Peter Pan & Other Magical Adventures For Children - 10 Classic Fantasy Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). J. M. Barrie
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casts himself into the group of boys who are encircling HOOK. Again and again they close upon him and again and again he hews a clear space.)
HOOK. Back, back, you mice. It's Hook; do you like him? (He lifts up MICHAEL with his claw and uses him as a buckler. A terrible voice breaks in.)
PETER. Put up your swords, boys. This man is mine.
(HOOK shakes MICHAEL off his claw as if he were a drop of water, and these two antagonists face each other for their final bout. They measure swords at arms' length ,make a sweeping motion with them, and bringing the points to the deck rest their hands upon the hilts.)
HOOK (with curling lip). So, Pan, this is all your doing!
PETER. Ay, Jas Hook, it is all my doing.
HOOK. Proud and insolent youth, prepare to meet thy doom.
PETER. Dark and sinister man, have at thee.
(Some say that he had to ask TOOTLES whether the word was sinister or canister.
HOOK or PETER this time! They fall to without another word. PETER is a rare swordsman, and parries with dazzling rapidity, sometimes before the other can make his stroke. HOOK, if not quite so nimble in wrist play, has the advantage of a yard or two in reach, but though they close he cannot give the quietus with his claw, which seems to find nothing to tear at. He does not, especially in the most heated moments, quite see PETER, who to his eyes, now blurred or opened clearly for the first time, is less like a boy than a mote of dust dancing in the sun. By some impalpable stroke HOOK'S sword is whipped from his grasp, and when he stoops to raise it a little foot is on its blade. There is no deep gash on HOOK, but he is suffering torment as from innumerable jags.)
BOYS (exulting). Now, Peter, now!
(PETER raises the sword by its blade, and with an inclination of the head that is perhaps slightly overdone, presents the hilt to his enemy.)
HOOK. 'Tis some fiend fighting me! Pan, who and what art thou?
(The children listen eagerly for the answer, none quite so eagerly as WENDY.)
PETER (at a venture). I'm youth, I'm joy, I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.
HOOK. To 't again!
(He has now a damp feeling that this boy is the weapon which is to strike him from the lists of man; but the grandeur of his mind still holds and, true to the traditions of his flag, he fights on like a human flail. PETER flutters round and through and over these gyrations as if the wind of them blew him out of the danger zone ,and again and again he darts in and jags.)
HOOK (stung to madness). I'll fire the powder magazine. (He disappears they know not where.)
CHILDREN. Peter, save us!
(PETER, alas, goes the wrong way and HOOK returns.)
HOOK (sitting on the hold with gloomy satisfaction). In two minutes the ship will be blown to pieces.
(They cast themselves before him in entreaty.)
CHILDREN. Mercy, mercy!
HOOK. Back, you pewling spawn. I'll show you now the road to dusty death. A holocaust of children, there is something grand in the idea!
(PETER appears with the smoking bomb in his hand, and tosses it overboard. HOOK has not really had much hope, and he rushes at his other persecutors with his head down like some exasperated bull in the ring; but with bantering cries they easily elude him by flying among the rigging.
Where is PETER? The incredible boy has apparently forgotten the recent doings, and is sitting on a barrel playing upon his pipes. This may surprise others but does not surprise HOOK. Lifting a blunderbuss he strikes forlornly not at the boy but at the barrel, which is hurled across the deck. PETER remains sitting in the air still playing upon his pipes. At this sight the great heart of HOOK breaks. That not wholly unheroic figure climbs the bulwarks murmuring 'Floreat Etona,' and prostrates himself into the water, where the crocodile is waitingfor him open-mouthed. HOOK knows the purpose of this yawning cavity, but after what he has gone through he enters it like one greeting a friend.
The curtain rises to show PETER a very Napoleon on his ship. It must not rise again lest we see him on the poop in HOOK'S hat and cigars, and with a small iron claw.)
SCENE 2
THE NURSERY AND THE TREE-TOPS
The old nursery appears again with everything just as it was at the beginning of the play, except that the kennel has gone and that the window is standing open. So Peter was wrong about mothers; indeed there is no subject on which he is so likely to be wrong.
Mrs. Darling is asleep on a chair near the window, her eyes tired with searching the heavens. Nana is stretched out listless on the floor. She is the cynical one, and though custom has made her hang the children's night things on the fire-guard for an airing, she surveys them not hopefully but with some self-contempt.
MRS. DARLING (starting up as if we had whispered to her that her brats are coming back). Wendy, John, Michael! (NANA lifts a sympathetic paw to the poor soul's lap.) I see you have put their night things out again, Nana! It touches my heart to watch you do that night after night. But they will never come back.
(In trouble the difference of station can be completely ignored, and it is not strange to see these two using the same handkerchief. Enter LIZA, who in the gentleness with which the house has been run of late is perhaps a little more masterful than of yore.)
LIZA (feeling herself degraded by the announcement). Nana's dinner is served.
(NANA, who quite understands what are LIZA'S feelings, departs for the dining-room with our exasperating leisureliness, instead of running, as we would all do if we followed our instincts.)
LIZA. To think I have a master as have changed places with his dog!
MRS. DARLING (gently). Out of remorse, Liza.
LIZA (surely exaggerating). I am a married woman myself. I don't think it's respectable to go to his office in a kennel, with the street boys running alongside cheering. (Even this does not rouse her mistress, which may have been the honourable intention.) There, that is the cab fetching him back! (Amid interested cheers from the street the kennel is conveyed to its old place by a cabby and friend, and MR.DARLING scrambles out of it in his office clothes.)
MR. DARLING (giving her his hat loftily). If you will be so good, Liza. (The cheering is resumed.) It is very gratifying!
LIZA (contemptuous). Lot of little boys.
MR. DARLING (with the new sweetness of one who has sworn never to lose his temper again). There were several adults to-day.
(She goes off scornfully with the hat and the two men, but he has not a word of reproach for her. It ought to melt us when we see how humbly grateful he is for akiss from his wife, so much more than he feels he deserves. One may think he is wrong to exchange into the kennel, but sorrow has taught him that he is the kind of man who whatever he does contritely he must do to excess; otherwise he soon abandons doing it.)
MRS. DARLING (who has known this for quite a long time).What sort of a day have you had, George?
(He is sitting on the floor by the kennel.)
MR. DARLING. There were never less than a hundred running round the cab cheering, and when we passed the Stock Exchange the members came out and waved.
(He is exultant but uncertain of himself, and with a word she could dispirit him utterly.)
MRS. DARLING (bravely). I am so proud, George.
MR. DARLING (commendation from the dearest quarter ever going to his head). I have been put on a picture postcard, dear.
MRS. DARLING (nobly). Never!
MR. DARLING (thoughtlessly). Ah, Mary, we should not be such celebrities if the children hadn't flown away.