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A Paramount Picture. Peter and Wendy — Photoplay title ''Peter Pan.
BETTY BRONSON AS PETER PAN AND MARY
BRIAN AS WENDY.
PETER AND WENDY
BY
JAMES M. BARRIE
PHOTOPLAY TITLE
"PETER PAN"
ILLUSTRATED WITH SCENES
FROM THE PHOTOPLAY
A PARAMOUNT PICTURE
FEATURING BETTY BRONSON
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Made in the United Stot« o{ fijnencA
CcHTnaGHT, 1911, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
PAGE
I PETER BREAKS THROUGH . . . i
n THE SHADOW i4
m COME AWAY, COME AWAY! . . 28
IV THE FLIGHT 48
V THE ISLAND COME TRUE ... 62
VI THE LITTLE HOUSE iS
VII THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND 91
VIII THE MERMAIDS' LAGOON . . . loi
IX THE NEVER BIRD 119
X THE HAPPY HOME 124
XI WENDY'S STORY i34
XII THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED
OFF 146
XIII DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES? . .153
XIV THE PIRATE SHIP 166
XV "HOOK OR ME THIS TIME" ... 177
XVI THE RETURN HOME 192
XVII WHEN WENDY GREW UP .... 205
PETER AND WENDY
CHAPTER I
PETER BREAKS THROUGH
ALL children, except one, grow up. They soon
L 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 witli 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 I" 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, 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
PETER AND WENDY
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 right-hand 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 who know about stocks
and shares. Of course no one really knows, but
he quite seem.ed 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 pic-
2
PETER BREAKS THROUGH
tures 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. Dar-
ling's bed, holding her hand and calculating ex-
penses, 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 sug-
gestions 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 of-
fice, 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
3
PETER AND WENDY
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 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 New-
foundland dog, called Nana, who had belonged to
no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her.
She had always thought children important, how-
ever, and the Darlings had become acquainted
with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent
most of her spare time peeping into perambulators,
4
PETER BREAKS THROUGH
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
round your throat. She believed to her last day in
old-fashioned remedies like rhubarb leaf, and
made sounds of contempt over all this new-fan-
gled 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 days she
never once forgot his sweater, and she usually car-
ried 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 de-
spised 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 b raiding, and smoothed
out Wendy and made a dash at John's hair.
5
PETER AND WENDY
No nursery could possibly have been con-
ducted more correctly, and Mr. Darling knew it,
yet he sometimes wondered uneasily whether the
neighbours talked.
He had his position in the cit}^ 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 al-
lowed 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 v/as
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 yon could keep
awake (but of course you can't) you would see
6
PETER BREAKS THROUGH
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
und 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 morn-
ing, the naughtinesses 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 pret-
tier 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 be-
come 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 tem-
perature on a card, and these are probably roads
in the island, for the Neverland is always more
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,
7
PETER AND WENDY
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, threepence for
pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on, and
either these are part of the island or they are an-
other 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. 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 ad-
8
PETER BREAKS THROUGH
venture and another, but nicely crammed. When
you play at it by day with the chairs and table-
cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two
minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very
nearly real. That is why there are night-lights.
Occasionally in her travels through her chil-
dren's minds Mrs. Darling found things she could
not understand, and of these quite the most per-
plexing 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 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 remem-
bered 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.
9
PETER AND WENDY
"Besides," she said to Wendy, ''he would be
grown up by this time."
"Oh no, he is n'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 did n't know how she knew it, she just knew it.
Mrs. Darling consulted Mr. Darling, but he
smiled pooh-pooh. "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 trou-
blesome boy gave Mrs. Darling quite a shock.
Children have the strangest adventures with-
out 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
met their dead father and had a game with him.
It was in this casual way that Wendy one morn-
ing 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 I"
"Whatever do you mean, Wendy?"
"It is so naughty of him not to wipe," Wendy
said, sighing. She was a tidy child.
She explained in quite a matter-of-fact way that
lo
PETER BREAKS THROUGH
she thought Peter sometimes came to the nursery
in the night and sat on the foot of her bed and
played on his pipes to her. Unfortunately she
never woke, so she did n'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 n't 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 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,
PETER AND WENDY
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 ex-
traordinary 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 even-
ing 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 birth-
day 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. 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
12
PETER BREAKS THROUGH
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.
13
CHAPTER 11
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
14
THE SHADOW
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 dis-
turbing 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 round 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 oppor-
tunity came for telling her husband. Ah me I
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 hus-
band, while perhaps Nana was on the other side
of her, holding her hand.
"No, no," Mr. Darling always said, "I am re-
sponsible 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
15
PETER AND WENDY
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 I" 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, re-
calling fondly every smallest detail of that dread-
ful evening. It had begun so uneventfully, so
precisely like a hundred other evenings, with Nana
putting on the water for Michael's bath and carry-
ing him to it on her back.
"I won't go to bed," he had shouted, like one
16
THE SHADOW
who still believed that he had the last word on
the subject, "I won't, I won't. Nana, it is n't six
o'clock yet. Oh dear, oh dear, I sha'n't love you
any more, Nana. I tell you I won't be bathed, I
won't, I won't I"
Then Mrs. Darling had come in, wearing her
white evening-gown. She had dressed early be-
cause Wendy so loved to see 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 so 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 occa-
sion.
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 evening-
dress could not stand that.
17
PKrER AND WENDY
'1 do," she said, "I so want a third child."
"Boy or girl?" asked Michael, not too hope-
fully.
"Boy."
Then he had leapt into her arms. Such a little
thing for Mr. and Mrs. Darling and Nana to re-
call now, but not so little if that was to be Mi-
chael'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 him-
self; 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?"
"Matter I" he yelled; he really yelled. "This
tie, it will not tie." He became dangerously sar-
18
THE SHADOW
castic. "Not round my neck! Round the bed-
post I 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 was 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 I" says Mrs. Darling
now, recalling it.
"Our last romp I" Mr. Darling groaned.
"O George, do you remember Michael sud-
denly said to me, 'How did you get to know me,
mother? "
19
PETER AND WENDY
*1 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
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 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 he 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
20
THE SHADOW
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 I" 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 medi-
cine without a murmur. I said 'Thank you, kind
parents, for giving me bottles to make me 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 medi-
cine 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.
21
PETER AND WENDY
*T know where it is, father," Wendy cried, al-
ways 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 cheer-
ily, and then in rushed Wendy with the medicine
in a glass.
"I have been as quick as I could," she panted.
"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 sus-
picious 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.
22
THE SHADOW
"It's all very well to say you are waiting; so am
I waiting."
"Father's a cowardy custard."
"So are you a cowardy 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 I" 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 look-
ing 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
23
PETER AND WENDY
looked at him reproachfully as he poured the medi-
cine into Nana's bowl. "What fun I" he 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 him-
self, 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 com-
forted her boys, and Wendy hugged Nana.
"Much good," he said bitterly, "my wearing my-
self 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 I"
"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 I" 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."
24
THE SHADOW
The children wept, and Nana ran to him be-
seechingly, 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 chil-
dren to bed in unwonted silence and lit their night-
lights. They could hear 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 I
"Are you sure, Wendy*?"
"Oh yes."
Mrs. Darling quivered and went to the win-
25
PETER AND WENDY
dow. 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 I"
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 chil-
dren."
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
26
THE SHADOW
become glassy-eyed and seldom speak (winking
is the star language), but the little ones still won-
der. They are not really friendly to Peter, who
has 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 :
"Now, Peter!"
CHAPTER III
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 bum 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 has been
in all the drawers in the nurser}% 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
2S
COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
square, through which her figure could be seen to
the best advantage. She was slightly inclined to
embonpoint.
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 chil-
dren can never hear it, but if 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
29
PETER AND WENDY
water, and when they did not he was appalled.
He tried to stick it on with soap from the bath-
room, 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 inter-
ested.
"Boy," she said courteously, "why are you
crying^"
Peter could be exceedingly 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 r
"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."
30
COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
"What a funny address I"
Peter had a sinking. For the first time he felt
that perhaps it was a funny address.
"No, it isn't," he said.
"I mean," Wendy said nicely, remembering that
she was hostess, "is that what they put on the let-
ters?"
He wished she had not mentioned letters.
"Don't get any letters," he said contemptu-
ously.
"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 per-
sons. 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, look-
ing 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 I
Fortunately she knew at once what to do. "It
31
PETER AND WENDY
must be sewn on," she said, just a little patron-
isingly.
"What's sewn?" he asked.
"You're dreadfully ignorant."
"No, Fm not."
But she was exulting in his ignorance. "I shall
sew it on for you, my little man," she said, though
he was as tall as herself, and she got out her house-
wife, and sewed the shadow on to Peter's foot.
"I daresay it will hurt a little," she warned
him.
"Oh, I sha'n't cr}%" said Peter, who was already
of 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, boy like, 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 I"
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.
32
COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
"You conceit," she exclaimed, with frightful sar-
casm; "of course I did nothing!"
"You did a little," Peter said carelessly, and
continued to dance.
"A little !" she replied with hauteur. "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 listen-
ing 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 de-
clared, "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.
33
PETER AND WENDY
''Surely you know what a kiss is?" she asked,
aghast.
"I shall know when you give it to me," he re-
plied stiffly, and not to hurt his feelings 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 round
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 cus-
tomary 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 really
a happy question to ask him ; it was like an exami-
nation 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 man-
ner, by a touch on her night-gown, that he could
sit nearer her.
34
COME AWAY, COME AWAY !
"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 ex-
traordinarily 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 admira-
tion, 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. 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-h(Mne 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
35
PETER AND WENDY
a child says, 1 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. *T 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.
"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 im-
patiently. "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 came 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 gur-
gles 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. '*0 Peter,"
36
COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
she cried, "if she would only stand still and let me
see her I"
"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 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 a 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 apolo-
getically, "she is called Tinker Bell because she
mends the pots and kettles."
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 "
"Sometimes I do still."
"But where do you live mostly now?'
"With the lost boys."
37
PETER AND WENDY
"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 ex-
penses. I'm captain."
"What fun it must be I"
"Yes," said cunning Peter, "but we are rather
lonely. You see we have no female companion-
ship."
"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 re-
main 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 igno-
rance about kisses. "I thought you would want it
back," he said a little bitterly, and offered to re-
turn her the thimble.
38
COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
"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 some one were pulling my
hair."
"That must have been Tink. I never knev/ her
so naughty before."
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 under-
stood, 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 know any stories."
"How perfectly awful," Wendy said.
"Do you know," Peter asked, "why swallows
39
PETER AND WENDY
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
happy 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 1" 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
40
COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
she said, "Oh dear, I can't. Think of mummy!
Besides, I can't fly."
"Fll teach you."
"Oh, how lovely to fly."
"I'll teach you how to jump on the wind's back,
and then away we go."
"Oo I" 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."
"Ool"
"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 nurs-
ery 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
41
PETER AND WENDY
fascinating!" she cried. "Peter, would you teach
John and Michael to fly too?"
*lf 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 as-
sumed the awful craftiness of children listening
for soimds 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 through-
out the whole adventure. And thus when Liza
entered, holding Nana, the nursery seemed quite
its old self, very dark, and you could have sworn
you heard its three wicked inmates breathing an-
gelically as they 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 away from them, with a raisin still on
42
COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
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 per-
fectly 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 you 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 com-
43
PETER AND WENDY
munication. 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 scoun-
drels 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 hiding-place. "I say, Peter, can you
really fly?'
Instead of troubling to answer him Peter flew
round the room, taking the mantelpiece on the
way.
"How topping!" said John and Michael.
"How sweet I" cried Wendy.
"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
44
COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
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 syl-
lables, 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 wriggle your shoulders this way,'*
he said, "and let go."
They were all on their beds, and gallant Mi-
chael 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 bath-
room.
"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 al-
most nothing so delicious as that. Peter gave
Wendy a hand at first, but had to desist, Tink was
so indignant.
45
PETER AND WENDY
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.
Michael was ready: he wanted to see how long
it took him to do a billion miles. But Wendy
hesitated.
"Mermaids I" said Peter again.
"Ool"
"And there are pirates."
"Pirates," cried John, seizing his Sunday hat,
"let us go at once I"
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-grip-
ping 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 to 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
46
COME AWAY, COME AWAY!
sigh of relief, but there wiH 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 watch-
ing them. Once again the stars blew the window
open, and that smallest star of all called out :
"Cave, Peter!"
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.
47
CHAPTER IV
THE FLIGHT
"Second to the right, and straight on till morn-
ing."
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 so 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.
48
THE FLIGHT
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 pur-
sue 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 but-
ter, 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.
"There he goes again I" 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 Mi-
chael 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 clev-
erness 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 sud-
49
PETER AND WENDY
denly 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 fol-
low 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 I"
"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.
50
THE FLIGHT
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."
"After the twentieth try," Wendy reminded
him. "And even though we became good at pick-
ing 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 adven-
ture 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 happen-
51
PETER AND WENDY
ing. 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 whis-
pered to her, "always if you see me forgetting you,
just keep on saying 'I'm Wendy,' and then I'll re-
member."
Of course this was rather unsatisfactory. How-
ever, 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 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 island was out
52
THE FLIGHT
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 recognised 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 !"
"W^endy, look at the turtles burying their eggs
in the sand."
"I say, John, I see your flamingo with the
broken leg I"
"Look, Michael, there's your cave I"
"John, what's that in the brushwood?'
"It's a wolf with her whelps. Wendy, I do
believe that's your little whelp I"
"There's my boat, John, with her sides stove in !"
"No, it isn't I W^hy, we burned your boat."
"That's her, at any rate. I say, John, I see the
smoke of the redskin camp !"
53
PETER AND WENDY
"Where? Show me, and I'll tell you by the
way the smoke curls whether they are on the war-
path."
"There, just across the Mysterious River."
*T see now. Yes, they are on the war-path
right enough."
Peter was a little annoyed with them for know-
ing 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 in. You even liked Nana to say that
this was just the mantelpiece over here, and that
the Neverland was all make-believe.
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
54
THE FLIGHT
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, listen-
ing 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 cau-
tiously.
"There's a pirate asleep in the pampas just be-
neath us," Peter told him. "If you like, we'll go
down and kill him."
55
PETER AND WENDY
'*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.
"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?"
56
THE FLIGHT
"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, be-
cause Tink was flying with them, and in her light
they could distinguish each other. Unfortunately
she could not fly so slowly as they, and so she had
to go round and round them in a circle in which
57
PETER AND WENDY
they moved as in a halo. Wendy quite liked it,
until Peter pointed out the drawback.
"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 I"
"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 I"
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's
the only other thing fairies can't do."
58
THE FLIGHT
"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 hurr}^ 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 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 lone-
liness was dreadful. "If only something would
make a sound I" 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.
59
PETER AND WENDY
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 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, some-
times she was all good. Fairies have to be one
thing or the other, because being so small they un-
fortunately have room for one feeling only at a
time. They are, however, allowed to change, only
60
THE FLIGHT
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 under-
stand, 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."
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 stag-
gering in her flight, she followed Tink to her
doom.
6t
CHAPTER V
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 red-
skins 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 all
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
82
THE ISLAND COME TRUE
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 cap-
tain. The boys on the island vary, of course, in
numbers, according as they get killed and so on;
and when they seem to be glowing 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 bears slain by
themselves, in which they are so round and furry
that when they fall they roll. They have there-
fore become very sure-footed.
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 comer; 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 sweep-
ing 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
63
PETER AND WENDY
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, and she thinks you
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, fol-
lowed 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, 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 no. Last come the Twins, who cannot be
described because we should be sure to be describ-
ing 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
aooloeetic sort of way.
64
THE ISLAND COME TRUE
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,
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 listen-
ing, 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 Guadjo-
mo. Here is Bill Jukes, every inch of him tat-
tooed, the same Bill Jukes who got six dozen on
the Walrus from Flint before he would drop the
bag of moidores; 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
65
PETER AND WENDY
to speak, without offence, and was the only Non-
conformist in Hook's crew; and Noodler, whose
hands were fixed on backwards ; and Robt. Mull ins
and Alf Mason and many another ruffian long
known and feared on the Spanish Main.
In the midst of them, the blackest and largest
jewel 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 and blackavized, 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 coun-
tenance. 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
was a raconteur of repute. He was never more
sinister than when he was most polite, which is
probably the truest test of breeding; and the ele-
66
THE ISLAND COME TRUE
gance of his diction, even when he was swearing,
no less than the distinction of his demeanour,
showed him one of a different caste from his crew.
A man of indomitable courage, it was said of him
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 attrire as-
sociated with the name of Charles 11. , 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. Sky-
lights lurches clumsily against him, ruffling his
lace collar; the hook shoots forth, there is a tear-
ing 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 war-path, which is not visible to inex-
perienced 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
67
PETER AND WENDY
boys as well as of pirates, for these are the Pic-
caninny 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 and the
belle of the Piccaninnies, coquettish, cold and
amorous 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 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 fiee 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
68
THE ISLAND COME TRUE
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 indefi-
nitely 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,
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 Cin-
derella."
They talked of Cinderella, and Tootles was con-
fident that his mother must have been very like
her.
It was only in Peter's absence that they could
69
PETER AND WENDY
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 father, 'Oh, how I
wish I had a cheque-book of my own!' I don't
know what a cheque-book is, but I should just love
to give my mother one."
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 ex-
ception of Nibs, who has darted away to recon-
noitre, 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
70
THE ISLAND COME TRUE
trunk as large as a boy. These are the seven en-
trances to the home under the ground, for which
Hook has been searching in vain these many
moons. Will he find it to-night?
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 I" he cried, writhing.
Now for the first time we hear the voice of
Hook. It was a black voice. "Put back that pis-
tol 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 wrig-
gled 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.
"Not now, Smee," Hook said darkly. "He is
only one, and I want to mischief all the seven.
Scatter and look foi^ them."
71
PETER AND WENDY
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 lifcc
He spoke long and earnestly, but what it was all
about Smee, who was rather stupid, did not know
in the least.
Anon he caught the word Peter.
"Most of all," Hook was saying passionately,
*T want their captain, Peter Pan. 'Twas he cut
off my arm." He brandished the hook threaten-
ingly. "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 bom 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
72
THE ISLAND COME TRUE
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 a sort of compli-
ment."
"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."
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 chinmey!" they both
exclaimed.
73
PETER AND WENDY
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 chatter-
ing. The pirates listened grimly, and then re-
placed 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."
74
THE ISLAND COME TRUE
He burst into laughter, not hollow laughter now,
but honest laughter. "Aha, they will die I"
Smee had listened with growing admiration.
"It's the wickedest, prettiest policy ever I heard
of I" he cried, and in their exultation they danced
and sang :
"Avast, belay, when I appear,
By fear they're overtook,
Nought's left upon your bones w^hen you
Have shaken claws with Cook."
They began the verse, but they never finished
it, for another sound broke in and stilled them. It
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.
75
PETER AND WENDY
"Save me, save me I" 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 simul-
taneously.
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 ad-
vanced upon them in this 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, Toor
Wendy.' "
"Poor Wendy?"
"I remember," said Slightly instantly, "there
are birds called Wendies "
76 .
^ <
o
■So
i O
THE ISLAND COME TRUE
"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 direc-
tion, 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.
77
CHAPTER VI
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 it 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.
78
THE LITTLE HOUSE
"A lady to take care of us at last," said one of
the twins, "and you have killed her I"
They were sorry for him, but sorrier for them-
selves, and when he took a step nearer them they
turned from him.
Tootles' face was very white, but there was a dig-
nity 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, Tretty
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."
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. "Greeting, 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?"
79
PETER AND WENDY
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, 'T 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, becom-
ing troubled. "She flew this way."
"Ah me!" one voice said, and another said,
*'0h, 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, letPetersee."
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. "Per-
haps 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.
80
THE LITTLE HOUSE
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 I"
Wonderful to relate, Wendy had raised her
arm. Nibs bent over her and listened reverently.
"I think she said Toor Tootles,' " he whispered.
"She lives," Peter said briefly.
Slightly cried instantly, "The Wendy lady
lives."
Then Peter knelt beside her and found his but-
ton. 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 be-
cause the Wendy lives."
81
PETER AND WENDY
Then they had to tell Peter of Tink's crime, and
almost never had they seen him look so stem.
"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 them.
But what to do with Wendy in her present
delicate state of health ?
"Let us carry her down into the house," Curly
suggested.
"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
82
THE LITTLE HOUSE
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," and as he said
it some of the other boys rushed on carrying
branches for the building of the house. "Look at
them!" he cried.
83
PETER AND WENDY
ce
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.
"For Wendy?" John said, aghast. "Why, she
is only a girl I"
"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
first," Peter ordered. "Then we shall build the
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 disap-
peared, 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-
84
THE LITTLE HOUSE
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," anxiously replied
Slightly, 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 I" 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.
In the meantime the wood had been alive with
the sound of axes ; almost everything needed for a
s:osy dwelling already lay at Wendy's feet.
85
PETER AND WENDY
"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 re-
spectfully 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 great-
est good luck the branches they had brought were
sticky with red sap, and all the ground was car-
peted 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 rather greedily:
"Oh, really next I think I'll have
Gay windows all about,
With roses peeping in, you know,
And babies peeping out."
86
THE LITTLE HOUSE
With a blow of their fists they made windows,
and large yellow leaves were the blinds. But
roses ?
"Roses I" cried Peter sternly.
Quickly they made-believe to grow the loveliest
roses up the walls.
Babies'?
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 pre-
tended 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 eye. 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 knockero
Absolutely finished now, they thought.
Not a 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
87
PETER AND WENDY
snatched the hat off John's head, knocked out the
bottom, and put the hat on the roof. The little
house was so pleased to have such a capital chim-
ney that, as if to say thank you, smoke imme-
diately 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 im-
pressions 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.
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
88
THE LITTLE HOUSE
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 I" 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 out-
side 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
89
PETER AND WENDY
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.
yc
CHAPTER VII
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 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 mas-
tered the action you are able to do these things
without thinking of them, and then 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
91
PETER AND WENDY
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 ar-
dently 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 if you wanted to go fishing,
and in this floor grew stout mushrooms of a charm-
ing colour, which were used as stools. A Never
tree tried hard to grow in the centre of 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 al-
most 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 wash-
ing. The bed was tilted against the wall by day,
and let down at 6.30, when it filled nearly half the
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THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND
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 a baby, and
he was the littlest, and you know what women
are, and the short and the 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 home by a
tiny curtain, which Tink, who was most fastidious,
always kept drawn when dressing or undressing.
No woman, however large, could have had a more
exquisite boudoir 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 the fairy dealers; the wash-stand was Pie-crust
and reversible, the chest of drawers an authentic
Charming the Sixth, and the carpet and rugs of 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
93
PETER AND WENDY
herself. Tink was very contemptuous of the rest
of the house, as indeed was perhaps inevitable, and
her chamber, though beautiful, looked rather con-
ceited, having the appearance of a nose perma-
nently 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 in the
evening, she was never above ground. The cook-
ing, I can tell you, kept her nose to the pot, and
even if there was nothing in it, even though 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 just to feel stodgy, 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 get-
ting 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
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THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND
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 stock-
ings, 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 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 nobly anxious to do her duty, she tried to fix
the old life in their minds by setting them cxami-
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PETER AND WENDY
nation 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 ques-
tions—"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 Carakters 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 de-
spised all mothers except Wendy, and for another
he was the only boy on the island who could
96
THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND
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 for-
getting too.
Adventures, of course, as we shall see, were of
daily occurrence; but about this time Peter in-
vented, with Wendy's help, a new game that fas-
cinated 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 such a
comic thing to do. He boasted that he had gone a
walk 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 for-
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PETER AND WENDY
gotten 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 affair, and especially interest-
ing as showing one of Peter's peculiarities, which
was that in the middle of a fight he would sud-
denly change sides. At the Gulch, when victory
was still in the balance, sometimes leaning this
way and sometimes that, he called out, "I'm red-
skin 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 redskin; and
of course this would have ended the fight had not
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THE HOME UNDER THE GROUND
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 ad-
venture 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.
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 la-
goon, which would of course be telling two adven-
tures rather than just one. A shorter adventure,
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PETER AND WENDY
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 would 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, per-
haps fairest to stick to the lagoon.
lOO
CHAPTER VIII
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 mo-
ments you might see the surf and hear the mer-
maids 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
n€ver had a civil word from one of them. When
she stole softly to the edge of the lagoon she might
lOl
PETER AND WENDY
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 ac-
cident, but intentionally.
They treated all the boys in the same way, ex-
cept 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 v/hich to see them is
at the turn of the moon, when they utter strange
wailing cries ; but the lagoon is dangerous for mor-
tals 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 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
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THE MERMAIDS' LAGOON
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 mer-
maids 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,
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PETER AND WENDY
and when she looked up, the lagoon that had al-
ways 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*?
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 cc arse she should have roused the children at
once ; r.ot 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
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THE MERMAIDS' LAGOON
as a dog, and with one warning cry he roused the
others.
He stood motionless, one hand to his ear.
"Pirates I" 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 I"
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 chiefs 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 boast that the wind of his
105
PETER AND WENDY
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 there 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.
106
THE MERMAIDS' LAGOON
"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 mouth.
But it was stayed even in the act, for "Boat
ahoy I" rang over the lagoon in Hook's voice, but
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 I" 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
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PETER AND WENDY
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.
"What's up, captain?"
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 I" cried Starkey.
"What's a mother?" asked the ignorant Smee.
Wendy was so shocked that she exclaimed, "He
doesn't know I" and always after this she felt that
108
THE MERMAIDS' LAGOON
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?"
"1 heard nothing," said Starkey, raising the lan-
tern 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.
"See," said Hook in answer to Smee's question,
"that is a mother. What a lesson I 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 mo-
ment 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
109
PETER AND WENDY
boat: the boys we will make walk the plank, and
Wendy shall be our mother."
Again Wendy forgot herself.
"Never I" she cried, and bobbed.
"What was that?"
But they could see nothing. They thought it
must have been but 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 I" 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 is here I" 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."
"It is passing queer," Smee said, and they all
fidgeted uncomfortably. Hook raised his voice,
but there was a quiver in it.
no
THE MERMAIDS' LAGOON
''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 de-
manded.
"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 I" 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 cod-
fish!" 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
111
PETER AND WENDY
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 greatest pirates, and it some-
times 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 V asked Hook.
"No."
"Mineral?"
"No."
"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 vou in England?"
112
THE MERMAIDS' LAGOON
"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 I" crowed Peter. "Do
you give it up*?"
Of course in his pride he was carrying the game
too far, and the miscreants 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 a fierce strug-
gle, in which the cutlass was torn from the pirate's
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PETER AND WENDY
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 confusion some struck at their
own side. The corkscrew of Smee got Tootles in
the fourth rib, but he was himself pinked 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 they had a sinking. Had
it been so with Peter at that moment I would ad-
mit it. After all, this was the only man that the
114
THE MERMAIDS' LAGOON
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 than 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 he 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 sup-
pose 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.
A few minutes afterwards the other boys saw
Hook in the water striking wildly for the ship ; no
elation on his pestilent face now, only white fear,
for the crocodile was in dogged pursuit of him. On
ordinary occasions the boys would have swum
115
PETER AND WENDY
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 mer-
maids. "They must be swimming back or flying,"
the boys concluded. They were not very anxious,
they had such faith in Peter. They chuckled, boy-
like, 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 I"
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"
116
THE MERMAIDS' LAGOON
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?"
"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 say-
ing 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!"
117
PETER AND WENDY
"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 tremor 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 ad-
venture."
118
CHAPTER IX
THE NEVER BIRD
The last sounds 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 moving
on the lagoon. He thought it was a piece of float-
ing 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 defi-
nite purpose, for it was fighting the tide, and
sometimes winning; and when it won, Peter, al-
ways 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
119
PETER AND WENDY
Peter on her 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 tor-
mented her. I can suppose only that, like Mrs.
Darling and the rest of them, she was melted be-
cause he had all his first teeth.
She called out to him what she had come for,
and he called out to her what was she 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 could pretend that this was such a story, and say
that Peter replied intelligently to the Never bird;
but truth is best, and I want to tell only what
really happened. Well, not only could they not
understand each other, but they forgot their man-
ners.
"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 an-
120
THE NEVER BIRD
swered. "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 I"
Then rather curiously they both snapped out
the same remark.
"Shut up I"
"Shut up I"
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 flut-
tered 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.
121
PETER AND WENDY
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 buc-
caneers of long ago to mark the site of buried
treasure. The children had discovered the glitter-
ing hoard, and when in 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 mo-
ment 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 in a place where the bird would easily find
122
THE NEVER BIRD
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 yoimgsters 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 ban-
dages; but Wendy, though glorying in having
them all home again safe and sound, was scandal-
ised 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.
123
CHAPTER X
THE HAPPY HOME
One important result of the brush 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 await-
ing 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 before him; and he liked
this tremendously, so that it was not leally 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 pro-
tecting 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."
124
THE HAPPY HOME
She was far too pretty to cringe in this way, but
Peter thought it his due, and he would answer con-
descendingly, "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 private opin-
ion 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, be-
cause 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.
This meal happened to be a make-believe tea,
125
PETER AND WENDY
and they sat round the board, guzzling in their
greed; and really, what with their chatter and
recriminations, the noise, as Wendy said, was posi-
tively deafening. To be sure, she did not mind
noise, but she simply would not have them grab-
bing things, and then excusing themselves by say-
ing 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 say-
ing, "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.
126
THE HAPPY HOME
"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.
"I don't suppose," Tootles said diffidently,
"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, "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."
127 _
PETER AND WENDY
''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, "Fm 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 Michaol, "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 j&re. It had become a very fa-
miliar scene this in the home under the ground,
but we are looking on it for the last time.
There was a step above, and Wendy, you may
be sure, was the first to recognise 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
128
THE HAPPY HOME
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.
"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 I" cried Wendy, "the mother of such an
armful, dance I"
"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.
129
PETER AND WENDY
"People of our figure, Wendy !"
"But it is only among our own progeny."
'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 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 shoul-
der.
"Dear Peter," she said, "with such a large fam-
ily, of course, I have now passed my best, but you
don't want to 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 make-believe, isn't it, that I am their
father?"
"Oh yes," Wendy said primly.
130
THE HAPPY HOME
"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 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 some-
thing 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, eaves-
dropping, squeaked out something impudent.
"She says she glories in being abandoned,"
Peter interpreted.
131
PETER AND WENDY
He had a sudden idea. "Perhaps Tink wants
to be my mother?"
"You silly ass I" cried Tinker Bell in a pas-
sion.
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 be-
fore 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 fin-
ished, 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, and the beginning
132
THE HAPPY HOME
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 pre-
tend 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.
^33
CHAPTER XI
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 them.
"There was a lady also, and "
"O mummy," cried the first twin, "you mean
that there is a lady also, don't you? Sh£ 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 just glad."
"Oh dear," sighed Wendy.
"Little less noise there," Peter called out, de-
termined that she should have fair play, however
beastly a story it might be in his opinion.
WENDY'S STORY
"The gentleman's name,'* Wendy continued,
"was Mr. Darling, and her name was Mrs.
Darling."
"I knew them," John said, to annoy the others.
'T think I knew them," said Michael rather
doubtfully.
"They were married, you know," explained
Wendy, "and what do you think they had?"
"White rats I" cried Nibs, inspired.
"No."
"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."
"Do you hear that, John? I am a descen-
dant."
"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 stor}%" said Nibs.
"They flew away," Wendy continued, "to the
Neverland, where the lost children are."
"I just thought they did," Curly broke in excit-
edly. "I don't know how it is, but I just thought
they did I"
135
PETER AND WENDY
"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 feel-
ings 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 par-
ents one jot.
"Think of the empty beds!"
"Ool"
"It's awfully sad," the first twin said cheer-
fully.
"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, hit-
ting Nibs with a pillow. "Do you like a mother's
love, Nibs 9"
"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;
1^6
WENDY'S STORY
so they stayed away for years and had a lovely
time."
"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 ac-
companying 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
137
PETER AND WENDY
of special attention we nobly return for it, confi-
dent 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 can-
dour he told them what he had hitherto concealed.
"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
138
WENDY'S STORY
so quickly as a child when he should give in.
"Wendy, let us 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 arrange-
ments?"
"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 Never-
land that, every time you breathe, a grown-up
dies; and Peter was killing them off vindictively
as fast as possible.
139
PETER AND WENDY
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 threaten-
ingly.
"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
ihem to turn.
"Tootles," she cried, "I appeal to you."
Was it not strange? she appealed to Tootles,
iqviite the silliest one.
Grandly, however, did Tootles respond. For
that one moment he dropped his silliness and
5poke 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 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
140
WENDY'S STORY
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 an-
swer, 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 deter-
mined 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^
This made her leap to the floor. "Who said I
wasn't getting up?" she cried.
In the meantime the boys were gazing very for-
lornly at Wendy, now equipped with John and
Michael for the journey. By this time they were
141
PETER AND WENDY
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 draw-
ing-room; they can be hidden behind 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
142
WENDY'S STORY
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 medici-
nal quality. On this occasion, however, she did
not give Peter his draught, 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 pipes. She had to
run about after him, though it was rather undig-
nified.
"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 re-
membered 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.
143
PETER AND WENDY
"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 uncom-
fortable 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 blubber-
ing; 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, as there was no indica-
tion that he would prefer a thimble.
"You will remember about changing your flan-
nels, 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 people. "Are you ready,
Tinker Bell?" he called out.
144
WENDY'S STORY
"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 attack upon the red-
skins. Above, where all had been so still, the air
was rent with shrieks and the clash of steel. Be-
low, 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 direc-
tion; 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.
CHAPTER XII
THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED OFF
The pirate attack had been a complete surprise:
a sure proof that the unscrupulous Hook had con-
ducted 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 sum-
mit 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
^46
THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED OFF
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 intima-
tion 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 implic-
itly to his honour, and their whole action of the
night stands out in marked contrast to his. They
left nothing undone that was consistent 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
moccasins 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 him-
147
PETER AND WENDY
self and wait for just before the dawn. Every-
thing being thus mapped out with almost diaboli-
cal 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 ex-
quisite 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 the 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 oif till the night was
nearly spent; on he pounded with no policy but
to fall to. 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, the 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
148
THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED OFF
at the stake. For them the happy hunting-grounds ,
now. They knew it; but as their fathers' sons
they acquitted themselves. Even then they had
time to gather in a phalanx 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 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 Pan-
ther, 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
H9
PETER AND WENDY
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 genius with which it was carried out.
What were his own feelings about himself at
that triumphant moment? Fain 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 crocodile, but even this
and the increased insecurity of life to which it led,
owing to the crocodile's pertinacity, hardly ac-
150
THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED OFF
count for a vindictiveness so relentless and malig-
nant. 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 to ram them down with
poles.
In the meantime, what of the boys? We have
seen them at the first clang of weapons, turned as
it were into stone figures, open-mouthed, all ap-
pealing 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?
151
PETER AND WENDY
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 tom-tom; it is always their sign of vic-
tory."
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. To
his amazement Hook signed to him to beat the
tom-tom, and slowly there came to Smee an under-
standing 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.
"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. Rap-
idly and silently Hook gave his orders : one man to
each tree, and the others to arrange themselves in
a line two yards apart.
152
CHAPTER XIII
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^ 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
'53
PETER AND WENDY
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 this job the black pirate had cut a rope into
nine equal pieces. All went well with the trussing
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 with which
to tie a knot. The pirates kicked him in their rage,
just as you kick the parcel (though in 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 his secret^
which was this, that no boy so blown out could use
DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?
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 re-
gretted 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 subter-
ranean caverns of his mind crossed his lips; he
merely signed that the captives were to be con-
veyed 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 itj and it did Peter a bad service. It
PETER AND WENDY
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 a gentle
breeze which had arisen might play refreshingly
through his hair. 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 accus-
tomed to the dim light various objects in the home
under the trees took shape; but the only one on
156
DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?
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 chil-
dren left, to play gaily on his pipes: no doubt
rather a forlorn attempt to prove to him.self 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 in-
vention, 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 sub-
jected him. But on this occasion he had fallen at
once into a dreamless sleep. One arm dropped
157
PETER AND WENDY
over the edge of the bed, one leg was 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 compas-
sion stir his sombre breast? The man was not
wholly evil; he loved flowers (I have been told)
and sweet music (he was himself no mean per-
former on the harpsichord) ; and, let it be frankly
admitted, the idyllic nature of the scene shook 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 ap-
pearance as he slept. The open mouth, the droop-
ing arm, the arched knee: they were such a per-
sonification 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 dis-
regarded 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 discov-
ered an obstacle, the door of Slightly's tree. It
did not entirely fill the aperture, and he had been
158
DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?
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 him-
self 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 straightway, and immediately he knew that
the sleeper was in his power.
Lest he should be taken alive, Hook always car-
ried about his person a dreadful drug, blended by
himself of all the death-dealing rings that had
come into his possession. These he had boiled
down into a yellow liquid quite unknown to sci-
ence, 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 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,
159
PETER AND WENDY
fiolding 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 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 his door. Unlike Slightly's
-door it filled the aperture, 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.
160
DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?
"What is it?'
"Oh, you could never guess I" she cried, and
offered him three guesses. "Out with it I" he
shouted, and in one ungrammatical sentence, as.
long as the ribbons conjurers 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 sol
"I'll rescue her I" 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.
"No I" shrieked Tinker Bell, who had heard
Hook muttering about his deed as he sped through
the forest.
"Why not?'
"It is poisoned."
"Poisoned I Who could have poisoned it?"
"Hook."
"Don't be silly. How could Hook have got
down here?"
Alas, Tinker Bell could not explain this, foi
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."
i6i
PETER AND WENDY
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 reel-
ing 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.
162
DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?
Peter flung out his arms. There were no chil-
dren there, and it was night time; but he ad-
dressed all who might be dreaming of the Never-
land, 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.
"Do you believe?" he cried.
Tink sat up in bed almost briskly to listen to
her fate.
She fancied she heard answers in the affirma-
tive, 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 little 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 liked 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 with weapons and
163
PETER AND WENDY
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 the 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. But in what direction, for he could not be
sure that the children had been taken to the ship^
A slight fall of snow had obliterated all foot-
marks; 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 some-
thing 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
the trees, for instance, Curly would drop seeds,
and Wendy would leave her handkerchief at some
important place. But morning was needed to
search for such guidance, and he could not wait.
The upper world had called him, but would give
no help.
164
DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?
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.
»65
CHAPTER XIV
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 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 pa-
thetic, 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 al-
most everything else, Smee was quite unconscious.
166
THE PIRATE SHIP
A few of the pirates leant over the bulwarks
drinking in the miasma 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 skilfully to this side or that out
of Hook's reach, lest he should claw them me-
chanically in passing.
Hook trod the deck in thought. O man un-
fathomable. It was his hour of triumph. Peter
had been removed for ever from his path, and all
the other boys were on the brig, about to walk the
plank. It was his grimmest deed since the days
when he had brought Barbecue to heel ; and know-
ing as we do how vain a tabernacle is man, could
we be surprised had he now paced the deck un-
steadily, 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 him-
self on board ship in the quietude of the night. It
was because he was so terribly alone. This in-
scrutable man never felt more alone than when
surrounded by his dogs. They were socially so in-
ferior 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
167
PETER AND WENDY
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 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 de-
generated, 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 to-
day?" was their eternal question.
'Tame, fame, that glittering bauble, it is
mine I" 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 himself feared Barbecue."
"Barbecue, Flint — what house?" came the cut-
ting 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
i68
THE PIRATE SHIP
his tallow 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. It was as if Peter's terrible oath had
boarded the ship. 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 I" It was in his darkest hours only that
he referred to himself in the third person.
"No little children love me I"
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 mut-
tered to himself, staring at Smee, who was hem-
ming placidly, under the conviction that all chil-
dren feared him.
Feared him I Feared Smee I There was not a
child on board the brig that night who did not al-
ready love him. He had said horrid things to
them and hit them with the palm of his hand, be-
cause 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 lov-
able I Hook itched to do it, but it seemed too
brutal. Instead, he revolved this mystery in his
169
PETER AND WENDY
mind: why do they find Smee lovable? He pur-
sued 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 it-
self—"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.
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 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 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.
"Quiet, you scugs," he cried, "or I'll cast an-
chor in you"; and at once the din was hushed.
"Are all the children chained, so that they cannot
fly away?'
"Ay, ay."
170
THE PIRATE SHIP
"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 respon-
sibility on an absent person; and though a some-
what 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 pi-
rate, 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?"
171
PETER AND WENDY
"I don't think so," said the first twin, as clevei
as the others. "Nibs, would "
"Stow this gab," roared Hook, and the spokes-
men were dragged back. "You, boy," he said, ad-
dressing 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."
"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 I" he cried, banging the barrel in
front of Hook.
172
THE PIRATE SHIP
"And I refuse," cried Michael.
"Rule Britannia I" 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 de-
spised 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 writ-
ten it on several. But as the boys gathered round
her she had no thought, of course, save for them.
"So, my beauty," said Plook, as if he spoke in
syrup, "you are to see your children walk the
plank."
Fine gentleman 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
173
PETER AND WENDY
gloatingly, "for a mother's last words to her chil-
dren."
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 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 I" 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.
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
174
THE PIRATE SHIP
took a step toward Wendy. His intention was to
turn her face so that she should see the boys walk-
ing 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 direc-
tion ; 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 spec-
tators.
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 know-
ing 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 his knees along the deck 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 bulwark? that he spoke.
i?5
PETER AND WENDY
*^ide 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 this 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 arouse suspicion. Then
he went on ticking.
CHAPTER XV
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 sud-
denly 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 pe-
culiar about it, but by and by he remembered that
it had not been ticking. At first he thought this
eerie, but soon he concluded rightly that the clock
had run down.
Without giving a thought to what might be the
feelings of a fellow-creature thus abruptly de-
prived 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
177
PETER AND WENDY
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 all 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 to board the brig by the 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 croco-
dile.
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. Then he realized that
he was doing it himself, and in a flash he under-
stood the situation. "How clever of me I" he
178
''HOOK OR ME THIS TIME"
thought at once, and signed to the boys not to
burst into applause.
It was at this moment that Ed Teynte the quar-
termaster emerged from the forecastle and came
along the deck. Now, reader, time what hap-
pened 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 over-
board. There was a splash, and then silence.
How long has it taken?
"One I" (Slightly had begun to count.)
None too soon, Peter, every inch of him on tip-
toe, 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 his spec-
tacles. "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 :
179
PETER AND WENDY
"Yo ho, yo ho, the frisky plank,
You walks along it so.
Till It goes down and you goes down
To Davy Jones below!"
To terrorise the prisoners the more, though with
a certain loss of dignity, he danced along an imag-
inary plank, grimacing at them as he sang; and
when he finished he cried, "Do you want a touch
of the cat before you walk the plank'?"
At that they fell on their knees. "No, no!"
they cried so piteously that ever}^ pirate smiled.
"Fetch the cat, Jukes," said Hook, "it's in the
cabin."
The cabin ! Peter was in the cabin ! The chil-
dren 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
180
"HOOK OR ME THIS TIME"
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, hag-
gard.
"What's the matter with Bill Jukes, you dog'?"
hissed Hook, towering over him.
"The matter wi' him is he's dead, stabbed," re-
plied Cecco in a hollow voice.
"BUI Jukes dead I" cried the startled pirates.
"7 be cabin's as black as a pit," Cecco said, al-
most 0bbering, "but there is something terrible in
the; c; the thing you heard crowing."
TW exultation of the boys, the lowering looks
oi tb i pirates, both were seen by Hook.
"^ ^oco," he said in his most steely voice, "go
bad': a ad fetch me out that doodle-doo."
( !ecco, bravest of the brave, cowered before his
captain, crying, "No, no"; but Hook was purring
t(7 his claw.
"Did you say you would go, Cecco?" he said
musingly.
Cecco went, first flinging up his arms despair-
ingly. There was no more singing, all listened
now; and again came a death-screech and again a
crow.
No one spoke except Slightly. "Three," he said.
181
PETER AND WENDY
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 I" 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 it 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 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 asked courteously, "did any
other gentleman say mutiny?" Seizing a lantern
and raising his claw with a menacing gesture, "I'll
182
"HOOK OR ME THIS TIME"
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 stag-
gering 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."
"I've heard," muttered Mullins, "he always
boards the pirate craft at last. Had he a tail, cap-
tain?'
"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 in-
solently; 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, "here's a notion.
183
PETER AND WENDY
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, pre-
tending to struggle, were pushed into the cabin and
the door was closed on them.
"Now, listen I" 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 to
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 to her to conceal her-
self 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
184
"HOOK OR ME THIS TIME"
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, 'Tve
thought it out. There's a Jonah aboard."
"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," Mul-
lins 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 un-
doing 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.
185
PETER AND WENDY
"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 all im-
strung, 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 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 him
as a buckler, when another, who had just passed
186
"HOOK OR ME THIS TIME"
his sword through Mullins, sprang into the
fray.
"Put up your swords, boys," cried the new-
comer, "this man is mine."
Thus suddenly Hook found himself face to face
with Peter. The others drew back and formed a
ring round 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, "pre-
pare 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;
187
PETER AND WENDY
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 dou-
bled under it and, lunging fiercely, pierced him in
the ribs. At sight of his own blood, whose pecu-
liar colour, you remember, was offensive to him,
the sword fell from Hook's hand, and he was at
Peter's mercy.
"Now I" cried all the boys, but with a mag-
nificent 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 ven-
ture, "I'm a little bird that has broken out of the
egg.'\
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
188
- <
"HOOK OR ME THIS TIME"
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 bad form before
it was cold for ever.
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, scorn-
ful ; and as 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 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.
189
PETER AND WENDY
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.
At last Hook had got the boon for which he
craved.
"Bad form," he cried jeeringly, and went con-
tent to the crocodile.
Thus perished James Hook.
"Seventeen," Slightly sang out; but he was not
quite correct in his figures. Fifteen paid the pen-
alty 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 mel-
ancholy come-down for a pirate; and Smee, who
henceforth wandered about the world in his spec-
tacles, 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
m the fight, though watching Peter with glistening
190
"HOOK OR ME THIS TIME*'
eyes ; but now that all was over she became promi-
nent again. She praised them equally, and shud-
dered 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 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 tight.
XQl
CHAPTER XVI
THE RETURN HOME
By three bells next morning they were all stirring
their stumps. 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 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. His bluff strident words
struck the note sailors understand, and they
cheered him lustily. Then a few sharp orders
were given, and they turned tlie ship round, and
nosed her for the mainland*
THE RETURN HOME
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. 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 after-
wards 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 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 re-
turned sooner to look with sorrowful sympathy at
her, she would probably have cried, "Don't be
193
PETER AND WENDY
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 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, see-
ing 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 t€ 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
preparing for is a good hiding. How delicious to
«poil it all by breaking the news in advance; so
194
THE RETURN HOME
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.
"But, my dear madam, it is ten days till Thurs-
day 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 go back to the ship. How-
ever, as we are here we may as well stay and look
on. That is all we arc,, 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
^95
PETER AND WENDY
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 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 what-
ever 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.
Every morning the kennel was carried with Mr.
196
THE RETURN HOME
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 at-
tention. 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 magnifi-
cent. 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; in-
terviews 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 comer of her mouth, where one looks first, is
197
PETER AND WENDY
almost withered up. Her hand moves restlesrl^? &n
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 whis-
per 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
to 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 at it to kiss his wife, we see that his face is
more worn than of yore, but has a softer expres-
sion.
He gave his hat to Liza, who took it scorn-
fully; for she had no imagination, and was quite
incapable of understanding the motives of such a
man. Outside, the crowd who had accompanied
the cab home were still cheering, and he was natu-
rally not unmoved.
"Listen to them," he said; "it is very gratify-
ing."
"Lot of little boys," sneered Liza.
1198
THE RETURN HOME
'TTiere 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 v/eak man I"
"And, George," she said timidly, "you are as
full of remorse as ever, aren't you*?"
"Full of remorse as ever, dearest I See my pun-
ishment : living in a kennel."
"But it is punishment, isn't it, George? You
are sure you are not enjoying it?"
"My love I"
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 win-
dow must always be left open for them, always,
always."
Now it was his turn to beg her pardon; and she
199
PETER AND WENDY
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 win-
dow; 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."
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 "HomCj
200
THE RETURN HOME
Sweet Home," but he knew it was saying, "Come
back, Wend3% 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 II"
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 na-
ture; "we don't want any silly mothers"; and he
flew away.
Thus Wendy and John and Michael found the
201
PETER AND WENDY
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.
"John," he said, looking around him doubt-
fully, "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 con-
viction.
"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 dis-
appointment 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 some-
what 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
202
THE RETURN HOME
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 I" said John.
"Then are you not really our mother, Wendy 1"
asked Michael, who was surely sleepy.
"Oh dear I" exclaimed Wendy, with her first
real twinge of remorse, "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 saw them in their beds so often in her
dreams that she thought this was just the dream
hanging around her stilL
203
PETER AND WENDY
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 win-
dow. He 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.
204
to
^ c
'^
CHAPTER XVII
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."
205
PETEk and WENDY
''Father!" Wendy cried, shocked; but still the
cloud was on him. He knew he was behaving un-
worthily, 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 unfa-
vourable 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 in his own house.
"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 draw-
ing-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,
206
WHEN WENDY GREW UP
searching for the drawing-room; 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 was 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 par-
ents about a very sweet subject?"
"No."
"About me, Peter?"
"No."
Mrs. Darling came to the window, for at pres-
ent 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 should be a man?"
"Very soon."
"I don't want to go to school and learn solemn
207
PETER AND WENDY
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 I"
"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," ex-
plained 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 one
eye on Wendy.
"It will be rather lonely in the evening," she
said, "sitting by the iire."
208
WHEN WENDY GREW UP
"I shall have Tink."
"Tink can't go a twentieth part of the way
round," she reminded him a little tartly.
"Sneaky tell-tale I" Tink called out from some-
where 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 and 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 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 sup-
pose 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
209
PETER AND WENDY
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 bemg as ordinary
as you or me or Jenkins minor. 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; 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 Never-
land, 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.
210
WHEN WENDY GREW UP
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 Inter-
est 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.
When she expressed a doubtful hope that
Tinker Bell would be glad to see her he said,
"Who is Tinker Bell?'
"O Peter I" 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.
211
PETER AND WENDY
"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 any-
thing 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. 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?
212
WHEN WENDY GREW UP
That used to be Tootles. The bearded man who
doesn't know any story to tell his children was
once John.
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.
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,
from Wendy's father, who was no longer fond
of stairs. Mrs. Darling was now dead and for-
gotten.
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,
213
PETER AND WENDY
and then it was Wendy's part to put Jane to bed
That was the time for stories. It was Jane's in-
vention to raise the sheet over her mother's head
and her own, thus making a tent, and in the awful
darkness to whisper: —
"What do we see now?"
'T 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 some-
times wonder whether I ever did really fly."
"Yes, you did."
"The dear old days when I could fly I"
"Why can't you fly now, mother?"
"Because I am grown up, dearest. When peo-
ple 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."
"WHiat is gay and innocent and heartless? I
do wish I was gay and innocent and heartless."
Or perhaps Wendy admits she does see some-
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WHEN WENDY GREW UP
thing. "I do believe," she says, ''that it is this
nursery !"
'1 do believe it is I" 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 Never-
land and the fairies and the pirates and the red-
skins and the mermaids' 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.' "
215
PETER AND WENDY
^'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 imi-
tate 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 sleep-
ing, but I was the only one who heard it awake."
"Lucky you !" said Jane.
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 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, help-
less and guilty, a big woman.
216
WHEN WENDY GREW UP
"Hullo, Wendy," he said, not noticing any dif-
ference, 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, v/here 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.
217
PETER AND WENDY
"I can't come," she said apologetically, "I have
forgotten how to fly."
"I'll soon teach you again."
"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 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."
2l8
WHEN WENDY GREW UP
But he supposed she was; and he took a step
towards the sleeping child with his fist upraised.
Of course he did not strike her. He sat down on
the floor 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 been waiting for
you."
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 on
her face that he liked to see on ladies when they
gazed at him.
219
PETER AND WENDY
"He does so need a mother," Jane said.
"Yes, I know," Wendy admitted, rather for-
lornly; ''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 be-
coming 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 for-
gets, Peter comes for Margaret and takes her to
the Neverland, where she tells him stories about
himself, to which he listens eagerly. When Mar-
garet grows up she will have a daughter, who is to
be Peter's mother in turn ; and so it will go on, so
long as children are gay and innocent and heartless.
THE END
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