Peter Pan in Scarlet

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  It vexed Peter that the islands that passed by the casement windows of his cabin looked nothing like the ones on the charts. Stupidly the chart-makers had drawn everything as if they were looking down on it from above: all very well if you are travelling by hot-air balloon but confusing to a ship’s captain. They ought to have shown what each island looked like from the side, through a brass telescope.

  He knew there would be other things in store, of course—things not marked on charts—tide rips, whales, and waterspouts—life-threatening dangers. But that was all right. Exploration should be the province of heroes. Peter fingered the white tie around his throat and closed his eyes, which were sore from map-reading. Spots of colour expanded inside his lids, into strange views and vistas: wide green lawns, rowers on a sunlit river, a cream-coloured building like a palace, with tall, narrow stained-glass windows … There were no such places in Neverland—none that he had ever seen, at least. Wonderful, then, that there were these pictures in his head!

  ‘Sail ho!’

  Peter flung down his quill pen and red ink splattered the Sea of a Thousand Islands. He ran up on deck.

  ‘Sail ho!’ called Curly again from the crow’s nest.

  ‘Hardly sails, dear,’ said Slightly. ‘It’s a steamer.’

  Through Hook’s brass telescope Peter sighted a steam-cutter as steel-grey as a knight in armour. Caked in rust like dried blood, it chugged and throbbed and clanked towards them under an awning of dirty smoke from its black smokestack. A jawful of teeth had been painted on to its bow so that it appeared to chew its way through the water. Wendy signalled it with semaphore:

  ‘F-R-I-E-N-D O-R F-O-E?’

  The Boys watched with admiration Wendy’s outstretched arms moving round like the hands of a clock. Unfortunately the crew of the steamship could none of them read semaphore. They came on, full speed ahead. It was not much of a full-speed, but since the SS Shark was on course to ram the Jolly Peter amidships, there was no time to lose. No time to load the cannon with gunpowder (or flour). No time to search the ship for muskets.

  ‘Jibe to port!’ shouted Peter.

  The crew blinked at him. They were very impressed, but they had no idea what it meant: Peter must have found a book of sea-going phrases in Hook’s sea chest.

  ‘Steer that way, you lubbers!’ he yelled.

  John spun the ship’s wheel. The Jolly Peter heeled over. The ship’s bell clanged. Sails flapped and billowed. Ropes twanged taut. The puppy slid clear across the deck. The prow of the Jolly Peter swung round until she was pointing almost the same way as the Shark. Instead of being sliced in two by sheet steel, perhaps they could dodge out of her path or outrun her.

  It was a vain hope. The sails emptied of wind; the Jolly Peter wallowed and rolled. On and on came the SS Shark, so close now that the children could see the pirate flag at the masthead and the crew getting ready to board. They made an unnerving sight, because these pirates, though no more than waist high, were wearing full warpaint and were armed with hatchets, bows and arrows, and bowie knives.

  ‘Starkey’s Redskins!’ said Peter under his breath.

  The steel bow with its painted arc of teeth did not slice open the hull of the Jolly Peter. It struck her in the aft quarter, shattering the casement windows of Peter’s stateroom and jolting the ship from stem to stern. Powerless to resist, the big brig was pushed through the water ahead of the steam-cutter like a pram being pushed along by a nursemaid. The captain of the steam-cutter was carried for’ard from the bridge, borne aloft on a swivelling leather captain’s chair carried by four child warriors. It was none other than Starkey: first mate to Captain Jas. Hook in the long-lost days before Pan’s great victory over Hook and his scurvy crew!

  ‘Now what do you say, boys?’ Starkey asked, his triumphant features creasing up like old leather. ‘Introduce yourselves to the nice people.’

  They were not all boys, by any means. Half were girls, with long silken hair and cleaner buckskin tunics. But they were all armed. Drawing back their bowstrings to full stretch, they bowed (or curtsied), blinked their large dark eyes at the crew of the Jolly Peter and shouted, ‘Hello. Thank you very much. How do you do. Delighted I’m sure. Kindly shed your loot in our direction then lie face down on the deck or, sadly, we will have to slit your gizzards and feed you to the fishes. Deep regrets. Please do not ask for mercy as refusal can give offence. Thank you very much. Nice weather we are having.’

  Captain Starkey nodded approvingly and spun round once in his chair. ‘Very good, buckos, but you forgot about the scalping. You must always mention the scalping.’ Suddenly he seemed to recognize the ship for what it was. Then his eye fell on Peter—or rather Peter’s coat—and a lifetime’s sunburn could not hide how his face drained of colour.

  Meanwhile, the steamship shoved the Jolly Peter through the water like a wheelbarrow. They could see now that the name daubed on to the prow of the steam cutter was not ‘SS Shark’ at all, but ‘SS Starkey’. The wooden hull creaked and groaned. Cannonballs fell from their monkey-racks and rolled down the deck, making both crew and Puppy jump out of their way. Peter’s cheeks burned with humiliation.

  ‘Call yourself a captain now, do you, Starkey!’ he jeered. ‘You were never more than a mop for swabbing Jas. Hook’s decks!’ One or two of the Explorers had got down on their faces. Now they stood up again, as Peter laughed in the face of his attacker. ‘I heard you were captured by the Redskins, Starkey! After we routed you in the Great Battle? I heard you were put to looking after their papooses! Terrible fate for a man who calls himself a pirate!’ Peter loaded the words with contempt, as he would have loaded a musket.

  Captain Starkey spun round twice in his chair. The colour was back in his cheeks. ‘Swipe me naked! If it ain’t the cock-a-doodle! For a moment I thunk it was … Well, ain’t revenge sweet, eh? Terrible fate? Yeah! Fate worse than death, I thunk at the time. Forced to look after a bunch of babbies and sprogs? A shame and come-down for a man of my calling! But I made the best of it, see? Turned it to my advantage. See what a job I done on ’em, my little squaws an’ braves? You won’t find better manners in the King of England’s parlour. An’ I trained them up in a trade, too, which is more’n you can say for most schoolmasters. Learned ’em everything I knowed. Turned ’em into pirates, every Jack-and-Jill of ’em. Got some real talent in there, I can tell you! Pride of me heart, these little throat-slitters are! Pride of me heart. What’s your cargo, cock-a-doodle? Cos it’s mine now!’

  When Peter refused to answer, Starkey ordered a dozen of his little throat-slitters to board the Jolly Peter and hunt for loot. ‘And bring me my old kitbag from the fo’c’sle!’ he told them. ‘The one with me name writ big on it.’ When the League bravely drew out their wooden swords to defend the ship, Starkey laughed so much that he nearly toppled out of his chair. ‘What? Wouldn’t your mummies let you play with real blades?’ Even Peter, who always carried a real dagger in his belt, could not defy the twenty arrowheads pointing at his brow.

  The warpainted pirates jumped nimbly aboard where the bow of the Starkey was wedged in the splintered stern of the Jolly Peter. Finding nothing but cobwebs and ship’s biscuits in the hold, they rounded up the Darlings and bundled them into the smelly old pirate kitbags from the fo’c’sle, and pulled the cords up tight round their necks: ‘I can get me a good price for slaves!’ Starkey cackled gloatingly. The warriors were very polite and their small hands were soft and well washed. But they stole John’s umbrella and penknife and, as they worked, they discussed whether Puppy was best cooked with ginger, squid, or piri-piri sauce. None of them attempted to lay hands on Peter Pan, who stood defiantly gripping the hilt of his dagger. But they worked round him, ignoring his blood-curdling curses and his promise to ‘make Starkey pay’.

  All this while, the steam-cutter puffed and chugged and juddered along, pushing the Jolly Peter ahead of it like a tea trolley in a Lyons corner house. From the noises it was making, it seemed the brig might die of shame at any minute, b
urst apart and plunge to the bottom of the sea. After Curly was dragged down from the crow’s nest and stuffed into a kitbag, there was no one keeping a lookout for reefs or whirlpools. Without his charts in front of him, Peter had no way of knowing what lay in their path. At any moment they might run aground—or reach the horizon and plunge off the edge of the world! The one thought that comforted him was that the Jolly Peter would take the SS Starkey with her, down to destruction.

  ‘Turn out your pockets!’ Starkey told Peter.

  (And put Hook’s treasure map into the greedy paws of a common pirate?) ‘Never!’

  ‘Turn out your pockets, cock-a-doodle, or I’ll have my throat-slitters shoot you full of arrows, and take a look myself, after.’

  Wendy saw the boy in the jay feathers and scarlet frock-coat glance towards the ship’s rail. She knew at once that he meant to leap to his death sooner than give up the treasure map to Starkey. ‘Don’t do it, Peter!’ she cried.

  Starkey laid a fatherly hand on the shoulder of one young squaw, whose bowstring was pulled taut. ‘On my word, bucko … shoot him in the thigh,’ he said, and the squaw took careful aim. ‘Let’s see what an arrow can do to puncture his pride!’

  Now, if Peter had had his charts in front of him just then, he would have seen that the Sea of a Thousand Islands had lately gained an extra sprinkling. Five small islands had appeared to port and, most unusually for islands, seemed to be gaining on them. What is more, they rose and fell on the swell, riding the waves, travelling against the current. When Starkey saw them too, the sight held him spellbound. The dreaded order ‘Shoot’ perched unspoken on his lip as he watched the flotilla of little islands sashay closer and closer.

  At that very moment, the ancient engines of the steam-cutter, struggling to push the Jolly Peter along, overstrained themselves and blew. The funnel coughed up black smuts, then stopped smoking. The sickening forward surge slowed, and both ships were left wallowing. The five islands overtook, nestling closer. They were woolly with trees, alfalfa, and pampas grass, and were apparently hitched to one another by lengths of fraying rope. Did they have inhabitants, these bobbing patches of dry land?

  Oh yes.

  Grappling irons came over the ship’s rail like gigantic claws. After that came … well … gigantic claws. The Redskins saw the tigers first. The panthers were quicker aboard, but their pelts were so black that they were almost invisible. The bears were slow moving but just as unstoppable, flopping big furry bellies over the rail before flumping on to the deck like sacks of brown sugar. The baboons flew through the rigging, hand-over-fist-over-tail. The palmerions’ hooves made a hollow din on the deck-planks.

  No doubt Starkey’s sprogs were, in the normal course of things, wonderful at archery and throat-slitting. But faced with packs of panthers and a pride of lions, with boarding parties of monkeys and a broadside of bears, their soft little hands shook and the bowstrings slid from between their sweaty fingers. They fled below decks. The search party aboard the Jolly Peter leapt back on to the bow of the SS Starkey, spilling their captain-nursemaid out of his swivel chair and into the paint-locker. They tried to push off, but the bow of the steam-cutter had wedged itself too deep.

  Five islands gently bumped rubber-tree fenders against the Jolly Peter. Exotic breeds of animal spilled aboard from four of the five. The fifth island delivered up only one breed of animal. One solitary, two-legged creature.

  ‘Difficulties, sir? What good fortune that I should have been passing,’ said the Great Ravello.

  Peter Pan drew his dagger and cut the cords of seven kitbags. The League of Pan wriggled free. Their first thought was to get as far away as possible from the wild animals roaming the ship, roaring and pouncing and dripping dribble on the deck.

  ‘Oh please!’ said Ravello. ‘Don’t mind my nippers and snappers. They know their place, and they rarely eat between meals.’ He cracked his circus-master’s whip. The beasts flinched, broke off from what they were doing, leapt over the rail, and swam back to their various floating islands. Except for the bears. They boarded the SS Starkey and sat themselves down around the open hatch of the fo’c’sle, dipping huge paws through it as if trying to catch fish through an ice-hole. The little Redskins inside could be heard screaming and whimpering and calling for their mothers. Peter Pan kept tight hold of his dagger.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Ravello!’ said Wendy. ‘You saved us!’

  ‘Pleasure, ma’am,’ said Ravello, bowing. There were scorch marks on his vast garment now, and a smell about him of charred wool. ‘I was very much hoping our paths would cross again.’

  Peter—tiny alongside the circus-master—flinched. ‘Why?’

  ‘There was a fire in the Neverwood—you must have seen something of it as you sailed away. Yes?’ (The Twins put their hands over their mouths in guilty horror: was Ravello about to make them pay for burning down his circus? Had he come after them with thoughts of revenge or punishment?) ‘My livelihood was utterly destroyed by that fire. Everything gone. Tent, cages, staff … Thus I find myself without a profession—without the means of earning a crust.’ (The Twins mewed with panic and bitter regret and tried to slide under the tarpaulin of a gig-boat and hide. The Great Ravello intercepted them, a raggedy sleeve encircling each boy, a firm tug pulling their heads close against his body.) ‘So. I seek employment. One must work one’s passage on the voyage through Life, you do agree?’

  ‘Work’s for grown-ups!’ said Peter, who didn’t.

  Ravello waved a ragged sleeve-end and let it drop. ‘Ah yes. Of course. I was forgetting. You people here have made Childhood your profession. Sadly I have rather missed the boat, in terms of being a little boy. Ergo, I must follow some other line of work.’ Within the woolly shadow of the hooded cardigan, Ravello’s pale brown eyes closed for a moment. ‘So I hope—dare I hope?—that I may be allowed to serve, in some humble way, the marvellous Peter Pan.’

  Peter was genuinely startled. ‘Me?’

  Ravello bowed, sweeping the tips of Peter’s boots with the ravellings of his cuff. ‘Your butler, perhaps! Your valet? Your serving man? I ask no pay, sir! Only my keep, sir! The honour of serving you would be payment enough. Simply to be allowed to be of use, sir! Say you can forgive my sin of growing big, sir!’ The shoulders folded forward, the head dipped. A dead sheep would have looked arrogant in comparison with the Great Ravello, as he sank to one knee in front of Peter Pan. ‘Let me serve you in any way I can!’

  For a moment, Pan could not think what to say. ‘What would I call you? Great or Mister?’ he asked awkwardly.

  ‘No such formality, sir,’ said the Ravelling Man. ‘And how should I qualify for the title Great while standing beside yourself? My mother named me …’ It took him a moment to recall his first name: perhaps he had not used it in a long time. ‘My mother gave me the name Crichton, but like most things a mother gives, it is not worth the having. Ravello will do admirably, sir.’

  ‘Good,’ said Pan. ‘But we are going exploring, you know. I must warn you: it may get dangerous. Courage is everything.’

  ‘You stole the very words from my heart!’ said the Ravelling Man, with such intensity that the mercury in the ship’s barometer plummeted. ‘Courage is indeed everything.’

  Just then, Starkey wriggled his way out of the paint-locker and peeped nervously over the rail. Seeing him, Peter Pan called sharply: ‘What’s your cargo, Starkey? Cos it’s mine, now!’

  The pirate snorted defiantly. ‘Shan’t tell! Shan’t won’t!’ But as Peter stepped towards him, dagger drawn, the coward fluttered his tattooed fingers in front of his chest and confessed, ‘Silverskins, that’s what! Don’t kill me, Pan! Silverskins!’

  Silverskins. A sleek, glittering word. A word with romance to it. Peter nodded solemnly and tilted his head just a little towards Wendy. Wendy tilted her head towards John, John whispered behind his hand to Slightly, ‘What’s a silverskin?’

  Slightly thought it might be the pelt of an ermine; John thought the peel from a silve
r nutmeg. Wendy thought of barracuda, silverest fish in the sea. The Twins believed it was a pirate term for a piece of money; Tootles that it was a moonbeam reaped with a sickle. Curly thought fairy slaves.

  ‘You are indeed rich, sir,’ said Ravello, his eyes wrinkling with joy. ‘Silverskins, eh?’ So no one confessed that they did not really know, because they did not want to look foolish in front of a grown-up, especially a butler. ‘The question is, sir; how will you share the spoil? Traditionally (I believe) the captain takes half and divides the rest among his crew.’

  That is how it started: the Silverskin War, the Feud of Fair Shares. Before Ravello came along, they would have shared out everything equally. That was how the League of Pan worked: even-stevens. But now Ravello had told them how these things were done.

  So now Peter wanted half.

  Tootles said that, as a Princess, she should have half too.

  Wendy pointed out that, if they were going to start comparing, she was the oldest and she should have half, as well.

  Ravello said: ‘Of course, another way of sharing out the takings is according to rank.’ At which point, the First Sea Lord said that he ought to have twice as much as the Other Sea Lord, and the Mastmaster sneered at the Deckmaster and one got kicked in the ankles. The puppy bit the Best Mate.

  Fireflyer said that he was going next door to count the silverskins.

  John said they should toss for it: when the coin came down heads and he said ‘Heads!’, he claimed that he had won the whole lot.

  Tootles said that the Twins only counted as one member of crew because they did not have separate names. They would have to share their share.

  The Twins said that Tootles could go and boil her head.

  Curly said that, strictly speaking, Peter was not the captain of the Jolly Peter: he had just helped himself to the title and the captain’s quarters.