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1904
PETER PAN
by James M. Barrie
CHAPTER I.
PETER BREAKS THROUGH.
All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will
grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two
years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another
flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked
rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heart and
cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all
that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew
that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the
beginning of the end.
Of course they lived at 14, and until Wendy came her mother was
the chief one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such
a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes,
one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many
you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had
one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was,
perfectly conspicuous in the 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
seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were
down in a way that would have made any woman respect him.
Mrs. Darling was married in white, and at first she kept the books
perfectly, almost gleefully, as if it were a game, not so much as a
Brussels sprout was missing; but by and by whole cauliflowers
dropped out, and instead of them there were pictures of babies without
faces. She drew them when she should have been totting up. They were
Mrs. Darling's guesses.
Wendy came first, then John, then Michael.
For a week or two after Wendy came it was doubtful whether they
would be able to keep her, as she was another mouth to feed. Mr.
Darling was frightfully proud of her, but he was very honourable,
and he sat on the edge of Mrs. Darling's bed, holding her hand and
calculating expenses, while she looked at him imploringly. She
wanted to risk it, come what might, but that was not his way; his
way was with a pencil and a piece of paper, and if she confused him
with suggestions he had to begin at the beginning again.
"Now don't interrupt," he would beg of her.
"I have one pound seventeen here, and two and six at the office; I
can cut off my coffee at the office, say ten shillings, making two
nine and six, with your eighteen and three makes three nine seven,
with five naught naught in my cheque-book makes eight nine seven,- who
is that moving?- eight nine seven, dot and carry seven- don't speak,
my own- and the pound you lent to that man who came to the door-
quiet, child- dot and carry child- there, you've done it!- did I say
nine nine seven? yes, I said nine nine seven; the question is, can
we try it for a year on nine nine seven?"
"Of course we can, George," she cried. But she was prejudiced in
Wendy's favour, and he was really the grander character of the two.
"Remember mumps," he warned her almost threateningly, and off he
went again. "Mumps one pound, that is what I have put down, but I
daresay it will be more like thirty shillings- don't speak- measles
one five, German measles half a guinea, makes two fifteen six- don't
waggle your finger- whooping-cough, say fifteen shillings"- and so
on it went, and it added up differently each time, but at last Wendy
just got through, with mumps reduced to twelve six, and the two
kinds of measles treated as one.
There was the same excitement over John, and Michael had even a
narrower squeak; but both were kept, and soon, you might have seen the
three of them going in a row to Miss Fulsom's Kindergarten school,
accompanied by their nurse.
Mrs. Darling loved to have everything just so, and Mr. Darling had a
passion for being exactly like his neighbours; so, of course, they had
a nurse. As they were poor, owing to the amount of milk the children
drank, this nurse was a prim Newfoundland dog, called Nana, who had
belonged to no one in particular until the Darlings engaged her. She
had always thought children important, however, and the Darlings had
become acquainted with her in Kensington Gardens, where she spent most
of her spare time peeping into perambulators, and was much hated by
careless nursemaids, whom she followed to their homes and complained
of to their mistresses. She proved to be quite a treasure of a
nurse. How thorough she was at bath-time, and up at any moment of
the night if one of her charges made the slightest cry. Of course
her kennel was in the nursery. She had a genius for knowing when a
cough is a thing to have no patience with and when it needs stocking
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-fangled talk about germs, and so on. It was a lesson in
propriety to see her escorting the children to school, walking
sedately by their side when they were well behaved, and butting them
back into line if they strayed. On John's footer days she never once
forgot his sweater, and she usually carried an umbrella in her mouth
in case of rain. There is a room in the basement of Miss Fulsom's
school where the nurses wait. They sat on forms, while Nana lay on the
floor, but that was the only difference. They affected to ignore her
as of an inferior social status to themselves, and she despised
their light talk. She resented visits to the nursery from Mrs.
Darling's friends, but if they did come she first whipped off
Michael's pinafore and put him into the one with blue braiding, and
smoothed out Wendy and made a dash at John's hair.
No nursery could possibly have been conducted more correctly, and
Mr. Darling knew it, yet he sometimes wondered uneasily whether the
neighbours talked.
He had his position in the city to consider.
Nana also troubled him in another way. He had sometimes a feeling
that she did not admire him. "I know she admires you tremendously,
George," Mrs. Darling would assure him, and then she would sign to the
children to be specially nice to father. Lovely dances followed, in
which the only other servant, Liza, was sometimes allowed to join.
Such a midget she looked in her long skirt and maid's cap, though
she had sworn, when engaged, that she would never see ten again. The
gaiety of those romps! And gayest of all was Mrs. Darling, who would
pirouette so wildly that all you could see of her was the kiss, and
then if you had dashed at her you might have got it. There never was a
simpler happier family until the coming of Peter Pan.
Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her
children's minds. It is the nightly custom of every good mother
after her children are asleep to rummage in their minds and put things
straight for next morning, repacking into their proper places the many
articles that have wandered during the day. If you could keep awake
(but of course you can't) you would see your own mother doing this,
and you would find it very interesting to watch her. It is quite
like tidying up drawers. You would see her on her knees, I expect,
lingering humorously over some of your contents, wondering where on
earth you had picked this thing up, making discoveries sweet and not
so sweet, pressing this to her cheek as if it were as nice as a
kitten, and hurriedly stowing that out of sight. When you wake in
the morning, the 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
prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on.
I don't know whether you have ever seen a map of a person's mind.
Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map
can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a
map of a child's mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going
round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your
temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island, for
the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing
splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and
rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs,
and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river
runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to
decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be
an easy map if that were all, but there is also first day at school,
religion, fathers, the round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings,
verbs that take the dative, chocolate pudding day, getting into
braces, say ninety-nine, threepence for pulling out your tooth
yourself, and so on, and either are part of the island or they are
another map showing through, 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 suggest and most
compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances
between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play
at it by day with the chairs and tablecloth, it is not in the least
alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes
very nearly real. That is why there are night-lights.
Occasionally in her travels through her children's minds Mrs.
Darling found things she could not understand, and of these quite
the most perplexing was the word Peter. She knew of no Peter, and
yet he was here and there in John and Michael's minds, while Wendy's
began to be scrawled all over with him. The name stood out in bolder
letters than any of the other words, and as Mrs. Darling gazed she
felt that it had an oddly cocky appearance.
"Yes, he is rather cocky," Wendy admitted with regret. Her mother
had been questioning her.
"But who is he, my pet?"
"He is Peter Pan, you know, mother."
At first Mrs. Darling did not know, but after thinking back into her
childhood she just remembered a Peter Pan who was said to live with
the fairies. There were odd stories about him, as that when children
died he went part of the way with them, so that they should not be
frightened. She had believed in him at the time, but now that she
was married and full of sense she quite doubted whether there was
any such person.
"Besides," she said to Wendy, "he would be grown up by this time."
"Oh no, he isn't grown up," Wendy assured her confidently, "and he
is just my size." She meant that he was her size in both mind and
body; she didn't know how she knew 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 troublesome boy gave Mrs.
Darling quite a shock.
Children have the strangest adventures without being troubled by
them. For instance, they may remember to mention, a week after the
event happened, that when they were in the wood they met their dead
father and had a game with him. It was in this casual way that Wendy
one morning made a disquieting revelation. Some leaves of a tree had
been found on the nursery floor, which certainly were not there when
the children went to bed, and Mrs. Darling was puzzling over them when
Wendy said with a tolerant smile:
"I do believe it is that Peter again!"
"Whatever do you mean, Wendy?"
"It's 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 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 didn't know how she knew, she just knew.
"What nonsense you talk, precious! No one can get into the house
without knocking."
"I think he comes in by the window," she said.
"My love, it is three floors up."
"Weren'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, and it was a sheer drop of
thirty feet, without so much as a spout to climb up by.
Certainly Wendy had been dreaming.
But Wendy had not been dreaming, as the very next night showed,
the night on which the extraordinary adventures of these children
may be said to have begun.
On the night we speak of all the children were once more in bed.
It happened to be Nana's evening off, and Mrs. Darling had bathed them
and sung to them till one by one they had let go her hand and slid
away into the land of sleep.
All were looking so safe and cosy that she smiled at her fears now
and sat down tranquilly by the fire to sew.
It was something for Michael, who on his birthday was getting into
shirts. The fire was warm, however, and the nursery dimly lit by three
night-lights, and presently the sewing lay on Mrs. Darling's lap. Then
her head nodded, oh, so gracefully. She was asleep. Look at the four
of them, Wendy and Michael over there, John here, and Mrs. Darling
by the fire. There should have been a fourth night-light.
While she slept she had a dream. She dreamt that the Neverland had
come too near and that a strange boy had broken through from it. He
did not alarm her, for she thought she had seen him before in the
faces of many women who have no children. Perhaps he is to be found in
the faces of some mothers also. But in her dream he had rent the
film that obscures the Neverland, and she saw Wendy and John and
Michael peeping through the gap.
The dream by itself would have been a trifle, but while she was
dreaming the window of the nursery blew open, and a boy did drop on
the floor. He was accompanied by a strange light, no bigger than
your fist, which darted about the room like a living thing, and I
think it must have been this light that wakened Mrs. Darling.
She started up with a cry, and saw the boy, and somehow she knew
at once that he was Peter Pan. If you or I or Wendy had been there
we should have seen that he was very like Mrs. Darling's kiss. He
was a lovely boy, clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that ooze out
of trees, but the most entrancing thing about him was that he had
all his first teeth. When he saw she was a grown-up, he gnashed the
little pearls at her.
CHAPTER II.
THE SHADOW.
Mrs. Darling screamed, and, as if in answer to a bell, the door
opened, and Nana entered, returned from her evening out. She growled
and sprang at the boy, who leapt lightly through the window. Again
Mrs. Darling screamed, this time in distress for him, for she
thought he was killed, and she ran down into the street to look for
his little body, but it was not there; and she looked up, and in the
black night she could see nothing but what she thought was a
shooting star.
She returned to the nursery, and found Nana with something in her
mouth, which proved to be the boy's shadow. As he leapt at the
window Nana had closed it quickly, too late to catch him, but his
shadow had not had time to get out; slam went the window and snapped
it off.
You may be sure Mrs. Darling examined the shadow carefully, but it
was quite the ordinary kind.
Nana had no doubt of what was the best thing to do with this shadow.
She hung it out at the window, meaning "He is sure to come back for
it; let us put it where he can get it easily without disturbing the
children."
But unfortunately Mrs. Darling could not leave it hanging out at the
window, it looked so like the washing and lowered the whole tone of
the house. She thought of showing it to Mr. Darling, but he was
totting up winter great-coats for John and Michael, with a wet towel
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 opportunity came for telling her husband. Ah
me!
The opportunity came a week later, on that never-to-be-forgotten
Friday. Of course it was a Friday.
"I ought to have been specially careful on a Friday," she used to
say afterwards to her husband, while perhaps Nana was on the other
side of her, holding her hand.
"No, no," Mr. Darling always said, "I am responsible for it all.
I, George Darling, did it. Mea culpa, mea culpa." He had had a
classical education.
They sat thus night after night recalling that fatal Friday, till
every detail of it was stamped on their brains and came through on the
other side like the faces on a bad coinage.
"If only I had not accepted that invitation to dine at 27," Mrs.
Darling said.
"If only I had not poured my medicine into Nana's bowl," said Mr.
Darling.
"If only I had pretended to like the medicine," was what Nana's
wet eyes said.
"My liking for parties, George."
"My fatal gift of humour, dearest."
"My touchiness about trifles, dear master and mistress."
Then one or more of them would break down altogether; Nana at the
thought, "It's true, it's true, they ought not to have had a dog for a
nurse." Many a time it was Mr. Darling who put the handkerchief to
Nana's eyes.
"That fiend!" Mr. Darling would cry, and Nana's bark was the echo of
it, but Mrs. Darling never upbraided Peter; there was something in the
right-hand corner of her mouth that wanted her not to call Peter
names.
They would sit there in the empty nursery, recalling fondly every
smallest detail of that dreadful evening. It had begun so
uneventfully, so precisely like a hundred other evenings, with Nana
putting on the water for Michael's bath and carrying him to it on
her back.
"I won't go to bed," he had shouted, like one who still believed
that he had the last word on the subject, "I won't, I won't. Nana,
it isn't six o'clock yet. Oh dear, oh dear, I shan't love you any
more, Nana. I tell you I won't be bathed, I won't, I won't!"
Then Mrs. Darling had come in, wearing her white evening-gown. She
had dressed early because 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
occasion.
Wendy had danced with joy, just as the real Mrs. Darling must have
done.
Then John was born, with the extra pomp that he conceived due to the
birth of a male, and Michael came from his bath to ask to be born
also, but John said brutally that they did not want any more.
Michael had nearly cried. "Nobody wants me," he said, and of
course the lady in evening-dress could not stand that.
"I do," she said, "I so want a third child."
"Boy or girl?" asked Michael, not too hopefully.
"Boy."
Then he had leapt into her arms. Such a little thing for Mr. and
Mrs. Darling and Nana to recall now, but not so little if that was
to be Michael's last night in the nursery.
They go on with their recollections.
"It was then that I rushed in like a tornado, wasn't it?" Mr.
Darling would say, scorning himself; and indeed he had been like a
tornado.
Perhaps there was some excuse for him. He, too, had been dressing
for the party, and all had gone well with him until he came to his
tie. It is an astounding thing to have to tell, but this man, though
he knew about stocks and shares, had no real mastery of his tie.
Sometimes the thing yielded to him without a contest, but there were
occasions when it would have been better for the house if he had
swallowed his pride and used a made-up tie.
This was such an occasion. He came rushing into the nursery with the
crumpled little brute of a tie in his hand.
"Why, what is the matter, father dear?"
"Matter!" he yelled; he really yelled. "This tie, it will not
tie." He became dangerously sarcastic. "Not round my neck! Round the
bed-post! Oh yes, twenty times have I made it up round the bed-post,
but round my neck, no! Oh dear no! begs to be excused!"
He thought Mrs. Darling was not sufficiently impressed, and he
went on sternly, "I warn you of this, mother, that unless this tie
is round my neck we don't go out to dinner to-night, and if I don't go
out to dinner tonight, 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!" says Mrs. Darling now, recalling it.
"Our last romp!" Mr. Darling groaned.
"O George, do you remember Michael suddenly said to me, 'How did you
get to know me, mother?'"
"I remember!"
"They were rather sweet, don't you think, George?"
"And they were ours, ours! and now they are gone?"
The romp had ended with the appearance of Nana, and most unluckily
Mr. Darling collided against her, covering his trousers with hairs.
They were not only new trousers, but they were the first he had ever
had with braid on them, and he had 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
bottle in your mouth again, Nana, and it is all my fault."
Strong man though he was, there is no doubt that he had behaved
rather foolishly over the medicine. If he had a weakness, it was for
thinking that all his life he had taken medicine boldly, and so now,
when Michael dodged the spoon in Nana's mouth, he had said
reprovingly, "Be a man, Michael."
"Won't; won't!" Michael cried naughtily. Mrs. Darling left the
room to get a chocolate for him, and Mr. Darling thought this showed
want of firmness.
"Mother, don't pamper him," he called after her. "Michael, when I
was your age I took medicine without a murmur. I said 'Thank you, kind
parents, for giving me bottles to make 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 medicine you sometimes take, father, is much nastier, isn't it?"
"Ever so much nastier," Mr. Darling said bravely, "and I would
take it now as an example to you, Michael, if I hadn't lost the
bottle."
He had not exactly lost it; he had climbed in the dead of night to
the top of the wardrobe and hidden it there. What he did not know
was that the faithful Liza had found it, and put it back on his
wash-stand.
"I know where it is, father," Wendy cried, always glad to be of
service. "I'll bring it," and she was off before he could stop her.
Immediately his spirits sank in the strangest way.
"John," he said, shuddering, "it's most beastly stuff. It's that
nasty, sticky, sweet kind."
"It will soon be over, father," John said cheerily, and then in
rushed Wendy with the medicine in a glass.
"I have been as quick as I could," she panted.
"You have been wonderfully quick," her father retorted, with a
vindictive politeness that was quite thrown away upon her. "Michael
first," he said doggedly.
"Father first," said Michael, who was of a suspicious nature.
"I shall be sick, you know," Mr. Darling said threateningly.
"Come on, father," said John.
"Hold your tongue, John," his father rapped out.
Wendy was quite puzzled. "I thought you took it quite easily,
father."
"That is not the point," he retorted. "The point is, that there is
more in my glass than in Michael's spoon." His proud heart was
nearly bursting. "And it isn't fair; I would say it though it were
with my last breath; it isn't fair."
"Father, I am waiting," said Michael coldly.
"It's all very well to say you are waiting; so am I waiting."
"Father's a 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!" Wendy
exclaimed.
"What do you mean by 'O father?'" Mr. Darling demanded. "Stop that
row, Michael. I meant to take mine, but I- I missed it."
It was dreadful the way all the three were looking at him, just as
if they did not admire him. "Look here, all of you," he said
entreatingly, as soon as Nana had gone into the bathroom, "I have just
thought of a splendid joke. I shall pour my medicine into Nana's bowl,
and she will drink it, thinking it is milk!"
It was the colour of milk; but the children did not have their
father's sense of humour, and they looked at him reproachfully as he
poured the medicine into Nana's bowl. "What fun!" he said
doubtfully, and they did not dare expose him when Mrs. Darling and
Nana returned.
"Nana, good dog," he said, patting her, "I have put a little milk
into your bowl, Nana."
Nana wagged her tail, ran to the medicine, and began lapping it.
Then she gave Mr. Darling such a look, not an angry look: she showed
him the great red tear that makes us so sorry for noble dogs, and
crept into her kennel.
Mr. Darling was frightfully ashamed of himself, but he would not
give in. In a horrid silence Mrs. Darling smelt the bowl. "O
George," she said, "it's your medicine!"
"It, was only a joke," he roared, while she comforted her boys,
and Wendy hugged Nana. "Much good," he said bitterly, "my wearing
myself to the bone trying to be funny in this house."
And still Wendy hugged Nana. "That's right," he shouted. "Coddle
her! Nobody coddles me. Oh dear no! I am only the breadwinner, why
should I be coddled- why, why, why!"
"George," Mrs. Darling entreated him, "not so loud; the servants
will hear you." Somehow they had got into the way of calling Liza
the servants.
"Let them!" he answered recklessly. "Bring in the whole world. But I
refuse to allow that dog to lord it in my nursery for an hour longer."
The children wept, and Nana ran to him beseechingly, but he waved
her back. He felt he was a strong man again. "In vain, in vain," he
cried; "the: proper place for you is the yard, and there you go to
be tied up this instant."
"George, George," Mrs. Darling whispered, "remember what I told
you about that boy."
Alas, he would not listen. He was determined to show who was
master in that house, and when commands would not draw Nana from the
kennel, he lured her out of it with honeyed words, and seizing her
roughly, dragged her from the nursery. He was ashamed of himself,
and yet he did it. It was all owing to his too affectionate nature,
which craved for admiration. When he had tied her up in the back-yard,
the wretched father went and sat in the passage, with his knuckles
to his eyes.
In the meantime Mrs. Darling had put the children to bed in unwonted
silence and lit their night-lights. They could hear Nana barking,
and John whimpered, "It is because he is chaining her up in the yard,"
but Wendy was wiser.
"That is not Nana's unhappy bark," she said, little guessing what
was about to happen; "that is her bark when she smells danger."
Danger!
"Are you sure, Wendy?"
"Oh yes?."
Mrs. Darling quivered and went to the window. It was securely
fastened. She looked out, and the night was peppered with stars.
They were crowding round the house, as if curious to see what was to
take place there, but she did not notice this, nor that one or two
of the smaller ones winked at her. Yet a nameless fear clutched at her
heart and made her cry, "Oh, how I wish that I wasn't going to a party
to-night!"
Even Michael, already half asleep, knew that she was perturbed,
and he asked, "Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights
are lit?"
"Nothing, precious," she said; "they are the eyes a mother leaves
behind her to guard her children."
She went from bed to bed singing enchantments over them, and
little Michael flung his arms round her. "Mother," he cried, "I'm glad
of you." They were the last words she was to hear from him for a
long time.
No. 27 was only a few yards distant, but there had been a slight
fall of snow, and Father and Mother Darling picked their way over it
deftly not to soil their shoes. They were already the only persons
in the street, and all the stars were watching them. Stars are
beautiful, but they may not take an active part in anything, they must
just look on forever. It is a punishment put on them for something
they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was. So the
older ones have become glassy-eyed and seldom speak (winking is the
star language), but the little ones still wonder. 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 burn
clearly. They were awfully nice little night-lights, and one cannot
help wishing that they could have kept awake to see Peter; but Wendy's
light blinked and gave such a yawn that the other two yawned also, and
before they could close their mouths all the three went out.
There was another light in the room now, a thousand times brighter
than the night-lights, and in the time we have taken to say this, it
has been in all the drawers in the nursery, looking for Peter's
shadow, rummaged the wardrobe and turned every pocket inside out. It
was not really a light; it made this light by flashing about so
quickly, but when it came to rest for a second you saw it was a fairy,
no longer than your hand, but still growing. It was a girl called
Tinker Bell exquisitely gowned in a skeleton leaf, cut low and square,
through which her figure could be seen to the best advantage. She
was slightly inclined to embonpoint.
A moment after the fairy's entrance the window was blown open by the
breathing of the little stars, and Peter dropped in. He had carried
Tinker Bell part of the way, and his hand was still messy with the
fairy dust.
"Tinker Bell," he called softly, after making sure that the children
were asleep. "Tink, where are you?" She was in a jug for the moment,
and liking it extremely; she had never been in a jug before.
"Oh, do come out of that jug, and tell me, do you know where they
put my shadow?"
The loveliest tinkle as of golden bells answered him. It is the
fairy language. You ordinary children can never hear it, but if you
were to hear it you would know that you had heard it once before.
Tink said that the shadow was in the big box. She meant the chest of
drawers, and Peter jumped at the drawers, scattering their contents to
the floor with both hands, as kings toss ha'pence to the crowd. In a
moment he had recovered his shadow, and in his delight he forgot
that he had shut Tinker Bell up in the drawer.
If he thought at all, but I don't believe he ever thought, it was
that he and his shadow, when brought near each other, would join
like drops of water, and when they did not he was appalled. He tried
to stick it on with soap from the bathroom, but that also failed. A
shudder passed through Peter, and he sat on the floor and cried.
His sobs woke Wendy, and she sat up in bed. She was not alarmed to
see a stranger crying on the nursery floor; she was only pleasantly
interested.
"Boy," she said courteously, "why are you crying?"
Peter could be 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's your name?"
"Peter Pan."
She was already sure that he must be Peter, but it did seem a
comparatively short name.
"Is that all?"
"Yes," he said rather sharply. He felt for the first time that it
was a shortish name.
"I'm so sorry," said Wendy Moira Angela.
"It doesn't matter," Peter gulped.
She asked where he lived.
"Second to the right," said Peter, "and then straight on till
morning."
"What a funny address!"
Peter had a sinking. For the first time he felt that perhaps it
was a funny address.
"No, it isn't," he said.
"I mean," Wendy said nicely, remembering that she was hostess, "is
that what they put on the letters?"
He wished she had not mentioned letters.
"Don't get any letters," he said contemptuously.
"But your mother gets letters?"
"Don't have a mother," he said. Not only had he no mother, but he
had not the slightest desire to have one. He thought them very
over-rated persons. Wendy, however, felt at once that she was in the
presence of a tragedy.
"O Peter, no wonder you were crying," she said, and got out of bed
and ran to him.
"I wasn't crying about mothers," he said rather indignantly. "I
was crying because I can't get my shadow to stick on. Besides, I
wasn't crying."
"It has come off?"
"Yes."
Then Wendy saw the shadow on the floor, looking so draggled, and she
was frightfully sorry for Peter. "How awful!" she said, but she
could not help smiling when she saw that he had been trying to stick
it on with soap. How exactly like a boy!
Fortunately she knew at once what to do. "It must be sewn on," she
said, just a little patronisingly.
"What's sewn?" he asked.
"You're dreadfully ignorant."
"No, I'm not."
But she was exulting in his ignorance. "I shall sew it on for you,
my little man," she said, though he was 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 shan't cry," 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, boylike, was indifferent to appearances, and he was now jumping
about in the wildest glee. Alas, he had already forgotten that he owed
his bliss to Wendy. He thought he had attached the shadow himself.
"How clever I am!" he crowed rapturously, "oh, the cleverness of me!"
It is humiliating to have to confess that this conceit of Peter
was one of his most fascinating qualities. To put it with brutal
frankness, there never was a cockier boy.
But for the moment Wendy was shocked. "You conceit," she
exclaimed, with frightful sarcasm; "of course I did nothing!"
"You did a little," Peter said carelessly, and continued to dance.
"A little!" she replied with hauteur. "If I am no use I can at least
withdraw," and she sprang in the most dignified way into bed and
covered her face with the blankets.
To induce her to look up he pretended to be going away, and when
this failed he sat on the end of the bed and tapped her gently with
his foot. "Wendy," he said, "don't withdraw. I can't help crowing,
Wendy, when I'm pleased with myself." Still she would not look up,
though she was listening eagerly. "Wendy," he continued, in a voice
that no woman has ever yet been able to resist, "Wendy, one girl is
more use than twenty boys."
Now Wendy was every inch a woman, though there were not very many
inches, and she peeped out of the bed-clothes.
"Do you really think so, Peter?"
"Yes, I do."
"I think it's perfectly sweet of you," she declared, "and I'll get
up again," and she sat with him on the side of the bed. She also
said she would give him a kiss if he liked, but Peter did not know
what she meant, and he held out his hand expectantly.
"Surely you know what a kiss is?" she asked, aghast.
"I shall know when you give it to me," he replied stiffly, and not
to hurt his 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 customary for them to
ask each other's age, and so Wendy, who always liked to do the correct
thing, asked Peter how old he was. It was not really a happy
question to ask him; it was like an examination paper that asks
grammar, when what you want to be asked is Kings of England.
"I don't know," he replied uneasily, "but I am quite young." He
really knew nothing about it, he had merely suspicions, but he said at
a venture, "Wendy, I ran away the day I was born."
Wendy was quite surprised, but interested; and she indicated in
the charming drawing-room manner, by a touch on her night-gown, that
he could sit nearer her.
"It was because I heard father and mother," he explained in a low
voice, "talking about what I was to be when I became a man." He was
extraordinarily agitated now. "I don't want ever to be a man," he said
with passion. "I want always to be a little boy and to have fun. So
I ran away to Kensington Gardens and lived a long long time among
the fairies."
She gave him a look of the most intense admiration, and he thought
it was because he had run away, but it was really because he knew
fairies. Wendy had lived such a home life that to know fairies
struck her as quite delightful. She poured out questions about them,
to his surprise, for they were rather a nuisance to him, getting in
his way and so on, and indeed he sometimes had to give them a
hiding. Still, he liked them on the whole, and he told her about the
beginning of fairies.
"You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its
laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping
about, and that was the beginning of fairies."
Tedious talk this, but being a stay-at-home she liked it.
"And so," he went on good-naturedly, "there ought to be one fairy
for every boy and girl."
"Ought to be? Isn't there?"
"No. You see children know such a lot now, they soon don't believe
in fairies, and every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,'
there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead."
Really, he thought they had now talked enough about fairies, and
it struck him that Tinker Bell was keeping very quiet. "I can't
think where she has gone to," he said, rising, and he called Tink by
name. Wendy's heart went flutter with a sudden thrill.
"Peter," she cried, clutching him, "you don't mean to tell me that
there is a fairy in this room!"
"She was here just now," he said a little impatiently. "You don't
hear her, do you?" and they both listened.
"The only sound I hear," said Wendy, "is like a tinkle of bells."
"Well, that's Tink, that's the fairy language. I think I hear her
too."
The sound 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 gurgles was his laugh. He had his first laugh still.
"Wendy," he whispered gleefully, "I do believe I shut her up in
the drawer!"
He let poor Tink out of the drawer, and she flew about the nursery
screaming with fury. "You shouldn't say such things," Peter
retorted. "Of course I'm very sorry, but how could I know you were
in the drawer?"
Wendy was not listening to him. "O Peter," she cried, "if she
would only stand still and let me see her!"
"They hardly ever stand still," he said, but for one moment Wendy
saw the romantic figure come to rest on the cuckoo clock. "O the
lovely!" she cried, though Tink's face was still distorted with
passion.
"Tink," said Peter amiably, "this lady says she wishes you were
her fairy."
Tinker Bell answered insolently.
"What does she say, Peter?"
He had to translate. "She is not very polite. She says you are a
great 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 apologetically, "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."
"Who are they?"
"They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when
the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven
days they are sent far away to the Neverland to defray expenses. I'm
captain."
"What fun it must be!"
"Yes," said cunning Peter, "but we are rather lonely. You see we
have no female companionship."
"Are none of the others girls?"
"Oh no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their
prams."
This flattered Wendy immensely. "I think," she said, "it is
perfectly lovely the way you talk about girls; John there just
despises us."
For reply Peter rose and kicked John out of bed, blankets and all;
one kick. This seemed to Wendy rather forward for a first meeting, and
she told him with spirit that he was not captain in her house.
However, John continued to sleep so placidly on the floor that she
allowed him to remain there. "And I know you meant to be kind," she
said, relenting, "so you may give me a kiss."
For the moment she had forgotten his ignorance about kisses. "I
thought you would want it back," he said a little bitterly, and
offered to return her thimble.
"Oh dear," said the nice Wendy, "I don't mean a kiss, I mean a
thimble."
"What's that?"
"It's like this." She kissed him.
"Funny!" said Peter gravely. "Now shall I give you a thimble?"
"If you wish to," said Wendy, keeping her head erect this time.
Peter thimbled her, and almost immediately she screeched. "What is
it, Wendy?"
"It was exactly as if some one were pulling my hair."
"That must have been Tink. I never knew 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 understood, and she was just slightly disappointed when he
admitted that he came to the nursery window not to see her but to
listen to stories.
"You see I don't know any stories. None of the lost boys know any
stories."
"How perfectly awful," Wendy said.
"Do you know," Peter asked, "why swallows build in the eaves of
houses? It is to listen to the stories. O Wendy, your mother was
telling you such a lovely story."
"Which story was it?"
"About the prince who couldn't find the lady who wore the glass
slipper."
"Peter," said Wendy excitedly, "that was Cinderella, and he found
her, and they lived 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?" she cried
with misgiving.
"To tell the other boys."
"Don't go Peter," she entreated, "I know such lots of stories."
Those were her precise words, so there can be no denying that it was
she who first tempted him.
He came back, and there was a greedy look in his eyes now which
ought to have alarmed her, but did not.
"Oh, the stories I could tell to the boys!" she cried, and then
Peter gripped her and began to draw her toward the window.
"Let me go!" she ordered him.
"Wendy, do come with me and tell the other boys."
Of course she was very pleased to be asked, but she said, "Oh
dear, I can't. Think of mummy! Besides, I can't fly."
"I'll teach you."
"Oh, how lovely to fly."
"I'll teach you how to jump on the wind's back, and then away we
go."
"Oo!" she exclaimed rapturously.
"Wendy, Wendy, when you are sleeping in your silly bed you might
be flying about with me saying funny things to the stars."
"Oo!"
"And, Wendy, there are mermaids."
"Mermaids! With tails?"
"Such long tails."
"Oh," cried Wendy, "to see a mermaid!"
He had become frightfully cunning. "Wendy," he said, "how we
should all respect you."
She was wriggling her body in distress. It was quite as if she
were trying to remain on the nursery floor.
But he had no pity for her.
"Wendy," he said, the sly one, "you could tuck us in at night."
"Oo!"
"None of us has ever been tucked in at night."
"Oo," and her arms went out to him.
"And you could darn our clothes, and make pockets for us. None of us
has any pockets."
How could she resist. "Of course it's awfully fascinating!" she
cried. "Peter, would you teach John and Michael to fly too?"
"If you like," he said indifferently, and she ran to John and
Michael and shook them. "Wake up," she cried, "Peter Pan has come
and he is to teach us to fly."
John rubbed his eyes. "Then I shall get up," he said. Of course he
was on the floor already. "Hallo," he said, "I am up!"
Michael was up by this time also, looking as sharp as a knife with
six blades and a saw, but Peter suddenly signed silence. Their faces
assumed the awful craftiness of children listening for sounds from the
grown-up world. All was as still as salt. Then everything was right.
No, stop! Everything was wrong. Nana, who had been barking
distressfully all the evening, was quiet now. It was her silence
they had heard!
"Out with the light! Hide! Quick!" cried John, taking command for
the only time throughout the whole adventure. And thus when Liza
entered, holding Nana, the nursery seemed quite its old self, very
dark, and you could have sworn you heard its three wicked inmates
breathing angelically 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 her cheek, by Nana's absurd suspicions. She thought
the best way of getting a little quiet was to take Nana to the nursery
for a moment, but in custody of course.
"There, you suspicious brute," she said, not sorry that Nana was
in disgrace. "They are perfectly safe, aren't they? Every one of the
little angels sound asleep in bed. Listen to their gentle breathing."
Here Michael, encouraged by his success, breathed so loudly that
they were nearly detected. Nana knew that kind of breathing, and she
tried to drag herself out of Liza's clutches.
But Liza was dense. "No more of it, Nana," she said sternly, pulling
her out of the room. "I warn you if 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 communication.
Mr. and Mrs. Darling knew at once that something terrible was
happening in their nursery, and without a good-bye to their hostess
they rushed into the street.
But it was now ten minutes since three scoundrels had been breathing
behind the curtains, and Peter Pan can do a great deal in ten minutes.
We now return to the nursery.
"It's all right," John announced, emerging from his 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!" 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 it now, Wendy!"
cried John, but soon he found he had not. Not one of them could fly an
inch, though even Michael was in words of two syllables, and Peter did
not know A from Z.
Of course Peter had been trifling with them, for no one can fly
unless the fairy dust has been blown on him. Fortunately, as we have
mentioned, one of his hands was messy with it, and he blew some on
each of them, with the most superb results.
"Now just wriggle your shoulders this way," he said, "and let go."
They were all on their beds, and gallant Michael let go first. He
did not quite mean to let go, but he did it, and immediately he was
borne across the room.
"I flewed!" he screamed while still in mid-air. John let go and
met Wendy near the bathroom.
"Oh, lovely!"
"Oh, ripping!"
"Look at me!"
"Look at me!"
"Look at me!"
They were not nearly so elegant as Peter, they could not help
kicking a little, but their heads were bobbing against the ceiling,
and there is almost nothing so delicious as that. Peter gave Wendy a
hand at first, but had to desist, Tink was so indignant.
Up and down they went, and round and round. Heavenly was Wendy's
word.
"I say," cried John, "why shouldn't we all go out!"
Of course it was to this that Peter had been luring them.
Michael was ready: he wanted to see how long it took him to do a
billion miles. But Wendy hesitated.
"Mermaids!" said Peter again.
"Oo!"
"And there are pirates."
"Pirates," cried John, seizing his Sunday hat, "let us go at once!"
It was just at this moment that Mr. and Mrs. Darling hurried with
Nana out of 27. They ran into the middle of the street to look up at
the nursery window; and, yes, it was still shut, but the room was
ablaze with light, and most heart-gripping sight of all, they could
see in shadow on the curtain three little figures in night attire
circling round and round, not on the floor but in the air.
Not three figures, four!
In a tremble they opened the street door. Mr. Darling would have
rushed upstairs, but Mrs. Darling signed 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 sigh of relief, but there will be no story.
On the other hand, if they are not in time, I solemnly promise that it
will all come right in the end.
They would have reached the nursery in time had it not been that the
little stars were watching them. Once again the stars blew the
window open, and that smallest star of all called out:
"Cave, Peter!"
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.
CHAPTER IV.
THE FLIGHT.
"Second to the right, and straight on till morning!"
That, Peter had told Wendy, was the way to the Neverland; but even
birds, carrying maps and consulting them at windy corners, could not
have sighted it with these instructions. Peter, you see, just said
anything that came into his head.
At first his companions trusted him implicitly, and so great were
the delights of flying that they wasted time circling round church
spires or any other tall objects on the way that took their fancy.
John and Michael raced, Michael getting a start.
They recalled with contempt that not so long ago they had thought
themselves fine fellows for being able to fly round a room.
Not 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.
Sometimes it was dark and sometimes light, and now they were very
cold and again too warm. Did they really feel hungry at times, or were
they merely pretending, because Peter had such a jolly new way of
feeding them? His way was to pursue birds who had food in their mouths
suitable for humans and snatch it from them; then the birds would
follow and snatch it back; and they would all go chasing each other
gaily for miles, parting at last with mutual expressions of good-will.
But Wendy noticed with gentle concern that Peter did not seem to
know that this was rather an odd way of getting your bread and butter,
nor even that there are other ways.
Certainly they did not pretend to be sleepy, they were sleepy; and
that was a danger, for the moment they popped off, down they fell. The
awful thing was that Peter thought this funny.
"There he goes again!" he would cry gleefully, as Michael suddenly
dropped like a stone.
"Save him, save him!" cried Wendy, looking with horror at the
cruel sea far below. Eventually Peter would dive through the air,
and catch Michael just before he could strike the sea, and it was
lovely the way he did it; but he always waited till the last moment,
and you felt it was his cleverness that interested him and not the
saving of human life. Also he was fond of variety, and the sport
that engrossed him one moment would suddenly cease to engage him, so
there was always the possibility that the next time you fell he
would let you go.
He could sleep in the air without falling, by merely lying on his
back and floating, but this was, partly at least, because he was so
light that if you got behind him and blew he went faster.
"Do be more polite to him," Wendy whispered to John, when they
were playing "Follow my Leader."
"Then tell him to stop showing off," said John.
When playing Follow my Leader, Peter would fly close to the water
and touch each shark's tail in passing, just as in the street you
may run your finger along an iron railing. They could not follow him
in this with much success, so perhaps it was rather like showing
off, especially as he kept looking behind to see how many tails they
missed.
"You must be nice to him," Wendy impressed on her brothers. "What
could we do if he were to leave us!"
"We could go back," Michael said.
"Well, then, we could go on," said John.
"That is the awful thing, John. We should have to go on, for we
don't know how to stop."
This was true, Peter had forgotten to show them how to stop.
John said that if the worst came to the worst, all they had to do
was to go straight on, for the world was round, and so in time they
must come back to their own window.
"And who is to get food for us, John?"
"I nipped a bit out of that eagle's mouth pretty neatly, Wendy."
"After the twentieth try," Wendy reminded him. "And even though we
became good at picking up food, see how we bump against clouds and
things if he is not near to give us a hand."
Indeed they were constantly bumping. They could now fly strongly,
though they still kicked far too much; but if they saw a cloud in
front of them, the more they tried to avoid it, the more certainly did
they bump into it. If Nana had been with them, she would have had a
bandage round Michael's forehead by this time.
Peter was not with them for the moment, and they felt rather
lonely up there by themselves. He could go so much faster than they
that he would suddenly shoot out of sight, to have some adventure in
which they had no share. He would come down laughing over something
fearfully funny he had been saying to a star, but he had already
forgotten what it was, or he would come up with mermaid scales still
sticking to him, and yet not be able to say for certain what had
been happening. It was really rather irritating to children who had
never seen a mermaid.
"And if he forgets them so quickly," Wendy argued, "how can we
expect that he will go on remembering us?"
Indeed, sometimes when he returned he did not remember them, at
least not well. Wendy was sure of it. She saw recognition come into
his eyes as he was about to pass them the time of day and go on;
once even she had to call him by name.
"I'm Wendy," she said agitatedly.
He was very sorry. "I say, Wendy," he whispered to her, "always if
you see me forgetting you, just keep on saying 'I'm Wendy,' and then
I'll remember."
Of course this was rather unsatisfactory. However, to make amends he
showed them how to lie out flat on a strong wind that was going
their way, and this was such a pleasant change that they tried it
several times and found 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 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!"
"Wendy, look at the turtles burying their eggs in the sand."
"I say, John, I see your flamingo with the broken leg!"
"Look, Michael, there's your cave!"
"John, what's that in the brushwood?"
"It's a wolf with her whelps. Wendy, I do believe that's your little
whelp!"
"There's my boat, John, with her sides stove in!"
"No, it isn't! Why, we burned your boat."
"That's her, at any rate. I say, John, I see the smoke of the
redskin camp!"
"Where? Show me, and I'll tell you by the way the smoke curls
whether they are on the war-path."
"There, just across the Mysterious River."
"I see now. Yes, they are on the war-path right enough."
Peter was a little annoyed with them for knowing so much, but if
he wanted to lord it over them his triumph was at hand, for have I not
told you that anon fear fell upon them?
It came as the arrows went, leaving the island in gloom.
In the old days at home the Neverland had always begun to look a
little dark and threatening by bedtime. Then unexplored patches
arose in it and spread, black shadows moved about in them, the roar of
the beasts of prey was quite different now, and above all, you lost
the certainty that you would win. You were quite glad that the
night-lights were 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 through them every time they touched his body. They were
now over the fearsome island, flying so low that sometimes a tree
grazed their feet. Nothing horrid was visible in the air, yet their
progress had become slow and laboured, exactly as if they were pushing
their way through hostile forces. Sometimes they hung in the air until
Peter had beaten on it with his fists.
"They don't want us to land," he explained.
"Who are they?" Wendy whispered, shuddering.
But he could not or would not say. Tinker Bell had been asleep on
his shoulder, but now he wakened her and sent her on in front.
Sometimes he poised himself in the air, listening intently, with his
hand to his ear, and again he would stare down with eyes so bright
that they seemed to bore two holes to earth. Having done these things,
he went on again.
His courage was almost appalling. "Would you like an adventure now,"
he said casually to John, "or would you like to have your tea first?"
Wendy said "tea first" quickly, and Michael pressed her hand in
gratitude, but the braver John hesitated.
"What kind of adventure?" he asked cautiously.
"There's a pirate asleep in the pampas just beneath us," Peter
told him. "If you like, we'll go down and kill him."
"I don't see him," John said after a long pause.
"I do."
"Suppose," John said, a little huskily, "he were to wake up."
Peter spoke indignantly. "You don't think I would kill him while
he was sleeping! I would wake him first, and then kill him. That's the
way I always do."
"I say! Do you kill many?"
"Tons."
John said "how ripping," but decided to have tea first. He asked
if there were many pirates on the island just now, and Peter said he
had never known so many.
"Who is captain now?"
"Hook," answered Peter, and his face became very stern as he said
that hated word.
"Jas. Hook?"
"Ay."
Then indeed Michael began to cry, and even John could speak in gulps
only, for they knew Hook's reputation.
"He was Blackbeard's bo'sun," John whispered huskily. "He is the
worst of them all. He is the only man of whom Barbecue was afraid."
"That's him," said Peter.
"What is he like?- Is he big?"
"He is not so big as he was"
"How do you mean?"
"I cut off a bit of him."
"You!"
"Yes, me," said Peter sharply.
"I wasn't meaning to be disrespectful."
"Oh, all right."
"But, I say, what bit?"
"His right hand."
"Then he can't fight now?"
"Oh, can't he just!"
"Left-hander?"
"He has an iron hook instead of a right hand, and he claws with it."
"Claws!"
"I say, John," said Peter.
"Yes."
"Say, 'Ay, ay, sir.'"
"Ay, ay, sir."
"There is one thing," Peter continued, "that every boy who serves
under me has to promise, and so must you."
John paled.
"It is this, if we meet Hook in open fight, you must leave him to
me."
"I promise," John said loyally.
For the moment they were feeling less eerie, because Tink was flying
with them, and in her light they could distinguish each other.
Unfortunately she could not fly so slowly as they, and so she had to
go round and round them in a circle in which they moved as in a
halo. Wendy quite liked it, until Peter pointed out the 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!"
"John!"
"Michael!"
"Tell her to go away at once, Peter," the three cried
simultaneously, but he refused.
"She thinks we have lost the way," he replied stiffly, "and she is
rather frightened. You don't think I would send her away all by
herself when she is frightened!"
For a moment the circle of light was broken, and something gave
Peter a loving little pinch.
"Then tell her," Wendy begged, "to put out her light."
"She can't put it out. That is about the only thing fairies can't
do. It just goes out of itself when she falls asleep, same as the
stars."
"Then tell her to sleep at once," John almost ordered.
"She can't sleep except when she's sleepy. It's the only other thing
fairies can't do."
"Seems to me," growled John, "these are the only two things worth
doing."
Here he got a pinch, but not a loving one.
"If only one of us had a pocket," Peter said, "we could carry her in
it." However, they had set off in such a hurry that there was not a
pocket between the four of them.
He had a happy idea. John's hat!
Tink agreed to travel by hat if it was carried in the hand. John
carried it, though she had hoped to be carried by Peter. Presently
Wendy took the hat, because John said it struck against his knee as he
flew; and this, as we shall see, led to mischief, for Tinker Bell
hated to be under an obligation to Wendy.
In the black topper the light was completely hidden, and they flew
on in silence. It was the stillest silence they had ever known, broken
once by a distant lapping, which Peter explained was the wild beasts
drinking at the ford, and again by a rasping sound that might have
been the branches of trees rubbing together, but he said it was the
redskins sharpening their knives.
Even these noises ceased. To Michael the loneliness was dreadful.
"If only something would make a sound!" he cried.
As if in answer to his request, the air was rent by the most
tremendous crash he had ever heard. The pirates had fired Long Tom
at them.
The roar of it echoed through the mountains, and the echoes seemed
to cry savagely, "Where are they, where are they, where are they?"
Thus sharply did the terrified three learn the difference between an
island of make-believe and the same island come true.
When at last the heavens were steady again, John and Michael found
themselves alone in the darkness. John was treading the air
mechanically, and Michael without knowing how to float was floating.
"Are you shot?" John whispered tremulously.
"I haven't tried yet," Michael whispered back.
We know now that no one had been hit. Peter, however, had been
carried by the wind of the shot far out to sea, while Wendy was
blown upwards with no companion but Tinker Bell.
It would have been well for Wendy if at that moment she had
dropped the hat.
I don't know whether the idea came suddenly to Tink, or whether
she had planned it on the way, but she at once popped out of the hat
and began to lure Wendy to her destruction.
Tink was not all bad: or, rather, she was all bad just now, but,
on the other hand, sometimes she was all good. Fairies have to be
one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have
room for one feeling only at a time. They are, however, allowed to
change, only it must be a complete change. At present she was full
of jealousy of Wendy. What she said in her lovely tinkle Wendy could
not of course understand, and I believe some of it was bad words,
but it sounded kind, and she flew back and forward, plainly meaning
"Follow me, and all will be well."
What else could poor Wendy do? She called to Peter and John and
Michael, and got only mocking echoes in reply. She did not yet know
that Tink hated her with the fierce hatred of a very woman. And so,
bewildered, and now staggering in her flight, she followed Tink to her
doom.
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 redskins feed heavily for six days and nights, and when
pirates and lost boys meet they merely bite their thumbs at each
other. But with the coming of Peter, who hates lethargy, they are
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 island, but they did not meet because all
were going at the same rate.
All wanted blood except the boys, who liked it as a rule, but
to-night were out to greet their captain. The boys on the island vary,
of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and
when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter
thins them out; but at this time there were six of them, counting
the twins as two. Let us pretend to he here among the sugarcane 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 therefore
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 corner; all would be
quiet, he would take the opportunity of going off to gather a few
sticks for firewood, and then when he returned the others would be
sweeping up the blood. This ill-luck had given a gentle melancholy
to his countenance, but instead of souring his nature had sweetened
it, so that he was quite the humblest of the boys. Poor kind
Tootles, there is danger in the air for you to-night. Take care lest
an adventure is now offered you, which, if accepted, will plunge you
in deepest woe. Tootles, the fairy Tink who is bent on mischief this
night is looking for a tool, 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, followed by Slightly, who
cuts whistles out of the trees and dances ecstatically to his own
tunes. Slightly is the most conceited of the boys. He thinks he
remembers the days before he was lost, with their manners and customs,
and this has given his nose an offensive tilt. Curly is fourth; he
is a pickle, 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 describing the wrong one. Peter never quite knew what
twins were, and his band were not allowed to know anything he did
not know, so these two were always vague about themselves, and did
their best to give satisfaction by keeping close together in an
apologetic sort of way.
The boys vanish in the gloom, and after a pause, but not a long
pause, for things go briskly on the island, come the pirates on
their track. We hear them before they are seen, and it is always the
same dreadful song:
"Avast belay, yo ho, heave to,
A-pirating we go,
And if we're parted by a shot
We're sure to meet below!"
A more villainous-looking lot never hung in a row on Execution dock.
Here, a little in advance, ever and again with his head to the
ground listening, his great arms bare, pieces of eight in his ears
as ornaments, is the handsome Italian Cecco, who cut his name in
letters of blood on the back of the governor of the prison at Gao.
That gigantic black behind him has had many names since he dropped the
one with which dusky mothers still terrify their children on the banks
of the Guadjomo. Here is Bill Jukes, every inch of him tattooed, the
same Bill Jukes who got six dozen on the Walrus from Flint before he
would drop the bag of moidores; and Cookson, said to be Black Murphy's
brother (but this was never proved), and Gentleman Starkey, once an
usher in a public school and still dainty in his ways of killing;
and Skylights (Morgan's Skylights); and the Irish bo'sun Smee, an
oddly genial man who stabbed, so to speak, without offence, and was
the only Non-conformist in Hook's crew; and Noodler, whose hands
were fixed on backwards; and Robt. Mullins and Alf Mason and many
another ruffian long known and feared on the Spanish Main.
In the midst of them, the blackest and largest 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 countenance. His eyes were of the blue of the
forget-me-not, and of a profound melancholy, save when he was plunging
his hook into you, at which time two red spots appeared in them and
lit them up horribly. In manner, something of the grand seigneur still
clung to him, so that he even ripped you up with an air, and I have
been told that he 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 elegance 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 attire associated with the name of
Charles II, having heard it said in some earlier period of his
career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts;
and in his mouth he had a holder of his own contrivance which
enabled him to smoke two cigars at once. But undoubtedly the
grimmest part of him was his iron claw.
Let us now kill a pirate, to show Hook's method. Skylights will
do. As they pass, Skylights lurches clumsily against him, ruffling his
lace collar; the hook shoots forth, there is a tearing sound and one
screech, then the body is kicked aside, and the pirates pass on. He
has not even taken the cigars from his mouth.
Such is the terrible man against whom Peter Pan is pitted. Which
will win?
On the trail of the pirates, stealing noiselessly down the war-path,
which is not visible to inexperienced eyes, come the redskins, every
one of them with his eyes peeled. They carry tomahawks and knives, and
their naked bodies gleam with paint and oil. Strung around them are
scalps, of boys as well as of pirates, for these are the Piccaninny
tribe, and not to be confused with the softer-hearted Delawares or the
Hurons. In the van, on all fours, is Great Big Little Panther, a brave
of so many scalps that in his present position they somewhat impede
his progress. Bringing up the rear, the place of greatest danger,
comes Tiger Lily, proudly erect, a princess in her own right. She is
the most beautiful of dusky Dianas 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
flee from them, for every kind of beast, and, more particularly, all
the man-eaters, live cheek by jowl on the favoured island. Their
tongues are hanging out, they are hungry to-night.
When they have passed, comes the last figure of all, a gigantic
crocodile. We shall see for whom she is looking presently.
The crocodile passes, but soon the boys appear again, for the
procession must continue indefinitely until one of the parties stops
or changes its pace. Then quickly they will be on top of each other.
All are keeping a sharp look-out in front, but none suspects that
the danger may be creeping up from behind. This shows how real the
island was.
The first to fall out of the moving circle was the boys. They
flung themselves down on the sward, close to their underground home.
"I do wish Peter would come back," every one of them said nervously,
though in height and still more in breadth they were all larger than
their captain.
"I am the only one who is not afraid of the pirates," Slightly said,
in the tone that prevented his being a general favourite, but
perhaps some distant sound disturbed him, for he added hastily, "but I
wish he would come back, and tell us whether he has heard anything
more about Cinderella."
They talked of Cinderella, and Tootles was confident that his mother
must have been very like her.
It was only in Peter's absence that they could speak of mothers, the
subject being forbidden by him as silly.
"All I remember about my mother," Nibs told them, "is that she often
said to 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 exception of Nibs, who
has darted away to reconnoitre, they are already in their home under
the ground, a very delightful residence of which we shall see a good
deal presently. But how have they reached it? for there is no entrance
to be seen, not so much as a large stone, which if rolled away would
disclose the mouth of a cave. Look closely, however, and you may
note that there are here seven large trees, each with a hole in its
hollow trunk as large as a boy These are the seven entrances to the
home under the ground, for which Hook has been searching in vain these
many moons. Will he find it 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!" he cried, writhing.
Now for the first time we hear the voice of Hook. It was a black
voice. "Put back that pistol first," it said threateningly.
"It was one of those boys you hate. I could have shot him dead."
"Ay, and the sound would have brought Tiger Lily's redskins upon us.
Do you want to lose your scalp?"
"Shall I after him, captain," asked pathetic Smee, "and tickle him
with Johnny Corkscrew?" Smee had pleasant names for everything, and
his cutlass was Johnny Corkscrew, because he wriggled 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 for them."
The pirates disappeared among the trees, and in a moment their
captain and Smee were alone. Hook heaved a heavy sigh, and I know
not why it was, perhaps it was because of the soft beauty of the
evening, but there came over him a desire to confide to his faithful
bo'sun the story of his life. He spoke long and earnestly, but what it
was all about Smee, who was rather stupid, did not know in the least.
Anon he caught the word Peter.
"Most of all," Hook was saying passionately, "I want their
captain, Peter Pan. 'Twas he cut off my arm." He brandished the hook
threateningly. "I've waited long to shake his hand with this. Oh, I'll
tear him!"
"And yet," said Smee, "I have often heard you say that hook was
worth a score of hands, for combing the hair and other homely uses."
"Ay," the captain answered, "if I was a mother I would pray to
have my children born with this instead of that," and he cast a look
of pride upon his iron hand and one of scorn upon the other. Then
again he frowned.
"Peter flung my arm," he said, wincing, "to a crocodile that
happened to be passing by."
"I have often," said Smee, "noticed your strange dread of
crocodiles."
"Not of crocodiles," Hook corrected him, "but of that one
crocodile." He lowered his voice. "It liked my arm so much, Smee, that
it has followed me ever since, from sea to sea and from land to
land, licking its lips for the rest of me."
"In a way," said Smee, "it's a sort of compliment."
"I want no such compliments," Hook barked petulantly. "I want
Peter Pan, who first gave the brute its taste for me."
He sat down on a large mushroom, and now there was a quiver in his
voice. "Smee," he said huskily, "that crocodile would have had me
before this, but by a lucky chance it swallowed a clock which goes
tick tick inside it, and so before it can reach me I hear the tick and
bolt." He laughed, but in a hollow way.
"Some day," said Smee, "the clock will run down, and then he'll
get you."
Hook wetted his dry lips. "Ay," he said, "that's the fear that
haunts me."
Since sitting down he had felt curiously warm. "Smee," he said,
"this seat is hot." He jumped up. "Odds bobs, hammer and tongs, I'm
burning."
They examined the mushroom, which was of a size and solidity unknown
on the mainland; they tried to pull it up, and it came away at once in
their hands, for it had no root. Stranger still, smoke began at once
to ascend. The pirates looked at each other. "A chimney!" they both
exclaimed.
They had indeed discovered the chimney of the home under the ground.
It was the custom of the boys to stop it with a mushroom when
enemies were in the neighbourhood.
Not only smoke came out of it. There came also children's voices,
for so safe did the boys feel in their hiding-place that they were
gaily chattering. The pirates listened grimly, and then replaced the
mushroom. They looked around them and noted the holes in the seven
trees.
"Did you hear them say Peter Pan's from home?" Smee whispered,
fidgeting with Johnny Corkscrew.
Hook nodded. He stood for a long time lost in thought, and at last a
curdling smile lit up his swarthy face. Smee had been waiting for
it. "Unrip your plan, captain," he cried eagerly.
"To return to the ship," Hook replied slowly through his teeth, "and
cook a large rich cake of a jolly thickness with green sugar on it.
There can be but one room below, for there is but one chimney. The
silly moles had not the sense to see that they did not need a door
apiece. That shows they have no mother. We will leave the cake on
the shore of the Mermaids' Lagoon. These boys are always swimming
about there, playing with the mermaids. They will find the cake and
they will gobble it up, because, having no mother, they don't know how
dangerous 'tis to eat rich damp cake." He burst into laughter, not
hollow laughter now, but honest laughter. "Aha, they will die!"
Smee had listened with growing admiration.
"It's the wickedest, prettiest policy ever I heard of!" he cried,
and in their exultation they danced and sang:
"Avast, belay, when I appear,
By fear they're overtook,
Nought's left upon your bones when 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.
"Save me, save me!" cried Nibs, falling on the ground.
"But what can we do, what can we do?"
It was a high compliment to Peter that at that dire moment their
thoughts turned to him.
"What would Peter do?" they cried simultaneously.
Almost in the same breath they cried, "Peter would look at them
through his legs."
And then, "Let us do what Peter would do."
It is quite the most successful way of defying wolves, and as one
boy they bent and looked through their legs. The next moment is the
long one, but victory came quickly, for as the boys advanced upon them
in 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, 'Poor Wendy.'"
"Poor Wendy?"
"I remember," said Slightly instantly, "there are birds called
Wendies."
"See, it comes!" cried Curly, pointing to Wendy in the heavens.
Wendy was now almost overhead, and they could hear her plaintive
cry. But more distinct came the shrill voice of Tinker Bell. The
jealous fairy had now cast off all disguise of friendship, and was
darting at her victim from every direction, pinching savagely each
time she touched.
"Hullo, Tink," cried the wondering boys.
Tink's reply rang out: "Peter wants you to shoot the Wendy."
It was not in their nature to question when Peter ordered. "Let us
do what Peter wishes," cried the simple boys. "Quick, bows and
arrows!"
All but Tootles popped down their trees. He had a bow and arrow with
him, and Tink noted it, and rubbed her little hands.
"Quick, Tootles, quick," she screamed. "Peter will be so pleased."
Tootles excitedly fitted the arrow to his bow. "Out of the way,
Tink," he shouted, and then he fired, and Wendy fluttered to the
ground with an arrow in her breast.
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.
"A lady to take care of us at last," said one of the twins, "and you
have killed her!"
They were sorry for him, but sorrier for themselves, and when he
took a step nearer them they turned from him.
Tootles' face was very white, but there was a dignity about him
now that had never been there before.
"I did it," he said, reflecting. "When ladies used to come to me
in dreams, I said, 'Pretty mother, pretty mother.' But when at last
she really came, I shot her."
He moved slowly away.
"Don't go," they called in pity.
"I must," he answered, shaking; "I am so afraid of Peter."
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?"
They opened their mouths, but the cheers would not come. He
overlooked it in his haste to tell the glorious tidings.
"Great news, boys," he cried, "I have brought at last a mother for
you all?"
Still no sound, except a little thud from Tootles as he dropped on
his knees.
"Have you not seen her?" asked Peter, becoming troubled. "She flew
this way."
"Ah me!" one voice said, and another said, "Oh, mournful day!"
Tootles, rose. "Peter," he said quietly, "I will show her to you,"
and when the others would still have hidden her he said, "Back, twins,
let Peter see."
So they all stood back, and let him see, and after he had looked for
a little time he did not know what to do next.
"She is dead," he said uncomfortably. "Perhaps she is frightened
at being dead."
He thought of hopping off in a comic sort of way till he was out
of sight of her, and then never going near the spot any more. They
would all have been glad to follow if he had done this.
But there was the arrow. He took it from her heart and faced his
band.
"Whose arrow?" he demanded sternly.
"Mine, Peter," said Tootles on his knees.
"Oh, dastard hand," Peter said, and he raised the arrow to use it as
a dagger.
Tootles did not flinch. He bared his breast. "Strike, Peter," he
said firmly, "strike true."
Twice did Peter raise the arrow, and twice did his hand fall. "I
cannot strike," he said with awe, "there is something stays my hand."
All looked at him in wonder, save Nibs, who fortunately looked at
Wendy.
"It is she," he cried, "the Wendy lady, see, her arm!"
Wonderful to relate, Wendy had raised her arm. Nibs bent over her
and listened reverently. "I think she said 'Poor Tootles,'" he
whispered.
"She lives," Peter said briefly.
Slightly cried instantly, "The Wendy lady lives."
Then Peter knelt beside her and found his button. You remember she
had put it on a chain that she wore round her neck.
"See," he said, "the arrow struck against this. It is the kiss I
gave her. It has saved her life."
"I remember kisses," Slightly interposed quickly, "let me see it.
Ay, that's a kiss."
Peter did not hear him. He was begging Wendy to get better
quickly, so that he could show her the mermaids. Of course she could
not answer yet, being still in a frightful faint; but from overhead
came a wailing note.
"Listen to Tink," said Curly, "she is crying because the Wendy
lives."
Then they had to tell Peter of Tink's crime, and almost never had
they seen him look so stern.
"Listen, Tinker Bell," he cried, "I am your friend no more. Begone
from me forever."
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 forever, 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 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.
"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!"
"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 disappeared, scratching his
head. But he knew Peter must be obeyed, and he returned in a moment,
wearing John's hat and looking solemn.
"Please, sir," said Peter, going to him, "are you a doctor?"
The difference between him and the other boys at such a time was
that they knew it was make-believe, while to him make-believe and true
were exactly the same thing. This sometimes troubled them, as when
they had to make-believe that they had had their dinners.
If they broke down in their make-believe he rapped them on the
knuckles.
"Yes, my little man," 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!" 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 cosy dwelling already lay at Wendy's
feet.
"If only we knew," said one, "the kind of house she likes best."
"Peter," shouted another, "she is moving in her sleep."
"Her mouth opens," cried a third, looking respectfully into it. "Oh,
lovely!"
"Perhaps she is going to sing in her sleep," said Peter. "Wendy,
sing the kind of house you would like to have."
Immediately, without opening her eyes, Wendy began to sing:
"I wish I had a pretty house,
The littlest ever seen,
With funny little red walls
And roof of mossy green."
They gurgled with joy at this, for by the greatest good luck the
branches they had brought were sticky with red sap, and all the ground
was carpeted with moss. As they rattled up the little house they broke
into song themselves:
"We've built the little walls and roof
And made a lovely door,
So tell us, mother Wendy,
What are you wanting more?"
To this she answered rather greedily:
"Oh, really next I think I'll have
Gay windows all about,
With roses peeping in, you know,
And babies peeping out"
With a blow of their fists they made windows, and large yellow
leaves were the blinds. But roses-?
"Roses!" cried Peter sternly.
Quickly they made-believe to grow the loveliest roses up the walls.
Babies?
To prevent Peter ordering babies they hurried into song again:
"We've made the roses peeping out,
The babes are at the door,
We cannot make ourselves, you know,
'Cos we've been made before."
Peter, seeing this to be a good idea, at once pretended that it
was his own. The house was quite beautiful, and no doubt Wendy was
very cosy within, though, of course, they could no longer see her.
Peter strode up and down, ordering finishing touches. Nothing
escaped his eagle 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 knocker.
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 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 chimney that, as if to say thank you, smoke
immediately began to come out of the hat.
Now really and truly it was finished. Nothing remained to do but
to knock.
"All look your best," Peter warned them; "first impressions are
awfully important."
He was glad no one asked him what first impressions are; they were
all too busy looking their best.
He knocked politely, and now the wood was as still as the
children, not a sound to be heard except from Tinker Bell, who was
watching from a branch and openly sneering.
What the boys were wondering was, would anyone 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 were the very words
they had hoped she would say.
"And we are your children," cried the twins.
Then all went on their knees, and holding out their arms cried, "O
Wendy lady, be our mother."
"Ought I?" Wendy said, all shining. "Of course it's frightfully
fascinating, but you see I am only a little girl. I have no real
experience."
"That doesn't matter," said Peter, as if he were the only person
present who knew all about it, though he was really the one who knew
least. "What we need is just a nice motherly person."
"Oh dear!" Wendy said, "you see I feel that is exactly what I am."
"It is, it is," they all cried; "we saw it at once."
"Very well," she said, "I will do my best. Come inside at once,
you naughty children; I am sure your feet are damp. And before I put
you to bed I have just time to finish the story of Cinderella."
In they went; I don't know how there was room for them, but you
can squeeze very tight in the Neverland. And that was the first of the
many joyous evenings they had with Wendy. By and by she tucked them up
in the great bed in the home under the trees, but she herself slept
that night in the little house, and Peter kept watch outside with
drawn sword, for the pirates could be heard carousing far away and the
wolves were on the prowl. The little house looked so cosy and safe
in the darkness, with a bright light showing through its blinds, and
the chimney smoking beautifully, and Peter standing on guard. After
a time he fell asleep, and some unsteady fairies had to climb over him
on their way home from an orgy. Any of the other boys obstructing
the fairy path at night they would have mischiefed, but they just
tweaked Peter's nose and passed on.
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 mastered 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 you are bumpy in awkward places or the
only available tree is an odd shape, Peter does some things to you,
and after that you fit. Once you fit, great care must be taken to go
on fitting, and this, as Wendy was to discover to her delight, keeps a
whole family in perfect condition.
Wendy and Michael fitted their trees at the first try, but John
had to be altered a little.
After a few days' practice they could go up and down as gaily as
buckets in a well. And how ardently they grew to love their home under
the ground; especially Wendy! It consisted of one large room, as all
houses should do, with a floor in which you could dig if you wanted to
go fishing, and in this floor grew stout mushrooms of a charming
colour, which were used as stools. A Never tree tried hard to grow
in the centre of the room, but every morning they sawed the trunk
through, level with the floor. By tea-time it was always about two
feet high, and then they put a door on top of it, the whole thus
becoming a table; as soon as they cleared away, they sawed off the
trunk again, and thus there was more room to play. There was an
enormous fireplace which was in almost any part of the room where
you cared to light it, and across this Wendy stretched strings, made
of fibre, from which she suspended her washing. The bed was tilted
against the wall by day, and let down at 6:30, when it filled nearly
half the room; and all the boys slept in it, except Michael, lying
like sardines in a tin. There was a strict rule against turning
round until one gave the signal, when all turned at once. Michael
should have used it also, but Wendy would have 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 herself Tink was very contemptuous of the rest of the house,
as indeed was perhaps inevitable, and her chamber, though beautiful,
looked rather conceited, having the appearance of a nose permanently
turned up.
I suppose it was all especially entrancing to Wendy, because those
rampagious boys of hers gave her so much to do. Really there were
whole weeks when, except perhaps with a stocking in the evening, she
was never above ground. The cooking, I can tell you, kept her nose
to the pot, and even if there was nothing in it, even 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 getting
loose for your tree he let you stodge.
Wendy's favourite time for sewing and darning was after they had all
gone to bed. Then, as she expressed it, she had a breathing time for
herself; and she occupied it in making new things for them, and
putting double pieces on the knees, for they were all most frightfully
hard on their knees.
When she sat down to a basketful of their stockings, every heel with
a hole in it, she would fling up her arms and exclaim, "Oh dear, I
am sure I sometimes think spinsters are to be envied!" Her face beamed
when she exclaimed this.
You remember about her pet wolf Well, it very soon discovered that
she had come to the island and 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 examination papers on it, as like as possible to the ones
she used to do at school. The other boys thought this awfully
interesting, and insisted on joining, and they made slates for
themselves, and sat round the table, writing and thinking hard about
the questions she had written on another slate and passed round.
They were the most ordinary questions- "What was the colour of
Mother's eyes? Which was taller, Father or Mother? Was Mother blonde
or brunette? Answer all three questions if possible." "(A) Write an
essay of not less than 40 words on How I spent my last Holidays, or
The 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 despised all mothers
except Wendy, and for another he was the only boy on the island who
could neither write nor spell; not the smallest word. He was above all
that sort of thing.
By the way, the questions were all written in the past tense. What
was the colour of Mother's eyes, and so on. Wendy, you see, had been
forgetting too.
Adventures, of course, as we shall see, were of daily occurrence;
but about this time Peter invented, with Wendy's help, a new game that
fascinated him enormously, until he suddenly had no more interest in
it, which, as you have been told, was what always happened with his
games. It consisted in pretending not to have adventures, in doing the
sort of thing John and Michael had been doing all their lives, sitting
on stools flinging balls in the air, pushing each other, going out for
walks and coming back without having killed so much as a grizzly. To
see Peter doing nothing on a stool was a great sight; he could not
help looking solemn at such times, to sit still seemed to him 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 forgotten it so completely that he said nothing about it; and
then when you went out you found the body; and, on the other hand,
he might say a great deal about it, and yet you could not find the
body. Sometimes he came home with his head bandaged, and then Wendy
cooed over him and bathed it in lukewarm water, while he told a
dazzling tale. But she was never quite sure, you know. There were,
however, many adventures which she knew to be true because she was
in them herself, and there were still more that were at least partly
true, for the other boys were in them and said they were wholly
true. To describe them all would require a book as large as an
English-Latin, Latin-English Dictionary, and the most we can do is
to give one as a specimen of an average hour on the island. The
difficulty is which one to choose. Should we take the brush with the
redskins at Slightly Gulch? It was a sanguinary affair, and especially
interesting as showing one of Peter's peculiarities, which was that in
the middle of a fight he would suddenly change sides. At the Gulch,
when victory was still in the balance, sometimes leaning this way
and sometimes that, he called out, "I'm redskin to-day; what are
you, Tootles?" And Tootles answered, "Redskin; what are you, Nibs?"
and Nibs said, "Redskin; what are you, Twin?" and so on; and they were
all redskin; and of course this would have ended the fight had not the
real redskins, fascinated by Peter's methods, agreed to be lost boys
for that once, and so at it they all went again, more fiercely than
ever.
The extraordinary upshot of this adventure was- but we have not
decided yet that this is the adventure we are to narrate. Perhaps a
better one would be the night attack by the redskins on the house
under the ground, when several of them stuck in the hollow trees and
had to be pulled out like corks. Or we might tell how Peter saved
Tiger Lily's life in the Mermaids' Lagoon, and so made her his ally.
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 stone, and was used as a missile, and Hook fell over it in the
dark.
Or suppose we tell of the birds that were Peter's friends,
particularly of the Never bird that built in a tree overhanging the
lagoon, and how the nest fell into the water, and still the bird sat
on her eggs, and Peter gave orders that she was not to be disturbed.
That is a pretty story, and the end shows how grateful a bird can
be; but if we tell it we must also tell the whole adventure of the
lagoon, which would of course be telling two adventures rather than
just one. A shorter adventure, and quite as exciting, was Tinker
Bell's attempt, with the help of some street fairies, to have the
sleeping Wendy conveyed on a great floating leaf to the mainland.
Fortunately the leaf gave way and Wendy woke, thinking it was
bath-time, and swam back. Or again, we might choose Peter's defiance
of the lions, when he drew a circle round him on the ground with an
arrow and dared them to cross it; and though he waited for hours, with
the other boys and Wendy looking on breathlessly from trees, not one
of them 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, perhaps fairest
to stick to the lagoon.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MERMAID'S LAGOON.
If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a
shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness;
then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take
shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze
they must go on fire. But just before they go on fire you see the
lagoon. This is the nearest you ever get to it on the mainland, just
one heavenly moment; if there could be two moments you might see the
surf and hear the mermaids singing.
The children often spent long summer days on this lagoon, swimming
or floating most of the time, playing the mermaid games in the
water, and so forth. You must not think from this that the mermaids
were on friendly terms with them: on the contrary, it was among
Wendy's lasting regrets that all the time she was on the island she
never had a civil word from one of them. When she stole softly to
the edge of the lagoon she might see them by the score, especially
on Marooners' Rock, where they loved to bask, combing out their hair
in a lazy way that quite irritated her; or she might even swim, on
tiptoe as it were, to within a yard of them, but then they saw her and
dived, probably splashing her with their tails, not by accident, but
intentionally.
They treated all the boys in the same way, except of course Peter,
who chatted with them on Marooners' Rock by the hour and sat on
their tails when they got cheeky. He gave Wendy one of their combs.
The most haunting time at which to see them is at the turn of the
moon, when they utter strange wailing cries; but the lagoon is
dangerous for mortals then, and until the evening of which we have now
to tell, Wendy had never seen the lagoon by moonlight, less from fear,
for of course Peter would have accompanied her, than because she had
strict rules about every one being in bed by seven. She was often at
the lagoon, however, on sunny days after rain, when the mermaids
come up in extraordinary numbers to play with their bubbles. The
bubbles of many colours made in rainbow water they treat as balls,
hitting them gaily from one to another with their tails, and trying to
keep them in the rainbow till they burst. The goals are at each end of
the rainbow, and the keepers only are allowed to use their hands.
Sometimes a dozen of these games will be going on in the lagoon at a
time, and it is quite a pretty sight.
But the moment the children tried to join in they had to play by
themselves, for the mermaids immediately disappeared. Nevertheless
we have proof that they secretly watched the interlopers, and were not
above taking an idea from them; for John introduced a new way of
hitting the bubble, with the head instead of the hand, and the
mermaids adopted it. This is the one mark that John has left on the
Neverland.
It must also have been rather pretty to see the children resting
on a rock for half an hour after their mid-day meal. Wendy insisted on
their doing this, and it had to be a real rest even though the meal
was make-believe. So they lay there in the sun, and their bodies
glistened in it, while she sat beside them and looked important.
It was one such day, and they were all on Marooners' Rock. The
rock was not much larger than their great bed, but of course they
all knew how not to take up much room, and they were dozing or at
least lying with their eyes shut, and pinching occasionally when
they thought Wendy was not looking. She was very busy stitching.
While she stitched a change came to the lagoon. Little shivers ran
over it, and the sun went away and shadows stole across the water,
turning it cold. Wendy could no longer see to thread her needle, and
when she looked up, the lagoon that had always hitherto been such a
laughing place seemed formidable and unfriendly.
It was not, she knew, that night had come, but something as dark
as night had come. No, worse than that. It had not come, but it had
sent that shiver through the sea to say that it was coming. What was
it?
There crowded upon her all the stories she had been told of
Marooners' Rock, so called because evil captains put sailors on it and
leave them there to drown. They drown when the tide rises, for then it
is submerged.
Of course she should have roused the children at once; not merely
because of the unknown that was stalking toward them, but because it
was no longer good for them to sleep on a rock grown chilly. But she
was a young mother and she did not know this; she thought you simply
must stick to your rule about half an hour after the mid-day meal. So,
though fear was upon her, and she longed to hear male voices, she
would not waken them. Even when she heard the sound of muffled oars,
though her heart was in her mouth, she did not waken them. She stood
over them to let them have their sleep out. Was it not brave of Wendy?
It was well for those boys then that there was one among them who
could sniff danger even in his sleep. Peter sprang erect, as wide
awake at once as a dog, and with one warning cry he roused the others.
He stood motionless, one hand to his ear. "Pirates!" he cried. The
others came closer to him. A strange smile was playing about his face,
and Wendy saw it and shuddered. While that smile was on his face no
one dared address him; all they could do was to stand ready to obey.
The order came sharp and incisive.
"Dive!"
There was a gleam of legs, and instantly the lagoon seemed deserted.
Marooners' Rock stood alone in the forbidding waters, as if it were
itself marooned.
The boat drew nearer. It was the pirate dinghy, with three figures
in her, Smee and Starkey, and the third a captive, no other than Tiger
Lily. Her hands and ankles were tied, and she knew what was to be
her fate. She was to be left on the rock to perish, an end to one of
her race more terrible than death by fire or torture, for is it not
written in the book of the tribe that there is no path through water
to the happy hunting-ground? Yet her face was impassive; she was the
daughter of a chief, she must die as a chief's daughter, it is enough.
They had caught her boarding the pirate ship with a knife in her
mouth. No watch was kept on the ship, it being Hook's boast that the
wind of his name guarded the ship for a mile around. Now her fate
would help to guard it also. One more wall 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 cou