How to convey them?Hunched up in their ropes they might indeed be rolled down hill like barrels,but most of the way lay through a morass. Again Hook’s genius surmounted difficulties.He indicated that the little house must be used as a conveyance. The children were flung into it,four stout pirates raised it on their shoulders, the others fell in behind,and singing the hateful pirate chorus the strange procession set off through the wood.I don’t know whether any of the children were crying; if so, the singing drowned the sound;but as the little house disappeared in the forest,a brave though tiny jet of smoke issued from its chimney as if defying Hook.
Hook saw it, and it did Peter a bad service.It dried up any trickle of pity for him that may have remained in the pirate’s infuriated breast.
The first thing he did on finding himself alone in the fast falling night was to tiptoe to Slightly’s tree,and make sure that it provided him with a passage. Then for long he remained brooding;his hat of ill omen on the sward, so that any gentle breeze which had arisen might play refreshingly through his hair.Dark as were his thoughts his blue eyes were as soft as the periwinkle.Intently he listened for any sound from the nether world, but all was as silent below as above;the house under the ground seemed to be but one more empty tenement in the void.Was that boy asleep, or did he stand waiting at the foot of Slightly’s tree, with his dagger in his hand?
There was no way of knowing, save by going down. Hook let his cloak slip softly to the ground,and then biting his lips till a lewd blood stood on them, he stepped into the tree.He was a brave man, but for a moment he had to stop there and wipe his brow,which was dripping like a candle. Then, silently, he let himself go into the unknown.
He arrived unmolested at the foot of the shaft, and stood still again, biting at his breath,which had almost left him. As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light various objects in the home under the trees took shape;but the only one on which his greedy gaze rested, long sought for and found at last,was the great bed. On the bed lay Peter fast asleep.
Unaware of the tragedy being enacted above, Peter had continued,for a little time after the children left, to play gaily on his pipes:no doubt rather a forlorn attempt to prove to himself that he did not care.Then he decided not to take his medicine, so as to grieve Wendy.Then he lay down on the bed outside the coverlet, to vex her still more;for she had always tucked them inside it,because you never know that you may not grow chilly at the turn of the night. Then he nearly cried;but it struck him how indignant she would be if he laughed instead;so he laughed a haughty laugh and fell asleep in the middle of it.
Sometimes, though not often, he had dreams,and they were more painful than the dreams of other boys.For hours he could not be separated from these dreams, though he wailed piteously in them.They had to do, I think, with the riddle of his existence.At such times it had been Wendy’s custom to take him out of bed and sit with him on her lap,soothing him in dear ways of her own invention,and when he grew calmer to put him back to bed before he quite woke up,so that he should not know of the indignity to which she had subjected him.But on this occasion he had fallen at once into a dreamless sleep.One arm dropped over the edge of the bed, one leg was arched,and the unfinished part of his laugh was stranded on his mouth, which was open, showing the little pearls.
Thus defenceless Hook found him. He stood silent at the foot of the tree looking across the chamber at his enemy.Did no feeling of compassion disturb his sombre breast?The man was not wholly evil; he loved flowers (I have been told) and sweet music (he was himself no mean performer on the harpsichord);and, let it be frankly admitted, the idyllic nature of the scene stirred him profoundly.Mastered by his better self he would have returned reluctantly up the tree, but for one thing.
What stayed him was Peter’s impertinent appearance as he slept. The open mouth, the drooping arm,the arched knee: they were such a personification of cockiness as, taken together,will never again, one may hope, be presented to eyes so sensitive to their offensiveness.They steeled Hook’s heart. If his rage had broken him into a hundred pieces every one of them would have disregarded the incident, and leapt at the sleeper.
Though a light from the one lamp shone dimly on the bed, Hook stood in darkness himself,and at the first stealthy step forward he discovered an obstacle, the door of Slightly’s tree.It did not entirely fill the aperture, and he had been looking over it. Feeling for the catch,he found to his fury that it was low down, beyond his reach.To his disordered brain it seemed then that the irritating quality in Peter’s face and figure visibly increased,and he rattled the door and flung himself against it. Was his enemy to escape him after all?
But what was that?The red in his eye had caught sight of Peter’s medicine standing on a ledge within easy reach.He fathomed what it was straightaway, and immediately knew that the sleeper was in his power.
Lest he should be taken alive, Hook always carried about his person a dreadful drug,blended by himself of all the death-dealing rings that had come into his possession.These he had boiled down into a yellow liquid quite unknown to science,which was probably the most virulent poison in existence.
Five drops of this he now added to Peter’s cup. His hand shook,but it was in exultation rather than in shame. As he did it he avoided glancing at the sleeper,but not lest pity should unnerve him; merely to avoid spilling.Then one long gloating look he cast upon his victim, and turning,wormed his way with difficulty up the tree.As he emerged at the top he looked the very spirit of evil breaking from its hole.Donning his hat at its most rakish angle, he wound his cloak around him,holding one end in front as if to conceal his person from the night,of which it was the blackest part, and muttering strangely to himself, stole away through the trees.
Peter slept on. The light guttered and went out, leaving the tenement in darkness;but still he slept. It must have been not less than ten o’clock by the crocodile,when he suddenly sat up in his bed, wakened by he knew not what.It was a soft cautious tapping on the door of his tree.
Soft and cautious, but in that stillness it was sinister.Peter felt for his dagger till his hand gripped it. Then he spoke.
“Who is that?”
For long there was no answer: then again the knock.
“Who are you?”
No answer.
He was thrilled, and he loved being thrilled. In two strides he reached the door.Unlike Slightly’s door, it filled the aperture, so that he could not see beyond it, nor could the one knocking see him.
“I won’t open unless you speak,” Peter cried.
Then at last the visitor spoke, in a lovely bell-like voice.
“Let me in, Peter.”
It was Tink, and quickly he unbarred to her. She flew in excitedly,her face flushed and her dress stained with mud.
“What is it?”
“Oh, you could never guess!” she cried, and offered him three guesses. “Out with it!” he shouted, and in one ungrammatical sentence,as long as the ribbons that conjurers pull from their mouths,she told of the capture of Wendy and the boys.
Peter’s heart bobbed up and down as he listened. Wendy bound, and on the pirate ship; she who loved everything to be just so!
“I’ll rescue her!” he cried, leaping at his weapons. As he leapt he thought of something he could do to please her. He could take his medicine.
His hand closed on the fatal draught.
“No!” shrieked Tinker Bell, who had heard Hook mutter about his deed as he sped through the forest.
“Why not?”
“It is poisoned.”
“Poisoned?Who could have poisoned it?”
“Hook.”
“Don’t be silly. How could Hook have got down here?”
Alas, Tinker Bell could not explain this,for even she did not know the dark secret of Slightly’s tree.Nevertheless Hook’s words had left no room for doubt. The cup was poisoned.
“Besides,” said Peter, quite believing himself, “I never fell asleep.”
He raised the cup. No time for words now; time for deeds;and with one of her lightning movements Tink got between his lips and the draught, and drained it to the dregs.
“Why, Tink, how dare you drink my medicine?”
But she did not answer. Already she was reeling in the air.
“What is the matter with you?” cried Peter, suddenly afraid.
“It was poisoned, Peter,” she told him softly; “and now I am going to be dead.”
“O Tink, did you drink it to save me?”
“Yes.”
“But why, Tink?”
Her wings would scarcely carry her now, but in reply she alighted on his shoulder and gave his nose a loving bite.She whispered in his ear “You silly ass,” and then, tottering to her chamber, lay down on the bed.
His head almost filled the fourth wall of her little room as he knelt near her in distress.Every moment her light was growing fainter; and he knew that if it went out she would be no more.She liked his tears so much that she put out her beautiful finger and let them run over it.
Her voice was so low that at first he could not make out what she said. Then he made it out.She was saying that she thought she could get well again if children believed in fairies.
Peter flung out his arms. There were no children there, and it was night time;but he addressed all who might be dreaming of the Neverland,and who were therefore nearer to him than you think: boys and girls in their nighties,and naked papooses in their baskets hung from trees.
“Do you believe?” he cried.
Tink sat up in bed almost briskly to listen to her fate.
She fancied she heard answers in the affirmative, and then again she wasn’t sure.
“What do you think?” she asked Peter.
“If you believe,” he shouted to them, “clap your hands; don’t let Tink die.”
Many clapped.
Some didn’t.
A few beasts hissed.
The clapping stopped suddenly; as if countless mothers had rushed to their nurseries to see what on earth was happening;but already Tink was saved. First her voice grew strong, then she popped out of bed,then she was flashing through the room more merry and impudent than ever.She never thought of thanking those who believed,but she would have 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 wearing little else, to set out upon his perilous quest.It was not such a night as he would have chosen. He had hoped to fly,keeping not far from the ground so that nothing unwonted should escape his eyes;but in that fitful light to have flown low would have meant trailing his shadow through the trees,thus disturbing birds and acquainting a watchful foe that he was astir.
He regretted now that he had given the birds of the island such strange names that they are very wild and difficult of approach.
There was no other course but to press forward in redskin fashion, at which happily he was an adept.But in what direction, for he could not be sure that the children had been taken to the ship?A light fall of snow had obliterated all footmarks; and a deathly silence pervaded the island,as if for a space Nature stood still in horror of the recent carnage.He had taught the children something of the forest lore that he had himself learned from Tiger Lily and Tinker Bell,and knew that in their dire hour they were not likely to forget it. Slightly,if he had an opportunity, would blaze the trees, for instance, Curly would drop seeds,and Wendy would leave her handkerchief at some important place.The morning was needed to search for such guidance, and he could not wait.The upper world had called him, but would give no help.
The crocodile passed him, but not another living thing, not a sound, not a movement;and yet he knew well that sudden death might be at the next tree, or stalking him from behind.
He swore this terrible oath: “Hook or me this time.”
Now he crawled forward like a snake, and again erect,he darted across a space on which the moonlight played,one finger on his lip and his dagger at the ready. He was frightfully happy.
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 pathetic,unless it were because he was so pathetically unaware of it;but even strong men had to turn hastily from looking at him,and more than once on summer evenings he had touched the fount of Hook’s tears and made it flow.Of this, as of almost everything else, Smee was quite unconscious.
A few of the pirates leant over the bulwarks, drinking in the miasma of the night;others sprawled by barrels over games of dice and cards;and the exhausted four who had carried the little house lay prone on the deck,where even in their sleep they rolled skillfully to this side or that out of Hook’s reach,lest he should claw them mechanically in passing.
Hook trod the deck in thought. O man unfathomable. It was his hour of triumph.Peter had been removed for ever from his path, and all the other boys were in the brig,about to walk the plank. It was his grimmest deed since the days when he had brought Barbecue to heel;and knowing as we do how vain a tabernacle is man,could we be surprised had he now paced the deck unsteadily,bellied out by the winds of his success?
But there was no elation in his gait, which kept pace with the action of his sombre mind. Hook was profoundly dejected.
He was often thus when communing with himself on board ship in the quietude of the night.It was because he was so terribly alone.This inscrutable man never felt more alone than when surrounded by his dogs. They were socially inferior to him.
Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was would even at this date set the country in a blaze;but as those who read between the lines must already have guessed,he had been at a famous public school; and its traditions still clung to him like garments,with which indeed they are largely concerned.Thus it was offensive to him even now to board a ship in the same dress in which he grappled her,and he still adhered in his walk to the school’s distinguished slouch.But above all he retained the passion for good form.
Good form!However much he may have degenerated, he still knew that this is all that really matters.
From far within him he heard a creaking as of rusty portals,and through them came a stern tap-tap-tap, like hammering in the night when one cannot sleep. “Have you been good form to-day?” was their eternal question.
“Fame, fame, that glittering bauble, it is mine,” he cried.
“Is it quite good form to be distinguished at anything?” the tap-tap from his school replied.
“I am the only man whom Barbecue feared,” he urged, “and Flint feared Barbecue.”
“Barbecue, Flint—what house?” came the cutting retort.
Most disquieting reflection of all, was it not bad form to think about good form?
His vitals were tortured by this problem. It was a claw within him sharper than the iron one;and as it tore him, the perspiration dripped down his tallow 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!” It was in his darkest hours only that he referred to himself in the third person.
“No little children to love me!”
Strange that he should think of this, which had never troubled him before;perhaps the sewing machine brought it to his mind. For long he muttered to himself,staring at Smee, who was hemming placidly, under the conviction that all children feared him.
Feared him!Feared Smee!There was not a child on board the brig that night who did not already love him.He had said horrid things to them and hit them with the palm of his hand,because he could not hit with his fist, but they had only clung to him the more. Michael had tried on his spectacles.
To tell poor Smee that they thought him lovable!Hook itched to do it, but it seemed too brutal. Instead, he revolved this mystery in his mind: why do they find Smee lovable?He pursued the problem like the sleuth-hound that he was. If Smee was lovable, what was it that made him so?A terrible answer suddenly presented itself—“Good form?”
Had the bo’sun good form without knowing it, which is the best form of all?
He remembered that you have to prove you don’t know you have it before you are eligible for Pop.
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 anchor in you;” and at once the din was hushed.“Are all the children chained, so that they cannot fly away?”
“Ay, ay.”
“Then hoist them up.”
The wretched prisoners were dragged from the hold, all except Wendy,and ranged in line in front of him. For a time he seemed unconscious of their presence.He lolled at his ease, humming, not unmelodiously, snatches of a rude song,and fingering a pack of cards. Ever and anon the light from his cigar gave a touch of colour to his face.
“Now then, bullies,” he said briskly, “six of you walk the plank to-night,but I have room for two cabin boys. Which of you is it to be?”
“Don’t irritate him unnecessarily,” had been Wendy’s instructions in the hold;so Tootles stepped forward politely. Tootles hated the idea of signing under such a man,but an instinct told him that it would be prudent to lay the responsibility on an absent person;and though a somewhat silly boy, he knew that mothers alone are always willing to be the buffer.All children know this about mothers, and despise them for it, but make constant use of it.
So Tootles explained prudently, “You see, sir, I don’t think my mother would like me to be a pirate.Would your mother like you to be a pirate, Slightly?”
He winked at Slightly, who said mournfully, “I don’t think so,” as if he wished things had been otherwise. “Would your mother like you to be a pirate, Twin?”
“I don’t think so,” said the first twin, as clever as the others. “Nibs, would—”
“Stow this gab,” roared Hook, and the spokesmen were dragged back. “You, boy,” he said,addressing John, “you look as if you had a little pluck in you. Didst never want to be a pirate, my hearty?”
Now John had sometimes experienced this hankering at maths. prep.;and he was struck by Hook’s picking him out.
“I once thought of calling myself Red-handed Jack,” he said diffidently.
“And a good name too. We’ll call you that here, bully, if you join.”
“What do you think, Michael?” asked John.
“What would you call me if I join?” Michael demanded.
“Blackbeard Joe.”
Michael was naturally impressed. “What do you think, John?” He wanted John to decide, and John wanted him to decide.
“Shall we still be respectful subjects of the King?” John inquired.
Through Hook’s teeth came the answer: “You would have to swear, ‘Down with the King.’”
Perhaps John had not behaved very well so far, but he shone out now.
“Then I refuse,” he cried, banging the barrel in front of Hook.
“And I refuse,” cried Michael.
“Rule Britannia!” squeaked Curly.
The infuriated pirates buffeted them in the mouth; and Hook roared out, “That seals your doom.Bring up their mother. Get the plank ready.”
They were only boys, and they went white as they saw Jukes and Cecco preparing the fatal plank.But they tried to look brave when Wendy was brought up.
No words of mine can tell you how Wendy despised those pirates.To the boys there was at least some glamour in the pirate calling;but all that she saw was that the ship had not been tidied for years.There was not a porthole on the grimy glass of which you might not have written with your finger “Dirty pig”;and she had already written it on several. But as the boys gathered round her she had no thought, of course, save for them.
“So, my beauty,” said Hook, as if he spoke in syrup, “you are to see your children walk the plank.”
Fine gentlemen though he was, the intensity of his communings had soiled his ruff,and suddenly he knew that she was gazing at it. With a hasty gesture he tried to hide it, but he was too late.
“Are they to die?” asked Wendy, with a look of such frightful contempt that he nearly fainted.
“They are,” he snarled. “Silence all,” he called gloatingly,“for a mother’s last words to her children.”
At this moment Wendy was grand. “These are my last words, dear boys,” she said firmly.“I feel that I have a message to you from your real mothers, and it is this:‘We hope our sons will die like English gentlemen.’”
Even the pirates were awed, and Tootles cried out hysterically,“I am going to do what my mother hopes. What are you to do, Nibs?”
“What my mother hopes. What are you to do, Twin?”
“What my mother hopes. John, what are—”
But Hook had found his voice again.
“Tie her up!” he shouted.
It was Smee who tied her to the mast. “See here, honey,” he whispered,“I’ll save you if you promise to be my mother.”
But not even for Smee would she make such a promise. “I would almost rather have no children at all, ” she said disdainfully.
It is sad to know that not a boy was looking at her as Smee tied her to the mast;the eyes of all were on the plank: that last little walk they were about to take.They were no longer able to hope that they would walk it manfully,for the capacity to think had gone from them; they could stare and shiver only.
Hook smiled on them with his teeth closed, and took a step toward Wendy.His intention was to turn her face so that she should see the boys walking the plank one by one.But he never reached her, he never heard the cry of anguish he hoped to wring from her. He heard something else instead.
It was the terrible tick-tick of the crocodile.
They all heard it—pirates, boys, Wendy; and immediately every head was blown in one direction;not to the water whence the sound proceeded, but toward Hook.All knew that what was about to happen concerned him alone,and that from being actors they were suddenly become spectators.
Very frightful was it to see the change that came over him.It was as if he had been clipped at every joint. He fell in a little heap.
The sound came steadily nearer; and in advance of it came this ghastly thought,“The crocodile is about to board the ship!”
Even the iron claw hung inactive; as if knowing that it was no intrinsic part of what the attacking force wanted.Left so fearfully alone, any other man would have lain with his eyes shut where he fell:but the gigantic brain of Hook was still working,and under its guidance he crawled on the knees along the deck as far from the sound as he could go.The pirates respectfully cleared a passage for him,and it was only when he brought up against the bulwarks that he spoke.
“Hide me!” he cried hoarsely.
They gathered round him, all eyes averted from the thing that was coming aboard.They had no thought of fighting it. It was Fate.
Only when Hook was hidden from them did curiosity loosen the limbs of the boys so that they could rush to the ship’s side to see the crocodile climbing it.Then they got the strangest surprise of the Night of Nights;for it was no crocodile that was coming to their aid. It was Peter.
He signed to them not to give vent to any cry of admiration that might rouse suspicion. Then he went on ticking.
Chapter XV. “HOOK OR ME THIS TIME”
Odd things happen to all of us on our way through life without our noticing for a time that they have happened.Thus, to take an instance, we suddenly discover that we have been deaf in one ear for we don’t know how long,but, say, half an hour. Now such an experience had come that night to Peter.When last we saw him he was stealing across the island with one finger to his lips and his dagger at the ready.He had seen the crocodile pass by without noticing anything peculiar about it,but by and by he remembered that it had not been ticking. At first he thought this eerie,but soon concluded rightly that the clock had run down.
Without giving a thought to what might be the feelings of a fellow-creature thus abruptly deprived of its closest companion,Peter began to consider how he could turn the catastrophe to his own use; and he decided to tick,so that wild beasts should believe he was the crocodile and let him pass unmolested.He ticked superbly, but with one unforeseen result.The crocodile was among those who heard the sound, and it followed him,though whether with the purpose of regaining what it had lost,or merely as a friend under the belief that it was again ticking itself,will never be certainly known, for, like slaves to a fixed idea, it was a stupid beast.
Peter reached the shore without mishap, and went straight on,his legs encountering the water as if quite unaware that they had entered a new element.Thus many animals pass from land to water, but no other human of whom I know.As he swam he had but one thought: “Hook or me this time.” He had ticked so long that he now went on ticking without knowing that he was doing it.Had he known he would have stopped, for to board the brig by help of the tick,though an ingenious idea, had not occurred to him.
On the contrary, he thought he had scaled her side as noiseless as a mouse;and he was amazed to see the pirates cowering from him,with Hook in their midst as abject as if he had heard the crocodile.
The crocodile!No sooner did Peter remember it than he heard the ticking.At first he thought the sound did come from the crocodile, and he looked behind him swiftly.Then he realised that he was doing it himself, and in a flash he understood the situation. “How clever of me!” he thought at once, and signed to the boys not to burst into applause.
It was at this moment that Ed Teynte the quartermaster emerged from the forecastle and came along the deck.Now, reader, time what happened by your watch. Peter struck true and deep.John clapped his hands on the ill-fated pirate’s mouth to stifle the dying groan. He fell forward.Four boys caught him to prevent the thud. Peter gave the signal,and the carrion was cast overboard. There was a splash, and then silence. How long has it taken?
“One!” (Slightly had begun to count.)
None too soon, Peter, every inch of him on tiptoe, vanished into the cabin;for more than one pirate was screwing up his courage to look round.They could hear each other’s distressed breathing now,which showed them that the more terrible sound had passed.
“It’s gone, captain,” Smee said, wiping off his spectacles. “All’s still again.”
Slowly Hook let his head emerge from his ruff,and listened so intently that he could have caught the echo of the tick. There was not a sound,and he drew himself up firmly to his full height.
“Then here’s to Johnny Plank!” he cried brazenly, hating the boys more than ever because they had seen him unbend. He broke into the villainous ditty:
“Yo ho, yo ho, the frisky plank, You walks along it so,Till it goes down and you goes down To Davy Jones below!”
To terrorise the prisoners the more, though with a certain loss of dignity,he danced along an imaginary plank, grimacing at them as he sang; and when he finished he cried,“Do you want a touch of the cat before you walk the plank?”
At that they fell on their knees. “No, no!” they cried so piteously that every pirate smiled.
“Fetch the cat, Jukes,” said Hook; “it’s in the cabin.”
The cabin!Peter was in the cabin!The children gazed at each other.
“Ay, ay,” said Jukes blithely, and he strode into the cabin. They followed him with their eyes;they scarce knew that Hook had resumed his song, his dogs joining in with him:
“Yo ho, yo ho, the scratching cat, Its tails are nine, you know, And when they’re writ upon your back—”
What was the last line will never be known,for of a sudden the song was stayed by a dreadful screech from the cabin.It wailed through the ship, and died away.Then was heard a crowing sound which was well understood by the boys,but to the pirates was almost more eerie than the screech.
“What was that?” cried Hook.
“Two,” said Slightly solemnly.
The Italian Cecco hesitated for a moment and then swung into the cabin. He tottered out, haggard.
“What’s the matter with Bill Jukes, you dog?” hissed Hook, towering over him.
“The matter wi’ him is he’s dead, stabbed,” replied Cecco in a hollow voice.
“Bill Jukes dead!” cried the startled pirates.