‘I wasn’t meaning to be disrespectful.’

‘Oh, all right.’

‘But, I say, what bit?’

‘His right hand.’

‘Then he can’t fight now?’

‘Oh, can’t he just!’

‘Left-hander?’

‘He has an iron hook instead of a right hand, and he claws with it.’

‘Claws!’

‘I say, John,’ said Peter.

‘Yes.’

‘Say, “Aye, aye, sir.”’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

‘There is one thing’, Peter continued, ‘that every boy who serves under me has to promise, and so must you.’

John paled.

‘It is this, if we meet Hook in open fight, you must leave him to me.’

‘I promise,’ John said loyally.

For the moment they were feeling less eerie, because Tink was flying with them, and in her light they could distinguish each other. Unfortunately she could not fly so slowly as they, and so she had to go round and round them in a circle in which they moved as in a halo. Wendy quite liked it, until Peter pointed out the drawback.

‘She tells me,’ he said, ‘that the pirates sighted us before the darkness came, and got Long Tom out.’

‘The big gun?’

‘Yes. And of course they must see her light, and if they guess we are near it they are sure to let fly.’

‘Wendy!’

‘John!’

‘Michael!’

‘Tell her to go away at once, Peter,’ the three cried simultaneously, but he refused.

‘She thinks we have lost the way,’ he replied stiffly, ‘and she is rather frightened. You don’t think I would send her away all by herself when she is frightened!’

For a moment the circle of light was broken, and something gave Peter a loving little pinch.