Peter Pan in Scarlet (6 page)

‘Sail ho!’ he shouted, feet rising from the ground in exultation.

Through the moiling yellow smoke came the bowsprit of a ship, like a dueller’s sword—
en garde!
Behind it, the fat black bow of a brig that has fed deep on adventure, shouldering aside the oil-black waves. A dank, flapping noise spoke of slack black sails and the snaking ends of free-flying ropes. With a soft grinding of gravel and sand, the keel touched bottom and the ship shuddered from end to end, angry that mere dry land should have got in its way. Adrift in the mist, the
Jolly Roger
had simply run out of sea. She stood now, prow upraised in a haughty sneer, daring the little waves jumping and barking around her ankles to make a nuisance of themselves.

‘I know this ship!’ said Peter, and so did they all. For even those whose reading was not good enough to tackle the name on the bow could make out the skull-and-crossbones lolling at the masthead.

‘It’s
HIS
ship!’ breathed Slightly.

They waited for the rumble of cannon being run out. They listened for the cry from the deck of ‘Avast, ye swabs!’ But the beached ship was silent except for the creak of timbers groaning,
Aground! Aground!

Peter was first aboard, of course, climbing up by way of the barnacles and the gun ports, calling for the rest to follow. ‘What are you afraid of? Hook’s dead and gone, isn’t he? Over there’s the Crocodile that ate him!’

Tootles and Slightly followed, but the littler boys hung back, remembering how they had been prisoners once aboard this ship—lashed to the mast—sentenced to walk the plank. Even with the forest fire raging at their backs and nothing but smoke to breathe, it took Wendy to shame them into moving. She clambered up after Peter singing a sea shanty as she went.

She tried not to say, even to herself, how fearful it was to walk the decks, to climb the companionways, to tug open cabin doors and look inside. Now and then a shadowy figure would suddenly loom out of the choking murk, and utter a shout and reach for its sword. Then the mist would shift and there stood Curly or John or Slightly, head forward, peering, trembling with fright because
they
had just seen
her
shadowy shape. Curly fell over a cannon; Slightly walked into the ship’s bell which clanged like the knell of doom. When the smoke momentarily cleared, and moonlight poured down, the mast looked so tall you might climb up it with a candlesnuffer and put out all the stars.

Everything was exactly as it had been the night oh-so-long-before when Peter Pan and the villainous pirate Captain Hook had fought to the death over who should keep Wendy for a mother. Since then, spiders had woven webs between the spokes of the ship’s-wheel. Rust had caked the cannon balls to their racks. Rats had bred and raised young and grown old and retired to barns in the countryside. Seagulls had whitened the sails, and rain had washed them black again. But no rope-soled shoes or high-cuffed boots had walked the quarterdeck for twenty years. No songs had sounded in the fo’c’sle; no bo’sun’s pipe had whistled anyone aboard the
Jolly Roger
. She was a ghostly ship adrift on a ghastly ocean, damp and dank and dead.

But to homeless adventurers needing to escape the beach—out late and in want of somewhere to sleep—it was a wish come true. Hammocks still hung between the bulkheads. There were ship’s biscuits in the biscuit barrels and Christmas puddings in the brandy barrels and fresh rain in the water butts. There were boots in the footlockers and several kitbags, too, labelled
Smee, Starkey,  Cecco, Jukes …

‘How long do pirates live, do you think?’ asked Curly.

And there was a sea chest.

Wendy aired the fo’c’sle as she aired her opinions, for just the right length of time, then tucked up the Boys in their hammocks and set them swinging.

There were charts in the chartroom, signal flags and oilskins, a telescope for looking-out, and a compass for steering by. There was a kettle and cocoa, and something white in the powder kegs that would do for flour—or talcum powder in a crisis.

And there was the sea chest.

J. H.
it said on the lid, which opened like a cupboard and had drawers inside for socks, lace collars, and medals. There was a brass telescope as heavy as a gun. There was another brass instrument with slides and calibrations and knurled knobs of no known usefulness. There was a frock coat in red brocade and, coiled in a corner like a pale snake, a white tie or cravat. Peter Pan put on the coat, admired his reflection in the speckled cabin mirror, then pocketed the telescope and climbed the mainmast to the crow’s nest. Cracking the tie like a whip, he tipped back his head and crowed so loudly that the stars blinked.

‘I shall be Captain Peter Pan, and sail the seven oceans!’ he shouted, and dislodged an albatross roosting on the mizzenmast.

Back on deck, Wendy had to knot the tie for him: he had never worn a man’s tie round his throat before. ‘I believe you’ll find there are seven seas but only five oceans,’ she said as she did so. Peter sank his hands into the deep pockets of the red brocade coat. There were holes in the lining where a pirate’s pieces-of-eight might easily fall through; this must be Hook’s second-best coat. Well, of course it was! The best one had slithered, together with its owner, down the Crocodile’s throat. ‘Stand still and don’t fidget,’ said Wendy sternly (because tying a gentleman’s tie takes time and skill).

But Peter had found something else in his pocket, other than holes. Between his fingers he felt the crumbly softness of finest vellum chart-paper. ‘Look here! Look what I’ve found!’ he cried, waving the chart over his head. ‘A treasure map! And here’s where Hook stowed his treasure!’

Out of a landscape of cream vellum rose forests and hills, lighthouses and mountains. And there, sure enough, like a teacher’s angry crossing-out, a big black X had been gouged through the highest mountain of all. ‘Neverpeak’ read the inky scrawl underneath.

‘Wind the capstans and man the yards!’ cried Peter. ‘Clear the decks and make ready!’ and if he was startled to find such sea-salty words in his mouth, he did not show it.

Heads popped up through every hatch. ‘What? Why? Where are we going?’

‘Yes,’ said Wendy fretfully, ‘where are we going? There will be so much tidying up to do after the fire.’

‘We’re going on a voyage of discovery!’ cried Peter. ‘We’re going in search of treasure!’

‘A treasure hunt!’ The cry was taken up by everyone. ‘A treasure hunt!’ A treasure hunt, across uncharted waters, round the island and ashore again in unknown territories—along the untrodden paths of Neverland and into the unimagined dangers of Never-been-there-land! All thoughts but these—all plans but this—melted from the minds of Pan’s comrades.

Even the ocean felt the surge of excitement—TREASURE!—for it fairly rushed into the bay. The tide came in much faster than it does on unremarkable days. It refloated the
Jolly Roger
and spun her round so that her bowsprit pointed out to sea—
en garde!
Peter’s trusty crew swarmed into the rigging, hoping that, from up there, they would be able to see over the horizon. Sparks from the burning forest swarmed around their heads and brushed the canvas sails. Not a moment too soon, they left the Bay of Dragons behind them and sailed into the night. As they crossed the bar, and a salt spray wetted their faces, even the ship seemed caught up by the splendour of the enterprise, for at midnight the ship’s bell rang eight times.

And no one was anywhere near it.

The
Jolly Roger
, after so long without a crew, answered eagerly to the smallest turn of the ship’s helm. Peter cut such a dash in his scarlet frock coat (once the sleeves were shortened) that the League of Pan would have walked on water to please him. Here and there along the coast, he took them ashore to forage for breadfruit, and for butternuts and honeycomb to spread on it. He rigged awnings out of sails, where they could shelter when it rained. He gave them ranks—Rear Admiral, Front Admiral, First Sea Lord, Other Sea Lord, Best Mate, Deckmaster, Mastmaster, and Keeper of the Crow’s Nest. He told them: ‘I’ll stick by you for ever and lay down my life for you, if you’ll join my Company of Explorers!’—And they would have sworn on their sword hilts if they had had any proper swords.

Sometimes the ferocity of his orders took them by surprise, but it was worth it to serve in such a happy crew. His cleverness at sailing a ship astonished them. The names of obscure ropes and bits of rigging came to him in an instant. He even knew how to curse like a sailor.

‘That’s
quite
enough of that, thank you,’ said Wendy.

For hours, he would sit at the chart desk in Hook’s stateroom at the stern of the vessel, and write up the ship’s log using a raven’s feather, dipping it into a china flagon of blood red ink. Since he had never learned to read or write, he filled the pages with pictures instead of words, recording the day’s events.

Then he would return to poring over Hook’s treasure map, wondering what had taken the villain so far from the sea carrying a heavy treasure chest, what booty Hook had taken such pains to stash away? What hardships would face explorers who went in search of it? 

He changed the brig’s name, of course—to the
Jolly
Peter
—and refused to sail under the pirate flag. ‘I am no scurvy brigand to fly the skull-and-crossbones!’ he told Wendy. ‘Make me a flag, girl!’

‘What’s the little word that gets things done?’ said Wendy, who was a stickler for good manners.

Peter racked his brains. Having had no mother to teach him manners, he had no idea what the little word might be. ‘Button?’ he suggested. ‘Thimble? Flag?’

Wendy smiled, kissed him lightly on the cheek, and went to make a flag out of her sundress, a dress out of the pirate flag. So it was under the emblem of sunflower-and-two rabbits that the
Jolly Peter
sailed through the Straits of Zigzag and the Widego Narrows and into the Sea of One Thousand Islands. Flying fish leapt over the ship and diving gulls plunged under it, resurfacing with beaks full of whitebait.

The Thousand Islands came in all shapes and sizes. There were rocks only fit to strand a sailor on; desert islands with one palm tree and some coconut matting; mangrove islands noisy with parrots; archipelagos of red coral and archipelouses strewn with fine, green lawns. There were extinct volcanic atolls, and islands not at all extinct whose volcanoes smoked and rumbled and tossed lumps of molten rock far out to sea. There were islands shaped like turtles and others shaped simply like islands but teeming with turtles. All these Peter found marked on the charts, as well as lighthouses and headlands, whirlpools and estuaries. In the shaded areas labelled ‘
Fishing Grounds
’ a magnet swung over the side would bring in a can of sprats or a tin of sardines. There were wrecks, and drowned villages whose church bells rang when the sea was rough …

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, burst 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.