the others will be sweeping up the blood. Instead of souring his nature this has sweetened it and he is the humblest of the band. (Nibs is more gay and debonair, Slightly more conceited. Slightly thinks he remembers the days before he was lost, with their manners and customs. Curly 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 he stands forth whether he has done it or not. The other two are First Twin and Second Twin, who cannot be described because we should probably be describing the wrong one. Hunkering on the ground or peeking out of their holes, the six are not unlike village gossips gathered round the pump.
TOOTLES. Has Peter come back yet, Slightly?
SLIGHTLY (with a solemnity that he thinks suits the occasion). No, Tootles, no.
(They are like dogs waiting for the master to tell them that the day has begun.)
CURLY (as if Peter might be listening). I do wish he would come back.
TOOTLES. I am always afraid of the pirates when Peter is not here to protect us.
SLIGHTLY. I am not afraid of pirates. Nothing frightens me. But I do wish Peter would come back and tell us whether he has heard anything more about Cinderella.
SECOND TWIN (with diffidence). Slightly, I dreamt last night that the prince found Cinderella.
FIRST TWIN (who is intellectually the superior of the two). Twin, I think you should not have dreamt that, for I didn't, and Peter may say we oughtn't to dream differently, being twins, you know.
TOOTLES. I am awfully anxious about Cinderella. You see, not knowing anything about my own mother I am fond of thinking that she was rather like Cinderella.
(This is received with derision.)
NIBS. All I remember about my mother 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.
SLIGHTLY (as usual). My mother was fonder of me than your mothers were of you. (Uproar.) Oh yes, she was. Peter had to make up names for you, but my mother had wrote my name on the pinafore I was lost in. 'Slightly Soiled'; that's my name.
(They fall upon him pugnaciously; not that they are really worrying about their mothers, who are now as important to them as a piece of string, but because any excuse is good enough for a shindy. Not for long is he belaboured, for a sound is heard that sends them scurrying down their holes; in a second of time the scene is bereft of human life. What they have heard from near-by is a verse of the dreadful song with which on the Never Land the prates stealthily trumpet their approach—
Yo ho, yo ho, the pirate life,
The flag of skull and bones,
A merry hour, a hempen rope,
And hey for Davy Jones!
The pirates appear upon the frozen river dragging a raft, on which reclines among cushions that dark and fearful man, CAPTAIN JAS. HOOK. A more villainous-looking brotherhood of men never hung in a row on Execution dock. Here, his great arms bare, pieces of eight in his ears as ornaments, is the handsome CECCO, who cut his name on the back of the governor of the prison at Gao. Heavier in the pull is the gigantic black who has had many names since the first one terrified dusky children on the banks of the Guidjo-mo. BILL JUKES comes next, every inch of him tattooed, the same JUKES who got six dozen on the Walrus from FLINT. Following these are COOKSON, said to be BLACK. MURPHY'S brother (but this was never proved); and GENTLEMAN STARKEY, once an usher in a school; and SKYLIGHTS (Morgan's Skylights); and NOODLER, whose hands are fixed on backwards; and the spectacled boatswain, SMEE, the only Nonconformist in HOOK'S crew; and other ruffians long known and feared on the Spanish main.
Cruelest jewel in that dark setting is HOOK himself, cadaverous and blackavised, his hair dressed in long curls which look like black candles about to melt, his eyes blue as the forget-me-not and of a profound insensibility, save when he claws, at which time a red spot appears in them. He has an iron hook instead of a right hand, and it is with this he claws. He is never more sinister than when he is most polite, and the elegance of his diction, the distinction of his demeanour, show him one of a different class from his crew, a solitary among uncultured companions. This courtliness impresses even his victims on the high seas, who note that he always says 'Sorry' when prodding them along the flank. A man of indomitable courage, the only thing at which he flinches is the sight of his own blood, which is thick and of an unusual colour. At his public school they said of him that he 'bled yellow.' In dress he apes the dandiacal associated with Charles II., having heard it said in an earlier period of his career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts. A holder of his own contrivance is in his mouth enabling him to smoke two cigars at once. Those, however, who have seen him in the flesh, which is an inadequate term for his earthly tenement, agree that the grimmest part of him is his iron claw.
They continue their distasteful singing as they disembark—
Avast, belay, yo ho, heave to,
A-pirating we go,
And if we 're parted by a shot
We 're sure to meet below!
NIBS, the only one of the boys who has not sought safety in his tree, is seen for a moment near the lagoon, and STARKEY'S pistol is at once upraised. The captain twists his hook in him.)
STARKEY (abject). Captain, let go
!HOOK. Put back that pistol, first.
STARKEY. 'Twas one of those boys you hate; I could haveshot him dead.
HOOK. Ay, and the sound would have brought Tiger Lily's redskins on us. Do you want to lose your scalp?
SMEE (wriggling his cutlass pleasantly). That is true. Shall I after him, Captain, and tickle him with Johnny Corkscrew? Johnny is a silent fellow.
HOOK. Not now. He is only one, and I want to mischief all the seven. Scatter and look for them. (The boatswain whistles his instructions, and the men disperse on their frightful errand. With none to hear save SMEE, HOOK becomes confidential.) Most of all I want their captain, Peter Pan. 'Twas he cut off my arm. I have waited long to shake his hand with this. (Luxuriating.) Oh, I 'll tear him!
SMEE (always ready for a chat). Yet I have oft heard you say your hook was worth a score of hands, for combing the hair and other homely uses.
HOOK. If I was a mother I would pray to have my children born with this instead of that (his left arm creeps nervously behind him. He has a galling remembrance). Smee, Pan flung my arm to a crocodile that happened to be passingby.
SMEE. I have often noticed your strange dread of crocodiles.
HOOK (pettishly). Not of crocodiles but of that one crocodile. (He lays bare a lacerated heart.) The brute liked my arm so much, Smee, that he has followed me ever since, from sea to sea, and from land to land, licking his lips for the rest of me.
SMEE (looking for the bright side). In a way it is a sort of compliment.
HOOK (with dignity). I want no such compliments; I want Peter Pan, who first gave the brute his taste for me. Smee, that crocodile would have had me before now, but by a lucky chance he swallowed a clock, and it goes tick, tick, tick, tick inside him; and so before he can reach me I hear the tick and bolt. (He emits a hollow rumble.) Once I heard it strike six within him.
SMEE (sombrely). Some day the clock will run down,and then he'll get you.
HOOK (a broken man). Ay, that is the fear that haunts me.(He rises.) Smee, this seat is hot; odds, bobs, hammer and tongs, I am burning.
(He has been sitting, he thinks, on one of the island mushrooms, which are of enormous size. But this is a hand-painted one placed here in times of danger to conceal a chimney. They remove it, and tell-tale smoke issues; also, alas, the sound of children's voices.)
SMEE. A chimney!
HOOK (avidly). Listen! Smee, 'tis plain they live here, beneath the ground. (He replaces the mushroom. His brain works tortuously.)
SMEE (hopefully).