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, as the hook bore him back and down, at the cost of his skin.

Hook’s voice was sharp with the twin venoms of hatred and despair. “Put back that pistol first,” he commanded threateningly.

“It was one of those boys you hate. I could have shot him dead.”

“Ay, and the sound would have brought Scar Faced Woman’s warriors upon us. Do you want to lose your head?”

“Shall I after him, Captain,” asked pathetic Smee, “and tickle him with Johnny Corkscrew?” Smee invented precious names for everything, and his cutlass was Johnny Corkscrew, because he enjoyed wiggling it in the wounds it made. One could mention many traits in Smee that he thought made himself loveable. For instance, after killing, it was his spectacles he wiped instead of his weapon.

Sadly for him, he was an odious, by turns pathetic and psychotic character, and his little airs could not fool anyone for long, even a trusting child. Luckily Neverland does not possess many such children, for only the most wary survive in Peter’s games of war. Professor Basil Rathbone had already recoiled from him instinctively, as one would from a poisonous snake. Their dislike had been instant, violent and mutual.

“Johnny’s a silent wee fellow,” he reminded Hook tenderly.

“Not now, Smee,” Hook said darkly. “He is only one, and I want to mischief all eight. Scatter and seek them out.”

The pirates disappeared among the trees, and in a moment their Captain and Smee were alone. Hook heaved a heavy sigh, and began to discourse long and earnestly upon the travails of his life. We would call it complaining, were the complainant someone less terrifying, but what it was all about Smee, who was rather stupid, did not know in the least. In fact, he was not listening, being preoccupied with worrying a pimple on his arm. He was also worrying around in his mouldy little mind the problem of how to dispose of the castaway, Rathbone. Had he listened, he might have learnt something new.

Eventually, his idly flapping ears caught the name of Peter, and he again attended the declamation.

“Most of all,” Hook was saying passionately, “I want their captain, Peter Pan, for disfiguring me.” He brandished the hook threateningly. “I’ve waited a long time to shake his hand with this. Oh, I’ll tear him!”

“And yet,” reminded Smee, wiping his fingernails on his shirt, “I have often heard you say that hook was worth a score of hands, for combing the hair, punishing sailors and other homely uses.”

“Aye,” the Captain answered, “If I was a mother I would hope to have my children born with this instead of that, or perhaps cause such a blessing to happen myself,” 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 confessed, wincing with disgust, “to a crocodile that happened to be passing by.”

“I have often,” said Smee, “noticed your strange dread of crocodiles.” He was more recently arrived upon the island than the JOLLY ROGER and its captain, and of some things the crew did not venture to speak, particularly to repulsive little Smee. Although a sailor might be an inveterate gossip, the fear of punishment coupled with the assumption that all one’s companions knew already, rather robbed the tale of its ability to pique.

“Not of crocodiles,” Hook quickly corrected him, “of one crocodile only.” He lowered his voice. “It liked my hand so much, Smee, that it has followed me ever since, from sea to land and back again, licking its chops for the rest of me.”

“In a way,” said Smee, “it’s a kind of compliment.”

“I want no such compliments,” Hook snapped. “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 now, but by a lucky chance, when I was bombarding it from the deck one day, it swallowed a clock which goes tick-tick-tick-tick inside it, and so before it can reach me I hear the tick and bolt.” He laughed, but in a hollow way. “Just like a cat, for high ground or a tree.”

“Some day,” said Smee with morbid satisfaction, “The clock will run down, and then she’ll get you.”

Hook wetted his dry lips. “Aye,” he said, “That’s the fear that haunts me.”

Smee rubbed at his glasses, though he succeeded only in smearing them.

“Cap’n, what are you going to do with that shipwrecked upstart?”

“What business be it of yours?”

“It don’t seem right, begging your pardon Cap’n, that he gets to sit at ease in your chamber, eat your food and drink your drink, when he’s nothing more than a, by your leave Cap’n, a ruddy over-edumacated castaway.”

“Jealous, Smee?”

“Of such as him? Never! It’s just that he ain’t earned none of it.”

Hook regarded Smee through heavily lidded eyes. “I am not sure yet what I will do with the professor. For the time being, he is an intriguing diversion, and considerably more intelligent than the rest of the ignorant riff-raff on board.”

“May I go hunting lost boys, if I’m of no service to you?” Smee asked, sulking a little about Hook’s dismissal. “Maybe I’ll meet with your approval if I bring home a body for you, get you to smile for once.”

“Silence your whining, Smee. I am thinking of what to do with the lost boys to kill them all, not pick off one or two occasionally. It would be a fine thing for Peter to return and find them all dead. Perhaps to fall prey himself to the same delicious fate.”

“Does feel to you like Peter Pan’s not far from here now?” Smee whispered, fidgeting with Johnny Corkscrew, for he had not had cause to use it during Peter’s absence. It itched beneath his fat fingers.

Hook nodded. “Yes. Providence might allow me to kill them all in one swoop, were he to fall prey with the other little cretins to some devious plot.”

He stood for a long time lost in thought, and at last a curdling smile lit up his saturnine face. Smee had been waiting for it. “Unrip your plan, Cap’n,” he cried eagerly, “And acquaint me with your innermost desires!”

“To return to the ship,” Hook replied slowly through his teeth, “And cook a large, rich cake with green arsenic sugar on it, and cyanide within it. The lost boys have no native wit to share between them, and will not think to question such a treat, when they find it upon the path to the Mermaids’ Lagoon.. They will gobble it up, and be poisoned to the last lad.” He burst into laughter, not hollow laughter now, but honest laughter. “Aha, they will die, die with their little heels kicking.”

Smee had listened with growing admiration.

“It’s the wickedest, prettiest policy ever I heard of!” he cried, glad for such a distraction.

They began to discuss the grim details, but never finished, for another sound broke in and stilled them. There was at first such a tiny sound that a leaf might have fallen down and muffled it, but as it came nearer it became more distinct.

Tick-tick-tick-tick!

Hook stood shuddering, one foot in the air.

“The crocodile!” he gasped, and bounded away, velvet and lace flying, followed by his bo’sun.

It was indeed the great, patient crocodile. It had passed the Haida, who were now on the trail of the other pirates, and keen to reduce their numbers. It oozed on after Hook, tail whispering along the ground, snaggle-toothed maw agape.

Nibs burst into the company of boys belowground, in a great lather of excitement.

“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?” They demanded, wriggling up their tree trunks to tumble out on the ground.

“I don’t know,” Nibs said, awestruck, “but it looks so weary, and as it flies it screams and squawks.“

“I remember those,” said Slightly instantly, “I have seen birds like that before.”

“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, and flinging small hexes of discomfort and fear. Wendy, being as yet unused to flying, and moreover tired and blind in the darkness, was unable to fend off the lightening-fast attacks from the fairy. She began to flounder in her flight.

“Hullo, Tink,” cried the wondering boys, “what’s that you’ve got?”

Tink’s reply rang out: “Peter wants you to shoot this Wendybird.”

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 to retrieve weapons. He had a bow and arrow with him, and Tink noted it, and rubbed her little hands together, her light tinged a deep rose with malice.

“Quick, Tootles, quick,” she screamed. “Peter will be so pleased with you!”

Tootles excitedly fitted the arrow to his bow. “Out of the way, Tink,” he shouted, and then he fired. Wendy coughed once, in a strangled sort of way, and fluttered to the ground with an arrow in her chest.

It was a good shot; Tootles’ arrow struck her right over the heart.