by J. M. Barrie
To the pirates it was a voice crying that all the boys lay slain in the cabin; and they were panic-stricken. Hook tried to hearten them; but like the dogs he had made them they showed him their fangs, and he knew that if he took his eyes off them now they would leap at him.
“Lads,” he said, ready to cajole or strike as need be, but never quailing for an instant, “I’ve thought it out. There’s a Jonah aboard.”8
“Ay,” they snarled, “a man wi’ a hook.”
“No, lads, no, it’s the girl. Never was luck on a pirate ship wi’ a woman on board.9 We’ll right the ship when she’s gone.”
Some of them remembered that this had been a saying of Flint’s. “It’s worth trying,” they said doubtfully.
“Fling the girl overboard,” cried Hook; and they made a rush at the figure in the cloak.
“There’s none can save you now, missy,” Mullins hissed jeeringly.
“There’s one,” replied the figure.
“Who’s that?”
“Peter Pan the avenger!” came the terrible answer; and as he spoke Peter flung off his cloak. Then they all knew who ’twas that had been undoing them in the cabin, and twice Hook essayed to speak and twice he failed. In that frightful moment I think his fierce heart broke.
At last he cried, “Cleave him to the brisket,”10 but without conviction.
“Down, boys, and at them,” Peter’s voice rang out; and in another moment the clash of arms was resounding through the ship. Had the pirates kept together it is certain that they would have won; but the onset came when they were still unstrung, and they ran hither and thither, striking wildly, each thinking himself the last survivor of the crew. Man to man they were the stronger; but they fought on the defensive only, which enabled the boys to hunt in pairs and choose their quarry. Some of the miscreants leapt into the sea; others hid in dark recesses, where they were found by Slightly, who did not fight, but ran about with a lantern which he flashed in their faces, so that they were half blinded and fell as an easy prey to the reeking swords of the other boys. There was little sound to be heard but the clang of weapons, an occasional screech or splash, and Slightly monotonously counting—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten—eleven.
I think all were gone when a group of savage boys surrounded Hook, who seemed to have a charmed life, as he kept them at bay in that circle of fire. They had done for his dogs, but this man alone seemed to be a match for them all. Again and again they closed upon him, and again and again he hewed a clear space. He had lifted up one boy with his hook, and was using him as a buckler,11 when another, who had just passed his sword through Mullins, sprang into the fray.
“Put up your swords, boys,” cried the newcomer, “this man is mine.”
Thus suddenly Hook found himself face to face with Peter. The others drew back and formed a ring round them.
For long the two enemies looked at one another; Hook shuddering slightly, and Peter with the strange smile upon his face.
“So, Pan,” said Hook at last, “this is all your doing.”
“Ay, James Hook,” came the stern answer, “it is all my doing.”
“Proud and insolent youth,”12 said Hook, “prepare to meet thy doom.”
“Dark and sinister man,” Peter answered, “have at thee.”
Without more words they fell to, and for a space there was no advantage to either blade. Peter was a superb swordsman, and parried with dazzling rapidity; ever and anon he followed up a feint with a lunge that got past his foe’s defence, but his shorter reach stood him in ill stead, and he could not drive the steel home. Hook, scarcely his inferior in brilliancy, but not quite so nimble in wrist play, forced him back by the weight of his onset, hoping suddenly to end all with a favourite thrust, taught him long ago by Barbecue at Rio; but to his astonishment he found this thrust turned aside again and again. Then he sought to close and give the quietus13 with his iron hook, which all this time had been pawing the air; but Peter doubled under it and, lunging fiercely, pierced him in the ribs. At the sight of his own blood, whose peculiar colour, you remember, was offensive to him, the sword fell from Hook’s hand, and he was at Peter’s mercy.
“Now!” cried all the boys, but with a magnificent gesture Peter invited his opponent to pick up his sword. Hook did so instantly, but with a tragic feeling that Peter was showing good form.
Hitherto he had thought it was some fiend fighting him, but darker suspicions assailed him now.
“Pan, who and what art thou?” he cried huskily.
“I’m youth, I’m joy,” Peter answered at a venture, “I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.”14
This, of course, was nonsense; but it was proof to the unhappy Hook that Peter did not know in the least who or what he was, which is the very pinnacle of good form.
“To ’t again,” he cried despairingly.
He fought now like a human flail, and every sweep of that terrible sword would have severed in twain any man or boy who obstructed it; but Peter fluttered round him as if the very wind it made blew him out of the danger zone. And again and again he darted in and pricked.
Hook was fighting now without hope. That passionate breast no longer asked for life; but for one boon it craved: to see Peter show bad form before it was cold for ever.
Abandoning the fight he rushed into the powder magazine and fired it.
“In two minutes,” he cried, “the ship will be blown to pieces.”
Now, now, he thought, true form will show.
But Peter issued from the powder magazine with the shell in his hands, and calmly flung it overboard.
What sort of form was Hook himself showing? Misguided man though he was, we may be glad, without sympathising with him, that in the end he was true to the traditions of his race. The other boys were flying around him now, flouting, scornful; and as he staggered about the deck striking up at them impotently, his mind was no longer with them; it was slouching in the playing fields of long ago, or being sent up for good,15 or watching the wall-game from a famous wall.16 And his shoes were right, and his waistcoat was right, and his tie was right, and his socks were right.
James Hook, thou not wholly unheroic figure, farewell.
For we have come to his last moment.
Seeing Peter slowly advancing upon him through the air with dagger poised, he sprang upon the bulwarks to cast himself into the sea. He did not know that the crocodile was waiting for him; for we purposely stopped the clock that this knowledge might be spared him: a little mark of respect from us at the end.
He had one last triumph, which I think we need not grudge him. As he stood on the bulwark looking over his shoulder at Peter gliding through the air, he invited him with a gesture to use his foot. It made Peter kick instead of stab.
At last Hook had got the boon for which he craved.
“Bad form,” he cried jeeringly, and went content to the crocodile.
Thus perished James Hook.
“Seventeen,” Slightly sang out; but he was not quite correct in his figures. Fifteen paid the penalty for their crimes that night; but two reached the shore: Starkey to be captured by the redskins, who made him nurse for all their papooses, a melancholy comedown for a pirate; and Smee, who henceforth wandered about the world in his spectacles, making a precarious living by saying he was the only man that Jas. Hook had feared.17
Wendy, of course, had stood by taking no part in the fight, though watching Peter with glistening eyes; but now that all was over she became prominent again. She praised them equally, and shuddered delightfully when Michael showed her the place where he had killed one; and then she took them into Hook’s cabin and pointed to his watch which was hanging on a nail. It said “half-past one!”
The lateness of the hour was almost the biggest thing of all. She got them to bed in the pirates’ bunks pretty quickly, you may be sure; all but Peter, who strutted up and down on the deck, until at last he fell asleep by the side of Long Tom. He had one of his dreams that night, and crie
d in his sleep18 for a long time, and Wendy held him tight.
1. “a touch of the cat.” The cat-o’-nine-tails was a whip with nine knotted lashes used on sailors to enforce discipline at sea. It remained until 1881 an officially authorized instrument of punishment in the British army and navy.
2. “doodle-doo.” In The Peter Pan Alphabet, D stands for “Doodledoo”: “D is the Dire and Dread DoodleDoo / With which Peter Daunted the Pirate crew, / And demolished a foolish old Proverb for good / By crowing before he was out of the wood.”
3. “ ’Sdeath.” A shortened version of the oath “God’s death.”
4. “odds fish.” In The Peter Pan Alphabet, O stands for “Odds-fish,” which is defined in the following way: “O’s for Odds-fish—the Pirate’s Oath. / To print such a word, Gentle Reader, I’m loth. / And should You be guilty of language so low, / I should have to stop calling you ‘Gentle,’ you know.”
5. “I’ll swing.” I’ll be hanged.
6. took her place by the mast. This is one of many instances in which Peter uses mimicry and masquerade, impersonating another character in the play. Capricious and adept at role playing, he is able to slip out of his own identity and imitate mermaids, girls, and villains.
7. Then he took a great breath and crowed. Peter’s crowing like a cock links him to the gods Pan and Dionysus, as does his piping. In Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen, Mickey’s shouts of “Cock-a-doodle-doo” in the nighttime may well have been inspired by Peter’s crowing.
8. “There’s a Jonah aboard.” In the book of Jonah, God orders Jonah to denounce the citizens of Nineveh for their “great wickedness.” Frightened and overwhelmed by the mission, Jonah flees the presence of God and sails to Tarshish. When a storm develops, the sailors blame Jonah and decide to throw him overboard, with the hope of getting their ship to shore. Miraculously, Jonah is saved when a fish swallows him. After three days and nights of prayer, Jonah is released from his underwater prison.
9. “a woman on board.” Although seafaring men kept alive the superstition that having a woman on board was bad luck, there are many cases when wives (even of pirates) would accompany their husbands (usually the captains of ships) on voyages. Women may have been considered bad luck onboard, but as figureheads facing the sea at the bow of a ship, they were thought to protect sailors from harm. The practice of using such figures goes back to ancient times, when Pliny the Elder asserted that a bare-breasted woman could calm turbulent waters. In British countries and European lands, women were not widely used as figureheads until the nineteenth century.
10. “Cleave him to the brisket.” In the play, Hook cries out these words, and the stage directions read: “But he has a sinking [sic] that this boy has no brisket.” The brisket bone is the breastbone, and “cleaving to the brisket” was a phrase first used in Sir Walter Scott’s novel Rob Roy (1817): “By the hand of my father! The first man that strikes, I’ll cleave him to the brisket.”
11. buckler. A small shield.
12. “Proud and insolent youth.” The juxtaposition of child and adult, the one proud and insolent, the other dark and sinister, serves to emphasize the centrality of generational conflict in Peter Pan. In 1920, Barrie wrote about the generational divide in the aftermath of World War I: “Age & Youth the great enemies. . . . Age (wisdom) failed—Now let us see what youth (audacity) can do. . . . In short, there has arisen a new morality which seeks to go its own way agst [sic] the fierce protests (or despair) of the old morality. No argument can exist between the two till this is admitted. In present controversy it isn’t admitted—the Old screams at the New as . . . vile [because] not Old’s way—and New despises Old as played out and false sentiment. When they admit that the other has a case to state, then . . . they can argue—not before” (Yeoman 24–25).
13. give the quietus. Deal the death blow.
14. “I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.” Peter’s self-definition suggests both fragility and strength, combining the vulnerability of a newborn with the power to “break through.” He refuses to categorize himself and avoids being defined by others. Like all babies, as we learn in Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, he was a bird before he became a child. In a program note written for the 1908 Paris performance of Peter Pan, Barrie advised the audience: “[Of] Peter you must make what you will—perhaps he was a boy who died young and this is how the author perceives his subsequent adventures. Or perhaps he was a boy who was never born at all” (White and Tarr 204). In The Little White Bird, Barrie described children who have never had mothers (or what he also called dream children) as little white birds.
15. sent up for good. At Eton, a boy who was “sent up for good” was referred to the headmaster and rewarded for his good work. The custom continues today, and boys take their work to the headmaster, who signs it and gives them a prize.
16. watching the wall-game from a famous wall. The Eton wall game is played between the Collegers (King’s Scholars) and the Oppidans (the rest of the school). The best place from which to watch it is the top of a ten-foot-high wall.
17. he was the only man that Jas. Hook had feared. In Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Long John Silver is “the only man Flint feared,” and the phrase becomes a leitmotif in Barrie’s play.
18. cried in his sleep. Why Peter cries at night remains a mystery. Does he miss his mother and long to return home? Is he haunted by the specter of death (after murdering all those pirates), even though he is the boy who will never grow up? Is he distraught by the death of Hook? Despite his lack of a memory, he knows that something is missing and mourns it.
CHAPTER 16
The Return Home
By two bells that morning they were all stirring their stumps; for there was a big sea running; and Tootles, the bo’sun, was among them, with a rope’s end in his hand1 and chewing tobacco. They all donned pirate clothes cut off at the knee, shaved smartly, and tumbled up, with the true nautical roll and hitching their trousers.
It need not be said who was the captain. Nibs and John were first and second mate. There was a woman aboard. The rest were tars before the mast,2 and lived in the fo’c’sle. Peter had already lashed himself to the wheel;3 but he piped all hands and delivered a short address to them; said he hoped they would do their duty like gallant hearties, but that he knew they were the scum of Rio and the Gold Coast, and if they snapped at him he would tear them. The bluff strident words struck the note sailors understand, and they cheered him lustily. Then a few sharp orders were given, and they turned the ship round, and nosed her for the mainland.
Captain Pan calculated, after consulting the ship’s chart, that if this weather lasted they should strike the Azores about the 21st of June, after which it would save time to fly.
Some of them wanted it to be an honest ship and others were in favour of keeping it a pirate; but the captain treated them as dogs, and they dared not express their wishes to him even in a round robin.4 Instant obedience was the only safe thing. Slightly got a dozen5 for looking perplexed when told to take soundings.6 The general feeling was that Peter was honest just now to lull Wendy’s suspicions, but that there might be a change when the new suit was ready, which, against her will, she was making for him out of some of Hook’s wickedest garments. It was afterwards whispered among them that on the first night he wore this suit7 he sat long in the cabin with Hook’s cigar-holder in his mouth and one hand clenched, all but for the forefinger, which he bent and held threateningly aloft like a hook.
Instead of watching the ship, however, we must now return to that desolate home from which three of our characters had taken heartless flight so long ago. It seems a shame to have neglected No. 14 all this time; and yet we may be sure that Mrs. Darling does not blame us. If we had returned sooner to look with sorrowful sympathy at her, she would probably have cried, “Don’t be silly; what do I matter? Do go back and keep an eye on the children.” So long as mothers are like this their children will take advantage of them; and they may lay to that.8
Even now we venture into that familiar nursery9 only because its lawful occupants are on their way home; we are merely hurrying on in advance of them to see that their beds are properly aired and that Mr. and Mrs. Darling do not go out for the evening. We are no more than servants. Why on earth should their beds be properly aired, seeing that they left them in such a thankless hurry? Would it not serve them jolly well right if they came back and found that their parents were spending the week-end in the country? It would be the moral lesson they have been in need of ever since we met them; but if we contrived things in this way Mrs. Darling would never forgive us.
One thing I should like to do immensely, and that is to tell her, in the way authors have,10 that the children are coming back, that indeed they will be here on Thursday week. This would spoil so completely the surprise to which Wendy and John and Michael are looking forward. They have been planning it out on the ship: mother’s rapture, father’s shout of joy, Nana’s leap through the air to embrace them first, when what they ought to be preparing for is a good hiding. How delicious to spoil it all by breaking the news in advance; so that when they enter grandly Mrs. Darling may not even offer Wendy her mouth, and Mr. Darling may exclaim pettishly, “Dash it all, here are those boys again.” However, we should get no thanks even for this. We are beginning to know Mrs. Darling by this time, and may be sure that she would upbraid us for depriving the children of their little pleasure.
“But, my dear madam, it is ten days till Thursday week; so that by telling you what’s what, we can save you ten days of unhappiness.”
“Yes, but at what a cost! By depriving the children of ten minutes of delight.”
“Oh, if you look at it in that way.”
“What other way is there in which to look at it?”