“Second to the right, and straight on till morning.”
That, Peter told Wendy, was the way to the Neverland. Peter just said anything that came into his head.
They were flying over the sea. Sometimes it was dark and sometimes light, and now they were very cold and again too warm.
Sometimes they were sleepy; and that was a danger, because they began to fall down. The awful thing was that Peter thought this funny.
“There he goes again!” he cried, as Michael suddenly dropped like a stone.
“Save him, save him!” cried Wendy. Eventually Peter dived through the air, and caught Michael; but he always waited till the last moment.
He could sleep in the air, he was lying on his back and floating, he was very light.
“You must be nice to him,” Wendy told her brothers. “What shall we do if he leaves us!”
“We could go back,” Michael said.
“How shall we find our way back without him?”
“That is the awful thing, John. We must go on, because we don’t know how to stop.”
This was true, Peter forgot to show them how to stop.
“There it is, the island,” said Peter calmly.
“Where, where?”
Wendy and John and Michael recognized it at once.
“John, there’s the lagoon.”
“Wendy, look at the turtles in the sand.”
“John, I see your flamingo!”
“Look, Michael, there’s your cave!”
“John, what’s that in the brushwood?”
“There’s my boat!”
“No, it isn’t. Why, we burned your boat.”
“That’s it, John, I see the smoke of the Indian camp!”
“Where? Show me.”
“There, just across the Mysterious River[36].”
“I see now.”
Children have talked about the Neverland before. Of course the Neverland was a make-believe[37] in those days, but it was real now.
“They don’t want us to land[38],” said Peter.
“Who are they?” Wendy whispered, shuddering.
“Pirates.”
John asked,” Are there many pirates on the island now?”
“A lot of them,” answered Peter.
“Who is the captain now?”
“Hook,” answered Peter, and his face became very stern. “He is the worst of them all.”
“What is he like? Is he big?”
“He is not so big as he was.”
“What do you mean?”
“I cut off his right hand. But he has an iron hook instead of a right hand.”
“Tink tells me,” said Peter, “that the pirates sighted us before the darkness came, and got Long Tom out[39].”
“The big gun?”
“Yes. Be careful.”
The pirates fired Long Tom at them.
“Are you alive?” John whispered.
“I dont know yet,” Michael answered.
Wendy disappeared. She followed Tinker Bell, but she did not know that Tink hated her.