Sometimes he poised himself in the air, listening intently with his hand to his ear, and again he would stare down with eyes so bright that they seemed to bore two holes to earth. Having done these things, he went on again.

His courage was almost appalling. ‘Do you want an adventure now,’ he said casually to John, ‘or would you like to have your tea first?’

Wendy said ‘tea first’ quickly, and Michael pressed her hand in gratitude, but the braver John hesitated.

‘What kind of adventure?’ he asked cautiously.

‘There’s a pirate asleep in the pampas just beneath us,’ Peter told him. ‘If you like, we’ll go down and kill him.’

‘I don’t see him,’ John said after a long pause.

‘I do.’

‘Suppose,’ John said a little huskily, ‘he were to wake up.’

Peter spoke indignantly. ‘You don’t think I would kill him while he was sleeping! I would wake him first, and then kill him. That’s the way I always do.’

‘I say! Do you kill many?’

‘Tons.’

John said ‘how ripping’, but decided to have tea first. He asked if there were many pirates on the island just now, and Peter said he had never known so many.

‘Who is captain now?’

‘Hook,’ answered Peter; and his face became very stern as he said that hated word.

‘Jas. Hook?’

‘Aye.’

Then indeed Michael began to cry, and even John could speak in gulps only, for they knew Hook’s reputation.

‘He was Blackbeard’s bo’sun,’ John whispered huskily. ‘He is the worst of them all. He is the only man of whom Barbecue was afraid.’

‘That’s him,’ said Peter.

‘What is he like? Is he big?’

‘He is not so big as he was.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I cut off a bit of him.’

‘You!’

‘Yes, me,’ said Peter sharply.