not another living thing, not a
sound, not a movement; and yet he knew well that sudden
death might be at the next tree, or stalking him from behind.
He swore this terrible oath: "Hook or me this time."
Now he crawled forward like a snake, and again erect, he
darted across a space on which the moonlight played, one finger
on his lip and his dagger at the ready. He was frightfully
happy.
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Chapter 14
THE PIRATE SHIP
One green light squinting over Kidd's Creek, which is near the
mouth of the pirate river, marked where the brig, the JOLLY
ROGER, lay, low in the water; a rakish-looking [speedy-looking]
craft foul to the hull, every beam in her detestable, like ground
strewn with mangled feathers. She was the cannibal of the
seas, and scarce needed that watchful eye, for she floated immune
in the horror of her name.
She was wrapped in the blanket of night, through which no
sound from her could have reached the shore. There was little
sound, and none agreeable save the whir of the ship's sewing
machine at which Smee sat, ever industrious and obliging, the
essence of the commonplace, pathetic Smee. I know not why
he was so infinitely pathetic, unless it were because he was so
pathetically unaware of it; but even strong men had to turn
hastily from looking at him, and more than once on summer
evenings he had touched the fount of Hook's tears and made it
flow. Of this, as of almost everything else, Smee was quite
unconscious.
A few of the pirates leant over the bulwarks, drinking in the
miasma [putrid mist] of the night; others sprawled by barrels
over games of dice and cards; and the exhausted four who had
carried the little house lay prone on the deck, where even in
their sleep they rolled skillfully to this side or that out of
Hook's reach, lest he should claw them mechanically in
passing.
Hook trod the deck in thought. O man unfathomable. It was
his hour of triumph. Peter had been removed for ever from his
path, and all the other boys were in the brig, about to walk the
plank. It was his grimmest deed since the days when he had
brought Barbecue to heel; and knowing as we do how vain a
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tabernacle is man, could we be surprised had he now paced
the deck unsteadily, bellied out by the winds of his success?
But there was no elation in his gait, which kept pace with the
action of his sombre mind. Hook was profoundly dejected.
He was often thus when communing with himself on board
ship in the quietude of the night. It was because he was so terribly
alone. This inscrutable man never felt more alone than
when surrounded by his dogs. They were socially inferior to
him.
Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was
would even at this date set the country in a blaze; but as those
who read between the lines must already have guessed, he had
been at a famous public school; and its traditions still clung to
him like garments, with which indeed they are largely concerned.
Thus it was offensive to him even now to board a ship
in the same dress in which he grappled [attacked] her, and he
still adhered in his walk to the school's distinguished slouch.
But above all he retained the passion for good form.
Good form! However much he may have degenerated, he still
knew that this is all that really matters.
From far within him he heard a creaking as of rusty portals,
and through them came a stern tap-tap-tap, like hammering in
the night when one cannot sleep. "Have you been good form today?"
was their eternal question.
"Fame, fame, that glittering bauble, it is mine," he cried.
"Is it quite good form to be distinguished at anything?" the
tap-tap from his school replied.
"I am the only man whom Barbecue feared," he urged, "and
Flint feared Barbecue."
"Barbecue, Flint—what house?" came the cutting retort.
Most disquieting reflection of all, was it not bad form to think
about good form?
His vitals were tortured by this problem. It was a claw within
him sharper than the iron one; and as it tore him, the perspiration
dripped down his tallow [waxy] countenance and streaked
his doublet. Ofttimes he drew his sleeve across his face, but
there was no damming that trickle.
Ah, envy not Hook.
There came to him a presentiment of his early dissolution
[death]. It was as if Peter's terrible oath had boarded the ship.
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Hook felt a gloomy desire to make his dying speech, lest
presently there should be no time for it.
"Better for Hook," he cried, "if he had had less ambition!" It
was in his darkest hours only that he referred to himself in the
third person.
"No little children to love me!"
Strange that he should think of this, which had never
troubled him before; perhaps the sewing machine brought it to
his mind. For long he muttered to himself, staring at Smee,
who was hemming placidly, under the conviction that all children
feared him.
Feared him! Feared Smee! There was not a child on board
the brig that night who did not already love him. He had said
horrid things to them and hit them with the palm of his hand,
because he could not hit with his fist, but they had only clung
to him the more. Michael had tried on his spectacles.
To tell poor Smee that they thought him lovable! Hook itched
to do it, but it seemed too brutal. Instead, he revolved this mystery
in his mind: why do they find Smee lovable? He pursued
the problem like the sleuth-hound that he was. If Smee was lovable,
what was it that made him so? A terrible answer suddenly
presented itself—"Good form?"
Had the bo'sun good form without knowing it, which is the
best form of all?
He remembered that you have to prove you don't know you
have it before you are eligible for Pop [an elite social club at
Eton].
With a cry of rage he raised his iron hand over Smee's head;
but he did not tear. What arrested him was this reflection:
"To claw a man because he is good form, what would that
be?"
"Bad form!"
The unhappy Hook was as impotent [powerless] as he was
damp, and he fell forward like a cut flower.
His dogs thinking him out of the way for a time, discipline instantly
relaxed; and they broke into a bacchanalian [drunken]
dance, which brought him to his feet at once, all traces of human
weakness gone, as if a bucket of water had passed over
him.
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"Quiet, you scugs," he cried, "or I'll cast anchor in you;" and
at once the din was hushed. "Are all the children chained, so
that they cannot fly away?"
"Ay, ay."
"Then hoist them up."
The wretched prisoners were dragged from the hold, all except
Wendy, and ranged in line in front of him. For a time he
seemed unconscious of their presence. He lolled at his ease,
humming, not unmelodiously, snatches of a rude song, and fingering
a pack of cards. Ever and anon the light from his cigar
gave a touch of colour to his face.
"Now then, bullies," he said briskly, "six of you walk the
plank to-night, but I have room for two cabin boys. Which of
you is it to be?"
"Don't irritate him unnecessarily," had been Wendy's instructions
in the hold; so Tootles stepped forward politely. Tootles
hated the idea of signing under such a man, but an instinct told
him that it would be prudent to lay the responsibility on an absent
person; and though a somewhat silly boy, he knew that
mothers alone are always willing to be the buffer. All children
know this about mothers, and despise them for it, but make
constant use of it.
So Tootles explained prudently, "You see, sir, I don't think
my mother would like me to be a pirate. Would your mother
like you to be a pirate, Slightly?"
He winked at Slightly, who said mournfully, "I don't think
so," as if he wished things had been otherwise. "Would your
mother like you to be a pirate, Twin?"
"I don't think so," said the first twin, as clever as the others.
"Nibs, would—"
"Stow this gab," roared Hook, and the spokesmen were
dragged back. "You, boy," he said, addressing John, "you look
as if you had a little pluck in you. Didst never want to be a pirate,
my hearty?"
Now John had sometimes experienced this hankering at
maths. prep.; and he was struck by Hook's picking him out.
"I once thought of calling myself Red-handed Jack," he said
diffidently.
"And a good name too. We'll call you that here, bully, if you
join."
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"What do you think, Michael?" asked John.
"What would you call me if I join?" Michael demanded.
"Blackbeard Joe."
Michael was naturally impressed. "What do you think, John?"
He wanted John to decide, and John wanted him to decide.
"Shall we still be respectful subjects of the King?" John
inquired.
Through Hook's teeth came the answer: "You would have to
swear, 'Down with the King.'"
Perhaps John had not behaved very well so far, but he shone
out now.
"Then I refuse," he cried, banging the barrel in front of Hook.
"And I refuse," cried Michael.
"Rule Britannia!" squeaked Curly.
The infuriated pirates buffeted them in the mouth; and Hook
roared out, "That seals your doom. Bring up their mother. Get
the plank ready."
They were only boys, and they went white as they saw Jukes
and Cecco preparing the fatal plank. But they tried to look
brave when Wendy was brought up.
No words of mine can tell you how Wendy despised those pirates.
To the boys there was at least some glamour in the pirate
calling; but all that she saw was that the ship had not been tidied
for years. There was not a porthole on the grimy glass of
which you might not have written with your finger "Dirty pig";
and she had already written it on several. But as the boys
gathered round her she had no thought, of course, save for
them.
"So, my beauty," said Hook, as if he spoke in syrup, "you are
to see your children walk the plank."
Fine gentlemen though he was, the intensity of his communings
had soiled his ruff, and suddenly he knew that she was
gazing at it. With a hasty gesture he tried to hide it, but he was
too late.
"Are they to die?" asked Wendy, with a look of such frightful
contempt that he nearly fainted.
"They are," he snarled. "Silence all," he called gloatingly, "for
a mother's last words to her children."
At this moment Wendy was grand. "These are my last words,
dear boys," she said firmly. "I feel that I have a message to you
110
from your real mothers, and it is this: 'We hope our sons will
die like English gentlemen.'"
Even the pirates were awed, and Tootles cried out hysterically,
"I am going to do what my mother hopes. What are you to
do, Nibs?"
"What my mother hopes. What are you to do, Twin?"
"What my mother hopes. John, what are—"
But Hook had found his voice again.
"Tie her up!" he shouted.
It was Smee who tied her to the mast. "See here, honey," he
whispered, "I'll save you if you promise to be my mother."
But not even for Smee would she make such a promise. "I
would almost rather have no children at all," she said disdainfully
[scornfully].
It is sad to know that not a boy was looking at her as Smee
tied her to the mast; the eyes of all were on the plank: that last
little walk they were about to take. They were no longer able to
hope that they would walk it manfully, for the capacity to think
had gone from them; they could stare and shiver only.
Hook smiled on them with his teeth closed, and took a step
toward Wendy. His intention was to turn her face so that she
should see they boys walking the plank one by one. But he never
reached her, he never heard the cry of anguish he hoped to
wring from her. He heard something else instead.
It was the terrible tick-tick of the crocodile.
They all heard it—pirates, boys, Wendy; and immediately
every head was blown in one direction; not to the water
whence the sound proceeded, but toward Hook. All knew that
what was about to happen concerned him alone, and that from
being actors they were suddenly become spectators.
Very frightful was it to see the change that came over him. It
was as if he had been clipped at every joint. He fell in a little
heap.
The sound came steadily nearer; and in advance of it came
this ghastly thought, "The crocodile is about to board the ship!"
Even the iron claw hung inactive; as if knowing that it was no
intrinsic part of what the attacking force wanted. Left so fearfully
alone, any other man would have lain with his eyes shut
where he fell: but the gigantic brain of Hook was still working,
and under its guidance he crawled on the knees along the deck
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as far from the sound as he could go. The pirates respectfully
cleared a passage for him, and it was only when he brought up
against the bulwarks that he spoke.
"Hide me!" he cried hoarsely.
They gathered round him, all eyes averted from the thing
that was coming aboard. They had no thought of fighting it. It
was Fate.
Only when Hook was hidden from them did curiosity loosen
the limbs of the boys so that they could rush to the ship's side
to see the crocodile climbing it. Then they got the strangest
surprise of the Night of Nights; for it was no crocodile that was
coming to their aid. It was Peter.
He signed to them not to give vent to any cry of admiration
that might rouse suspicion. Then he went on ticking.
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Chapter 15
"HOOK OR ME THIS TIME"
Odd things happen to all of us on our way through life without
our noticing for a time that they have happened. Thus, to take
an instance, we suddenly discover that we have been deaf in
one ear for we don't know how long, but, say, half an hour.
Now such an experience had come that night to Peter. When
last we saw him he was stealing across the island with one finger
to his lips and his dagger at the ready. He had seen the
crocodile pass by without noticing anything peculiar about it,
but by and by he remembered that it had not been ticking. At
first he thought this eerie, but soon concluded rightly that the
clock had run down.
Without giving a thought to what might be the feelings of a
fellow-creature thus abruptly deprived of its closest companion,
Peter began to consider how he could turn the catastrophe
to his own use; and he decided to tick, so that wild beasts
should believe he was the crocodile and let him pass unmolested.
He ticked superbly, but with one unforeseen result. The
crocodile was among those who heard the sound, and it followed
him, though whether with the purpose of regaining what
it had lost, or merely as a friend under the belief that it was
again ticking itself, will never be certainly known, for, like
slaves to a fixed idea, it was a stupid beast.
Peter reached the shore without mishap, and went straight
on, his legs encountering the water as if quite unaware that
they had entered a new element. Thus many animals pass from
land to water, but no other human of whom I know. As he
swam he had but one thought: "Hook or me this time." He had
ticked so long that he now went on ticking without knowing
that he was doing it. Had he known he would have stopped, for
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to board the brig by help of the tick, though an ingenious idea,
had not occurred to him.
On the contrary, he thought he had scaled her side as noiseless
as a mouse; and he was amazed to see the pirates cowering
from him, with Hook in their midst as abject as if he had
heard the crocodile.
The crocodile! No sooner did Peter remember it than he
heard the ticking. At first he thought the sound did come from
the crocodile, and he looked behind him swiftly. They he realised
that he was doing it himself, and in a flash he understood
the situation. "How clever of me!" he thought at once, and
signed to the boys not to burst into applause.
It was at this moment that Ed Teynte the quartermaster
emerged from the forecastle and came along the deck. Now,
reader, time what happened by your watch. Peter struck true
and deep. John clapped his hands on the ill-fated pirate's
mouth to stifle the dying groan. He fell forward. Four boys
caught him to prevent the thud. Peter gave the signal, and the
carrion was cast overboard. There was a splash, and then silence.
How long has it taken?
"One!" (Slightly had begun to count.)
None too soon, Peter, every inch of him on tiptoe, vanished
into the cabin; for more than one pirate was screwing up his
courage to look round. They could hear each other's distressed
breathing now, which showed them that the more terrible
sound had passed.
"It's gone, captain," Smee said, wiping off his spectacles.
"All's still again."
Slowly Hook let his head emerge from his ruff, and listened
so intently that he could have caught the echo of the tick.
There was not a sound, and he drew himself up firmly to his
full height.
"Then here's to Johnny Plank!" he cried brazenly, hating the
boys more than ever because they had seen him unbend. He
broke into the villainous ditty:
"Yo ho, yo ho, the frisky plank,
You walks along it so,
Till it goes down and you goes down
To Davy Jones below!"
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To terrorize the prisoners the more, though with a certain
loss of dignity, he danced along an imaginary plank, grimacing
at them as he sang; and when he finished he cried, "Do you
want a touch of the cat [o' nine tails] before you walk the
plank?"
At that they fell on their knees. "No, no!" they cried so
piteously that every pirate smiled.
"Fetch the cat, Jukes," said Hook; "it's in the cabin."
The cabin! Peter was in the cabin! The children gazed at
each other.
"Ay, ay," said Jukes blithely, and he strode into the cabin.
They followed him with their eyes; they scarce knew that Hook
had resumed his song, his dogs joining in with him:
"Yo ho, yo ho, the scratching cat, Its tails are nine, you know,
And when they're writ upon your back—"
What was the last line will never be known, for of a sudden
the song was stayed by a dreadful screech from the cabin. It
wailed through the ship, and died away. Then was heard a
crowing sound which was well understood by the boys, but to
the pirates was almost more eerie than the screech.
"What was that?" cried Hook.
"Two," said Slightly solemnly.
The Italian Cecco hesitated for a moment and then swung into
the cabin. He tottered out, haggard.
"What's the matter with Bill Jukes, you dog?" hissed Hook,
towering over him.
"The matter wi' him is he's dead, stabbed," replied Cecco in a
hollow voice.
"Bill Jukes dead!" cried the startled pirates.
"The cabin's as black as a pit," Cecco said, almost gibbering,
"but there is something terrible in there: the thing you heard
crowing."
The exultation of the boys, the lowering looks of the pirates,
both were seen by Hook.
"Cecco," he said in his most steely voice, "go back and fetch
me out that doodle-doo."
Cecco, bravest of the brave, cowered before his captain, crying
"No, no"; but Hook was purring to his claw.
"Did you say you would go, Cecco?" he said musingly.
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Cecco went, first flinging his arms despairingly. There was
no more singing, all listened now; and again came a deathscreech
and again a crow.
No one spoke except Slightly. "Three," he said.
Hook rallied his dogs with a gesture. "'S'death and odds
fish," he thundered, "who is to bring me that doodle-doo?"
"Wait till Cecco comes out," growled Starkey, and the others
took up the cry.
"I think I heard you volunteer, Starkey," said Hook, purring
again.
"No, by thunder!" Starkey cried.
"My hook thinks you did," said Hook, crossing to him. "I wonder
if it would not be advisable, Starkey, to humour the hook?"
"I'll swing before I go in there," replied Starkey doggedly,
and again he had the support of the crew.
"Is this mutiny?" asked Hook more pleasantly than ever.
"Starkey's ringleader!"
"Captain, mercy!" Starkey whimpered, all of a tremble now.
"Shake hands, Starkey," said Hook, proffering his claw.
Starkey looked round for help, but all deserted him. As he
backed up Hook advanced, and now the red spark was in his
eye. With a despairing scream the pirate leapt upon Long Tom
and precipitated himself into the sea.
"Four," said Slightly.
"And now," Hook said courteously, "did any other gentlemen
say mutiny?" Seizing a lantern and raising his claw with a menacing
gesture, "I'll bring out that doodle-doo myself," he said,
and sped into the cabin.
"Five." How Slightly longed to say it. He wetted his lips to be
ready, but Hook came staggering out, without his lantern.
"Something blew out the light," he said a little unsteadily.
"Something!" echoed Mullins.
"What of Cecco?" demanded Noodler.
"He's as dead as Jukes," said Hook shortly.
His reluctance to return to the cabin impressed them all unfavourably,
and the mutinous sounds again broke forth. All pirates
are superstitious, and Cookson cried, "They do say the
surest sign a ship's accurst is when there's one on board more
than can be accounted for."
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"I've heard," muttered Mullins, "he always boards the pirate
craft last. Had he a tail, captain?"
"They say," said another, looking viciously at Hook, "that
when he comes it's in the likeness of the wickedest man
aboard."
"Had he a hook, captain?" asked Cookson insolently; and one
after another took up the cry, "The ship's doomed!" At this the
children could not resist raising a cheer. Hook had well-nigh
forgotten his prisoners, but as he swung round on them now
his face lit up again.
"Lads," he cried to his crew, "now here's a notion. Open the
cabin door and drive them in. Let them fight the doodle-doo for
their lives. If they kill him, we're so much the better; if he kills
them, we're none the worse."
For the last time his dogs admired Hook, and devotedly they
did his bidding. The boys, pretending to struggle, were pushed
into the cabin and the door was closed on them.
"Now, listen!" cried Hook, and all listened. But not one dared
to face the door. Yes, one, Wendy, who all this time had been
bound to the mast. It was for neither a scream nor a crow that
she was watching, it was for the reappearance of Peter.
She had not long to wait. In the cabin he had found the thing
for which he had gone in search: the key that would free the
children of their manacles, and now they all stole forth, armed
with such weapons as they could find. First signing them to
hide, Peter cut Wendy's bonds, and then nothing could have
been easier than for them all to fly off together; but one thing
barred the way, an oath, "Hook or me this time." So when he
had freed Wendy, he whispered for her to conceal herself with
the others, and himself took her place by the mast, her cloak
around him so that he should pass for her. Then he took a
great breath and crowed.
To the pirates it was a voice crying that all the boys lay slain
in the cabin; and they were panic-stricken. Hook tried to
hearten them; but like the dogs he had made them they
showed him their fangs, and he knew that if he took his eyes
off them now they would leap at him.
"Lads," he said, ready to cajole or strike as need be, but never
quailing for an instant, "I've thought it out. There's a Jonah
aboard."
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"Ay," they snarled, "a man wi' a hook."
"No, lads, no, it's the girl. Never was luck on a pirate ship wi'
a woman on board. We'll right the ship when she's gone."
Some of them remembered that this had been a saying of
Flint's. "It's worth trying," they said doubtfully.
"Fling the girl overboard," cried Hook; and they made a rush
at the figure in the cloak.
"There's none can save you now, missy," Mullins hissed
jeeringly.
"There's one," replied the figure.
"Who's that?"
"Peter Pan the avenger!" came the terrible answer; and as he
spoke Peter flung off his cloak. Then they all knew who 'twas
that had been undoing them in the cabin, and twice Hook essayed
to speak and twice he failed. In that frightful moment I
think his fierce heart broke.
At last he cried, "Cleave him to the brisket!" but without
conviction.
"Down, boys, and at them!" Peter's voice rang out; and in another
moment the clash of arms was resounding through the
ship. Had the pirates kept together it is certain that they would
have won; but the onset came when they were still unstrung,
and they ran hither and thither, striking wildly, each thinking
himself the last survivor of the crew. Man to man they were the
stronger; but they fought on the defensive only, which enabled
the boys to hunt in pairs and choose their quarry. Some of the
miscreants leapt into the sea; others hid in dark recesses,
where they were found by Slightly, who did not fight, but ran
about with a lantern which he flashed in their faces, so that
they were half blinded and fell as an easy prey to the reeking
swords of the other boys. There was little sound to be heard
but the clang of weapons, an occasional screech or splash, and
Slightly monotonously counting—five—six—seven
eight—nine—ten—eleven.
I think all were gone when a group of savage boys surrounded
Hook, who seemed to have a charmed life, as he kept them
at bay in that circle of fire. They had done for his dogs, but this
man alone seemed to be a match for them all. Again and again
they closed upon him, and again and again he hewed a clear
space. He had lifted up one boy with his hook, and was using
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him as a buckler [shield], when another, who had just passed
his sword through Mullins, sprang into the fray.
"Put up your swords, boys," cried the newcomer, "this man is
mine."
Thus suddenly Hook found himself face to face with Peter.
The others drew back and formed a ring around them.
For long the two enemies looked at one another, Hook shuddering
slightly, and Peter with the strange smile upon his face.
"So, Pan," said Hook at last, "this is all your doing."
"Ay, James Hook," came the stern answer, "it is all my
doing."
"Proud and insolent youth," said Hook, "prepare to meet thy
doom."
"Dark and sinister man," Peter answered, "have at thee."
Without more words they fell to, and for a space there was
no advantage to either blade. Peter was a superb swordsman,
and parried with dazzling rapidity; ever and anon he followed
up a feint with a lunge that got past his foe's defence, but his
shorter reach stood him in ill stead, and he could not drive the
steel home. Hook, scarcely his inferior in brilliancy, but not
quite so nimble in wrist play, forced him back by the weight of
his onset, hoping suddenly to end all with a favourite thrust,
taught him long ago by Barbecue at Rio; but to his astonishment
he found this thrust turned aside again and again. Then
he sought to close and give the quietus with his iron hook,
which all this time had been pawing the air; but Peter doubled
under it and, lunging fiercely, pierced him in the ribs. At the
sight of his own blood, whose peculiar colour, you remember,
was offensive to him, the sword fell from Hook's hand, and he
was at Peter's mercy.
"Now!" cried all the boys, but with a magnificent gesture
Peter invited his opponent to pick up his sword. Hook did so instantly,
but with a tragic feeling that Peter was showing good
form.
Hitherto he had thought it was some fiend fighting him, but
darker suspicions assailed him now.
"Pan, who and what art thou?" he cried huskily.
"I'm youth, I'm joy," Peter answered at a venture, "I'm a little
bird that has broken out of the egg."
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This, of course, was nonsense; but it was proof to the unhappy
Hook that Peter did not know in the least who or what
he was, which is the very pinnacle of good form.
"To't again," he cried despairingly.
He fought now like a human flail, and every sweep of that
terrible sword would have severed in twain any man or boy
who obstructed it; but Peter fluttered round him as if the very
wind it made blew him out of the danger zone. And again and
again he darted in and pricked.
Hook was fighting now without hope. That passionate breast
no longer asked for life; but for one boon it craved: to see Peter
show bad form before it was cold forever.
Abandoning the fight he rushed into the powder magazine
and fired it.
"In two minutes," he cried, "the ship will be blown to pieces."
Now, now, he thought, true form will show.
But Peter issued from the powder magazine with the shell in
his hands, and calmly flung it overboard.
What sort of form was Hook himself showing? Misguided
man though he was, we may be glad, without sympathising
with him, that in the end he was true to the traditions of his
race. The other boys were flying around him now, flouting,
scornful; and he staggered about the deck striking up at them
impotently, his mind was no longer with them; it was slouching
in the playing fields of long ago, or being sent up [to the headmaster]
for good, or watching the wall-game from a famous
wall. And his shoes were right, and his waistcoat was right,
and his tie was right, and his socks were right.
James Hook, thou not wholly unheroic figure, farewell.
For we have come to his last moment.
Seeing Peter slowly advancing upon him through the air with
dagger poised, he sprang upon the bulwarks to cast himself into
the sea. He did not know that the crocodile was waiting for
him; for we purposely stopped the clock that this knowledge
might be spared him: a little mark of respect from us at the
end.
He had one last triumph, which I think we need not grudge
him. As he stood on the bulwark looking over his shoulder at
Peter gliding through the air, he invited him with a gesture to
use his foot. It made Peter kick instead of stab.
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At last Hook had got the boon for which he craved.
"Bad form," he cried jeeringly, and went content to the
crocodile.
Thus perished James Hook.
"Seventeen," Slightly sang out; but he was not quite correct
in his figures. Fifteen paid the penalty for their crimes that
night; but two reached the shore: Starkey to be captured by
the redskins, who made him nurse for all their papooses, a
melancholy come-down for a pirate; and Smee, who henceforth
wandered about the world in his spectacles, making a precarious
living by saying he was the only man that Jas. Hook had
feared.
Wendy, of course, had stood by taking no part in the fight,
though watching Peter with glistening eyes; but now that all
was over she became prominent again. She praised them
equally, and shuddered delightfully when Michael showed her
the place where he had killed one; and then she took them into
Hook's cabin and pointed to his watch which was hanging on a
nail. It said "half-past one!"
The lateness of the hour was almost the biggest thing of all.
She got them to bed in the pirates' bunks pretty quickly, you
may be sure; all but Peter, who strutted up and down on the
deck, until at last he fell asleep by the side of Long Tom. He
had one of his dreams that night, and cried in his sleep for a
long time, and Wendy held him tightly.
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Chapter 16
THE RETURN HOME
By three bells that morning they were all stirring their stumps
[legs]; for there was a big sea running; and Tootles, the bo'sun,
was among them, with a rope's end in his hand and chewing tobacco.
They all donned pirate clothes cut off at the knee,
shaved smartly, and tumbled up, with the true nautical roll and
hitching their trousers.
It need not be said who was the captain. Nibs and John were
first and second mate. There was a woman aboard. The rest
were tars [sailors] before the mast, and lived in the fo'c'sle.
Peter had already lashed himself to the wheel; but he piped all
hands and delivered a short address to them; said he hoped
they would do their duty like gallant hearties, but that he knew
they were the scum of Rio and the Gold Coast, and if they
snapped at him he would tear them. The bluff strident words
struck the note sailors understood, and they cheered him lustily.
Then a few sharp orders were given, and they turned the
ship round, and nosed her for the mainland.
Captain Pan calculated, after consulting the ship's chart, that
if this weather lasted they should strike the Azores about the
21st of June, after which it would save time to fly.
Some of them wanted it to be an honest ship and others were
in favour of keeping it a pirate; but the captain treated them as
dogs, and they dared not express their wishes to him even in a
round robin [one person after another, as they had to Cpt.
Hook]. Instant obedience was the only safe thing. Slightly got a
dozen for looking perplexed when told to take soundings. The
general feeling was that Peter was honest just now to lull
Wendy's suspicions, but that there might be a change when the
new suit was ready, which, against her will, she was making
for him out of some of Hook's wickedest garments. It was
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afterwards whispered among them that on the first night he
wore this suit he sat long in the cabin with Hook's cigar-holder
in his mouth and one hand clenched, all but for the forefinger,
which he bent and held threateningly aloft like a hook.
Instead of watching the ship, however, we must now return
to that desolate home from which three of our characters had
taken heartless flight so long ago. It seems a shame to have
neglected No. 14 all this time; and yet we may be sure that
Mrs. Darling does not blame us. If we had returned sooner to
look with sorrowful sympathy at her, she would probably have
cried, "Don't be silly; what do I matter? Do go back and keep
an eye on the children." So long as mothers are like this their
children will take advantage of them; and they may lay to [bet
on] that.
Even now we venture into that familiar nursery only because
its lawful occupants are on their way home; we are merely hurrying
on in advance of them to see that their beds are properly
aired and that Mr. and Mrs. Darling do not go out for the evening.
We are no more than servants. Why on earth should their
beds be properly aired, seeing that they left them in such a
thankless hurry? Would it not serve them jolly well right if they
came back and found that their parents were spending the
week-end in the country? It would be the moral lesson they
have been in need of ever since we met them; but if we contrived
things in this way Mrs. Darling would never forgive us.
One thing I should like to do immensely, and that is to tell
her, in the way authors have, that the children are coming
back, that indeed they will be here on Thursday week. This
would spoil so completely the surprise to which Wendy and
John and Michael are looking forward. They have been planning
it out on the ship: mother's rapture, father's shout of joy,
Nana's leap through the air to embrace them first, when what
they ought to be prepared for is a good hiding. How delicious
to spoil it all by breaking the news in advance; so that when
they enter grandly Mrs. Darling may not even offer Wendy her
mouth, and Mr. Darling may exclaim pettishly, "Dash it all,
here are those boys again." However, we should get no thanks
even for this. We are beginning to know Mrs. Darling by this
time, and may be sure that she would upbraid us for depriving
the children of their little pleasure.
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"But, my dear madam, it is ten days till Thursday week; so
that by telling you what's what, we can save you ten days of
unhappiness."
"Yes, but at what a cost! By depriving the children of ten
minutes of delight."
"Oh, if you look at it in that way!"
"What other way is there in which to look at it?"
You see, the woman had no proper spirit. I had meant to say
extraordinarily nice things about her; but I despise her, and
not one of them will I say now. She does not really need to be
told to have things ready, for they are ready. All the beds are
aired, and she never leaves the house, and observe, the window
is open. For all the use we are to her, we might well go
back to the ship. However, as we are here we may as well stay
and look on. That is all we are, lookers-on. Nobody really wants
us. So let us watch and say jaggy things, in the hope that some
of them will hurt.
The only change to be seen in the night-nursery is that
between nine and six the kennel is no longer there. When the
children flew away, Mr. Darling felt in his bones that all the
blame was his for having chained Nana up, and that from first
to last she had been wiser than he. Of course, as we have seen,
he was quite a simple man; indeed he might have passed for a
boy again if he had been able to take his baldness off; but he
had also a noble sense of justice and a lion's courage to do
what seemed right to him; and having thought the matter out
with anxious care after the flight of the children, he went down
on all fours and crawled into the kennel. To all Mrs. Darling's
dear invitations to him to come out he replied sadly but firmly:
"No, my own one, this is the place for me."
In the bitterness of his remorse he swore that he would never
leave the kennel until his children came back. Of course this
was a pity; but whatever Mr. Darling did he had to do in excess,
otherwise he soon gave up doing it. And there never was
a more humble man than the once proud George Darling, as he
sat in the kennel of an evening talking with his wife of their
children and all their pretty ways.
Very touching was his deference to Nana. He would not let
her come into the kennel, but on all other matters he followed
her wishes implicitly.
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Every morning the kennel was carried with Mr. Darling in it
to a cab, which conveyed him to his office, and he returned
home in the same way at six. Something of the strength of
character of the man will be seen if we remember how sensitive
he was to the opinion of neighbours: this man whose every
movement now attracted surprised attention. Inwardly he must
have suffered torture; but he preserved a calm exterior even
when the young criticised his little home, and he always lifted
his hat courteously to any lady who looked inside.
It may have been Quixotic, but it was magnificent. Soon the
inward meaning of it leaked out, and the great heart of the
public was touched. Crowds followed the cab, cheering it lustily;
charming girls scaled it to get his autograph; interviews appeared
in the better class of papers, and society invited him to
dinner and added, "Do come in the kennel."
On that eventful Thursday week, Mrs. Darling was in the
night-nursery awaiting George's return home; a very sad-eyed
woman. Now that we look at her closely and remember the
gaiety of her in the old days, all gone now just because she has
lost her babes, I find I won't be able to say nasty things about
her after all. If she was too fond of her rubbishy children, she
couldn't help it. Look at her in her chair, where she has fallen
asleep. The corner of her mouth, where one looks first, is almost
withered up. Her hand moves restlessly on her breast as
if she had a pain there. Some like Peter best, and some like
Wendy best, but I like her best. Suppose, to make her happy,
we whisper to her in her sleep that the brats are coming back.
They are really within two miles of the window now, and flying
strong, but all we need whisper is that they are on the way.
Let's.
It is a pity we did it, for she has started up, calling their
names; and there is no one in the room but Nana.
"O Nana, I dreamt my dear ones had come back."
Nana had filmy eyes, but all she could do was put her paw
gently on her mistress's lap; and they were sitting together
thus when the kennel was brought back. As Mr. Darling puts
his head out to kiss his wife, we see that his face is more worn
than of yore, but has a softer expression.
He gave his hat to Liza, who took it scornfully; for she had no
imagination, and was quite incapable of understanding the
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motives of such a man. Outside, the crowd who had accompanied
the cab home were still cheering, and he was naturally not
unmoved.
"Listen to them," he said; "it is very gratifying."
"Lots of little boys," sneered Liza.
"There were several adults to-day," he assured her with a
faint flush; but when she tossed her head he had not a word of
reproof for her. Social success had not spoilt him; it had made
him sweeter. For some time he sat with his head out of the
kennel, talking with Mrs. Darling of this success, and pressing
her hand reassuringly when she said she hoped his head would
not be turned by it.
"But if I had been a weak man," he said. "Good heavens, if I
had been a weak man!"
"And, George," she said timidly, "you are as full of remorse
as ever, aren't you?"
"Full of remorse as ever, dearest! See my punishment: living
in a kennel."
"But it is punishment, isn't it, George? You are sure you are
not enjoying it?"
"My love!"
You may be sure she begged his pardon; and then, feeling
drowsy, he curled round in the kennel.
"Won't you play me to sleep," he asked, "on the nursery piano?"
and as she was crossing to the day-nursery he added
thoughtlessly, "And shut that window. I feel a draught."
"O George, never ask me to do that. The window must always
be left open for them, always, always."
Now it was his turn to beg her pardon; and she went into the
day-nursery and played, and soon he was asleep; and while he
slept, Wendy and John and Michael flew into the room.
Oh no. We have written it so, because that was the charming
arrangement planned by them before we left the ship; but
something must have happened since then, for it is not they
who have flown in, it is Peter and Tinker Bell.
Peter's first words tell all.
"Quick Tink," he whispered, "close the window; bar it! That's
right. Now you and I must get away by the door; and when
Wendy comes she will think her mother has barred her out;
and she will have to go back with me."
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Now I understand what had hitherto puzzled me, why when
Peter had exterminated the pirates he did not return to the island
and leave Tink to escort the children to the mainland. This
trick had been in his head all the time.
Instead of feeling that he was behaving badly he danced with
glee; then he peeped into the day-nursery to see who was playing.
He whispered to Tink, "It's Wendy's mother! She is a
pretty lady, but not so pretty as my mother. Her mouth is full
of thimbles, but not so full as my mother's was."
Of course he knew nothing whatever about his mother; but
he sometimes bragged about her.
He did not know the tune, which was "Home, Sweet Home,"
but he knew it was saying, "Come back, Wendy, Wendy,
Wendy"; and he cried exultantly, "You will never see Wendy
again, lady, for the window is barred!"
He peeped in again to see why the music had stopped, and
now he saw that Mrs. Darling had laid her head on the box,
and that two tears were sitting on her eyes.
"She wants me to unbar the window," thought Peter, "but I
won't, not I!"
He peeped again, and the tears were still there, or another
two had taken their place.
"She's awfully fond of Wendy," he said to himself. He was
angry with her now for not seeing why she could not have
Wendy.
The reason was so simple: "I'm fond of her too. We can't both
have her, lady."
But the lady would not make the best of it, and he was unhappy.
He ceased to look at her, but even then she would not
let go of him. He skipped about and made funny faces, but
when he stopped it was just as if she were inside him,
knocking.
"Oh, all right," he said at last, and gulped. Then he unbarred
the window. "Come on, Tink," he cried, with a frightful sneer at
the laws of nature; "we don't want any silly mothers;" and he
flew away.
Thus Wendy and John and Michael found the window open
for them after all, which of course was more than they deserved.
They alighted on the floor, quite unashamed of themselves,
and the youngest one had already forgotten his home.
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"John," he said, looking around him doubtfully, "I think I have
been here before."
"Of course you have, you silly. There is your old bed."
"So it is," Michael said, but not with much conviction.
"I say," cried John, "the kennel!" and he dashed across to
look into it.
"Perhaps Nana is inside it," Wendy said.
But John whistled. "Hullo," he said, "there's a man inside it."
"It's father!" exclaimed Wendy.
"Let me see father," Michael begged eagerly, and he took a
good look. "He is not so big as the pirate I killed," he said with
such frank disappointment that I am glad Mr. Darling was
asleep; it would have been sad if those had been the first
words he heard his little Michael say.
Wendy and John had been taken aback somewhat at finding
their father in the kennel.
"Surely," said John, like one who had lost faith in his
memory, "he used not to sleep in the kennel?"
"John," Wendy said falteringly, "perhaps we don't remember
the old life as well as we thought we did."
A chill fell upon them; and serve them right.
"It is very careless of mother," said that young scoundrel
John, "not to be here when we come back."
It was then that Mrs. Darling began playing again.
"It's mother!" cried Wendy, peeping.
"So it is!" said John.
"Then are you not really our mother, Wendy?" asked Michael,
who was surely sleepy.
"Oh dear!" exclaimed Wendy, with her first real twinge of remorse
[for having gone], "it was quite time we came back."
"Let us creep in," John suggested, "and put our hands over
her eyes."
But Wendy, who saw that they must break the joyous news
more gently, had a better plan.
"Let us all slip into our beds, and be there when she comes
in, just as if we had never been away."
And so when Mrs. Darling went back to the night-nursery to
see if her husband was asleep, all the beds were occupied. The
children waited for her cry of joy, but it did not come. She saw
them, but she did not believe they were there. You see, she
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saw them in their beds so often in her dreams that she thought
this was just the dream hanging around her still.
She sat down in the chair by the fire, where in the old days
she had nursed them.
They could not understand this, and a cold fear fell upon all
the three of them.
"Mother!" Wendy cried.
"That's Wendy," she said, but still she was sure it was the
dream.
"Mother!"
"That's John," she said.
"Mother!" cried Michael. He knew her now.
"That's Michael," she said, and she stretched out her arms
for the three little selfish children they would never envelop
again. Yes, they did, they went round Wendy and John and Michael,
who had slipped out of bed and run to her.
"George, George!" she cried when she could speak; and Mr.
Darling woke to share her bliss, and Nana came rushing in.
There could not have been a lovelier sight; but there was none
to see it except a little boy who was staring in at the window.
He had had ecstasies innumerable that other children can never
know; but he was looking through the window at the one joy
from which he must be for ever barred.
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Chapter 17
WHEN WENDY GREW UP
I hope you want to know what became of the other boys. They
were waiting below to give Wendy time to explain about them;
and when they had counted five hundred they went up. They
went up by the stair, because they thought this would make a
better impression. They stood in a row in front of Mrs. Darling,
with their hats off, and wishing they were not wearing their
pirate clothes. They said nothing, but their eyes asked her to
have them. They ought to have looked at Mr. Darling also, but
they forgot about him.
Of course Mrs. Darling said at once that she would have
them; but Mr. Darling was curiously depressed, and they saw
that he considered six a rather large number.
"I must say," he said to Wendy, "that you don't do things by
halves," a grudging remark which the twins thought was pointed
at them.
The first twin was the proud one, and he asked, flushing, "Do
you think we should be too much of a handful, sir? Because, if
so, we can go away."
"Father!" Wendy cried, shocked; but still the cloud was on
him. He knew he was behaving unworthily, but he could not
help it.
"We could lie doubled up," said Nibs.
"I always cut their hair myself," said Wendy.
"George!" Mrs. Darling exclaimed, pained to see her dear
one showing himself in such an unfavourable light.
Then he burst into tears, and the truth came out. He was as
glad to have them as she was, he said, but he thought they
should have asked his consent as well as hers, instead of treating
him as a cypher [zero] in his own house.
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"I don't think he is a cypher," Tootles cried instantly. "Do you
think he is a cypher, Curly?"
"No, I don't. Do you think he is a cypher, Slightly?"
"Rather not. Twin, what do you think?"
It turned out that not one of them thought him a cypher; and
he was absurdly gratified, and said he would find space for
them all in the drawing-room if they fitted in.
"We'll fit in, sir," they assured him.
"Then follow the leader," he cried gaily. "Mind you, I am not
sure that we have a drawing-room, but we pretend we have,
and it's all the same. Hoop la!"
He went off dancing through the house, and they all cried
"Hoop la!" and danced after him, searching for the drawingroom;
and I forget whether they found it, but at any rate they
found corners, and they all fitted in.
As for Peter, he saw Wendy once again before he flew away.
He did not exactly come to the window, but he brushed against
it in passing so that she could open it if she liked and call to
him. That is what she did.
"Hullo, Wendy, good-bye," he said.
"Oh dear, are you going away?"
"Yes."
"You don't feel, Peter," she said falteringly, "that you would
like to say anything to my parents about a very sweet subject?"
"No."
"About me, Peter?"
"No."
Mrs. Darling came to the window, for at present she was
keeping a sharp eye on Wendy. She told Peter that she had adopted
all the other boys, and would like to adopt him also.
"Would you send me to school?" he inquired craftily.
"Yes."
"And then to an office?"
"I suppose so."
"Soon I would be a man?"
"Very soon."
"I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things," he
told her passionately. "I don't want to be a man. O Wendy's
mother, if I was to wake up and feel there was a beard!"
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"Peter," said Wendy the comforter, "I should love you in a
beard;" and Mrs. Darling stretched out her arms to him, but he
repulsed her.
"Keep back, lady, no one is going to catch me and make me a
man."
"But where are you going to live?"
"With Tink in the house we built for Wendy. The fairies are to
put it high up among the tree tops where they sleep at nights."
"How lovely," cried Wendy so longingly that Mrs. Darling
tightened her grip.
"I thought all the fairies were dead," Mrs. Darling said.
"There are always a lot of young ones," explained Wendy,
who was now quite an authority, "because you see when a new
baby laughs for the first time a new fairy is born, and as there
are always new babies there are always new fairies. They live
in nests on the tops of trees; and the mauve ones are boys and
the white ones are girls, and the blue ones are just little sillies
who are not sure what they are."
"I shall have such fun," said Peter, with eye on Wendy.
"It will be rather lonely in the evening," she said, "sitting by
the fire."
"I shall have Tink."
"Tink can't go a twentieth part of the way round," she reminded
him a little tartly.
"Sneaky tell-tale!" Tink called out from somewhere round the
corner.
"It doesn't matter," Peter said.
"O Peter, you know it matters."
"Well, then, come with me to the little house."
"May I, mummy?"
"Certainly not. I have got you home again, and I mean to
keep you."
"But he does so need a mother."
"So do you, my love."
"Oh, all right," Peter said, as if he had asked her from politeness
merely; but Mrs. Darling saw his mouth twitch, and she
made this handsome offer: to let Wendy go to him for a week
every year to do his spring cleaning. Wendy would have preferred
a more permanent arrangement; and it seemed to her
that spring would be long in coming; but this promise sent
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Peter away quite gay again. He had no sense of time, and was
so full of adventures that all I have told you about him is only a
halfpenny-worth of them. I suppose it was because Wendy
knew this that her last words to him were these rather plaintive
ones:
"You won't forget me, Peter, will you, before spring cleaning
time comes?"
Of course Peter promised; and then he flew away. He took
Mrs. Darling's kiss with him. The kiss that had been for no one
else, Peter took quite easily. Funny. But she seemed satisfied.
Of course all the boys went to school; and most of them got
into Class III, but Slightly was put first into Class IV and then
into Class V. Class I is the top class. Before they had attended
school a week they saw what goats they had been not to remain
on the island; but it was too late now, and soon they
settled down to being as ordinary as you or me or Jenkins
minor [the younger Jenkins]. It is sad to have to say that the
power to fly gradually left them. At first Nana tied their feet to
the bed-posts so that they should not fly away in the night; and
one of their diversions by day was to pretend to fall off buses
[the English double-deckers]; but by and by they ceased to tug
at their bonds in bed, and found that they hurt themselves
when they let go of the bus. In time they could not even fly
after their hats. Want of practice, they called it; but what it
really meant was that they no longer believed.
Michael believed longer than the other boys, though they
jeered at him; so he was with Wendy when Peter came for her
at the end of the first year. She flew away with Peter in the
frock she had woven from leaves and berries in the Neverland,
and her one fear was that he might notice how short it had become;
but he never noticed, he had so much to say about
himself.
She had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old
times, but new adventures had crowded the old ones from his
mind.
"Who is Captain Hook?" he asked with interest when she
spoke of the arch enemy.
"Don't you remember," she asked, amazed, "how you killed
him and saved all our lives?"
"I forget them after I kill them," he replied carelessly.
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When she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would
be glad to see her he said, "Who is Tinker Bell?"
"O Peter," she said, shocked; but even when she explained he
could not remember.
"There are such a lot of them," he said. "I expect she is no
more."
I expect he was right, for fairies don't live long, but they are
so little that a short time seems a good while to them.
Wendy was pained too to find that the past year was but as
yesterday to Peter; it had seemed such a long year of waiting
to her. But he was exactly as fascinating as ever, and they had
a lovely spring cleaning in the little house on the tree tops.
Next year he did not come for her. She waited in a new frock
because the old one simply would not meet; but he never came.
"Perhaps he is ill," Michael said.
"You know he is never ill."
Michael came close to her and whispered, with a shiver,
"Perhaps there is no such person, Wendy!" and then Wendy
would have cried if Michael had not been crying.
Peter came next spring cleaning; and the strange thing was
that he never knew he had missed a year.
That was the last time the girl Wendy ever saw him. For a
little longer she tried for his sake not to have growing pains;
and she felt she was untrue to him when she got a prize for
general knowledge. But the years came and went without
bringing the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy
was a married woman, and Peter was no more to her than a
little dust in the box in which she had kept her toys. Wendy
was grown up. You need not be sorry for her. She was one of
the kind that likes to grow up. In the end she grew up of her
own free will a day quicker than other girls.
All the boys were grown up and done for by this time; so it is
scarcely worth while saying anything more about them. You
may see the twins and Nibs and Curly any day going to an office,
each carrying a little bag and an umbrella. Michael is an
engine-driver [train engineer]. Slightly married a lady of title,
and so he became a lord. You see that judge in a wig coming
out at the iron door? That used to be Tootles. The bearded man
who doesn't know any story to tell his children was once John.
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Wendy was married in white with a pink sash. It is strange to
think that Peter did not alight in the church and forbid the
banns [formal announcement of a marriage].
Years rolled on again, and Wendy had a daughter. This ought
not to be written in ink but in a golden splash.
She was called Jane, and always had an odd inquiring look,
as if from the moment she arrived on the mainland she wanted
to ask questions. When she was old enough to ask them they
were mostly about Peter Pan. She loved to hear of Peter, and
Wendy told her all she could remember in the very nursery
from which the famous flight had taken place. It was Jane's
nursery now, for her father had bought it at the three per cents
[mortgage rate] from Wendy's father, who was no longer fond
of stairs. Mrs. Darling was now dead and forgotten.
There were only two beds in the nursery now, Jane's and her
nurse's; and there was no kennel, for Nana also had passed
away. She died of old age, and at the end she had been rather
difficult to get on with; being very firmly convinced that no one
knew how to look after children except herself.
Once a week Jane's nurse had her evening off; and then it
was Wendy's part to put Jane to bed. That was the time for
stories. It was Jane's invention to raise the sheet over her
mother's head and her own, this making a tent, and in the awful
darkness to whisper:
"What do we see now?"
"I don't think I see anything to-night," says Wendy, with a
feeling that if Nana were here she would object to further
conversation.
"Yes, you do," says Jane, "you see when you were a little
girl."
"That is a long time ago, sweetheart," says Wendy. "Ah me,
how time flies!"
"Does it fly," asks the artful child, "the way you flew when
you were a little girl?"
"The way I flew? Do you know, Jane, I sometimes wonder
whether I ever did really fly."
"Yes, you did."
"The dear old days when I could fly!"
"Why can't you fly now, mother?"
135
"Because I am grown up, dearest. When people grow up they
forget the way."
"Why do they forget the way?"
"Because they are no longer gay and innocent and heartless.
It is only the gay and innocent and heartless who can fly."
"What is gay and innocent and heartless? I do wish I were
gay and innocent and heartless."
Or perhaps Wendy admits she does see something.
"I do believe," she says, "that it is this nursery."
"I do believe it is," says Jane. "Go on."
They are now embarked on the great adventure of the night
when Peter flew in looking for his shadow.
"The foolish fellow," says Wendy, "tried to stick it on with
soap, and when he could not he cried, and that woke me, and I
sewed it on for him."
"You have missed a bit," interrupts Jane, who now knows the
story better than her mother. "When you saw him sitting on the
floor crying, what did you say?"
"I sat up in bed and I said, 'Boy, why are you crying?'"
"Yes, that was it," says Jane, with a big breath.
"And then he flew us all away to the Neverland and the fairies
and the pirates and the redskins and the mermaid's lagoon,
and the home under the ground, and the little house."
"Yes! which did you like best of all?"
"I think I liked the home under the ground best of all."
"Yes, so do I. What was the last thing Peter ever said to you?"
"The last thing he ever said to me was, 'Just always be waiting
for me, and then some night you will hear me crowing.'"
"Yes."
"But, alas, he forgot all about me," Wendy said it with a
smile. She was as grown up as that.
"What did his crow sound like?" Jane asked one evening.
"It was like this," Wendy said, trying to imitate Peter's crow.
"No, it wasn't," Jane said gravely, "it was like this;" and she
did it ever so much better than her mother.
Wendy was a little startled. "My darling, how can you know?"
"I often hear it when I am sleeping," Jane said.
"Ah yes, many girls hear it when they are sleeping, but I was
the only one who heard it awake."
"Lucky you," said Jane.
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And then one night came the tragedy. It was the spring of
the year, and the story had been told for the night, and Jane
was now asleep in her bed. Wendy was sitting on the floor,
very close to the fire, so as to see to darn, for there was no other
light in the nursery; and while she sat darning she heard a
crow. Then the window blew open as of old, and Peter dropped
in on the floor.
He was exactly the same as ever, and Wendy saw at once
that he still had all his first teeth.
He was a little boy, and she was grown up. She huddled by
the fire not daring to move, helpless and guilty, a big woman.
"Hullo, Wendy," he said, not noticing any difference, for he
was thinking chiefly of himself; and in the dim light her white
dress might have been the nightgown in which he had seen her
first.
"Hullo, Peter," she replied faintly, squeezing herself as small
as possible. Something inside her was crying "Woman, Woman,
let go of me."
"Hullo, where is John?" he asked, suddenly missing the third
bed.
"John is not here now," she gasped.
"Is Michael asleep?" he asked, with a careless glance at Jane.
"Yes," she answered; and now she felt that she was untrue to
Jane as well as to Peter.
"That is not Michael," she said quickly, lest a judgment
should fall on her.
Peter looked. "Hullo, is it a new one?"
"Yes."
"Boy or girl?"
"Girl."
Now surely he would understand; but not a bit of it.
"Peter," she said, faltering, "are you expecting me to fly away
with you?"
"Of course; that is why I have come." He added a little
sternly, "Have you forgotten that this is spring cleaning time?"
She knew it was useless to say that he had let many spring
cleaning times pass.
"I can't come," she said apologetically, "I have forgotten how
to fly."
"I'll soon teach you again."
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"O Peter, don't waste the fairy dust on me."
She had risen; and now at last a fear assailed him. "What is
it?" he cried, shrinking.
"I will turn up the light," she said, "and then you can see for
yourself."
For almost the only time in his life that I know of, Peter was
afraid. "Don't turn up the light," he cried.
She let her hands play in the hair of the tragic boy. She was
not a little girl heart-broken about him; she was a grown woman
smiling at it all, but they were wet eyed smiles.
Then she turned up the light, and Peter saw. He gave a cry of
pain; and when the tall beautiful creature stooped to lift him in
her arms he drew back sharply.
"What is it?" he cried again.
She had to tell him.
"I am old, Peter. I am ever so much more than twenty. I grew
up long ago."
"You promised not to!"
"I couldn't help it. I am a married woman, Peter."
"No, you're not."
"Yes, and the little girl in the bed is my baby."
"No, she's not."
But he supposed she was; and he took a step towards the
sleeping child with his dagger upraised. Of course he did not
strike. He sat down on the floor instead and sobbed; and
Wendy did not know how to comfort him, though she could
have done it so easily once. She was only a woman now, and
she ran out of the room to try to think.
Peter continued to cry, and soon his sobs woke Jane. She sat
up in bed, and was interested at once.
"Boy," she said, "why are you crying?"
Peter rose and bowed to her, and she bowed to him from the
bed.
"Hullo," he said.
"Hullo," said Jane.
"My name is Peter Pan," he told her.
"Yes, I know."
"I came back for my mother," he explained, "to take her to
the Neverland."
"Yes, I know," Jane said, "I have been waiting for you."
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When Wendy returned diffidently she found Peter sitting on
the bed-post crowing gloriously, while Jane in her nighty was
flying round the room in solemn ecstasy.
"She is my mother," Peter explained; and Jane descended
and stood by his side, with the look in her face that he liked to
see on ladies when they gazed at him.
"He does so need a mother," Jane said.
"Yes, I know." Wendy admitted rather forlornly; "no one
knows it so well as I."
"Good-bye," said Peter to Wendy; and he rose in the air, and
the shameless Jane rose with him; it was already her easiest
way of moving about.
Wendy rushed to the window.
"No, no," she cried.
"It is just for spring cleaning time," Jane said, "he wants me
always to do his spring cleaning."
"If only I could go with you," Wendy sighed.
"You see you can't fly," said Jane.
Of course in the end Wendy let them fly away together. Our
last glimpse of her shows her at the window, watching them receding
into the sky until they were as small as stars.
As you look at Wendy, you may see her hair becoming white,
and her figure little again, for all this happened long ago. Jane
is now a common grown-up, with a daughter called Margaret;
and every spring cleaning time, except when he forgets, Peter
comes for Margaret and takes her to the Neverland, where she
tells him stories about himself, to which he listens eagerly.
When Margaret grows up she will have a daughter, who is to
be Peter's mother in turn; and thus it will go on, so long as children
are gay and innocent and heartless.
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