‘So, my beauty,’ said Hook, as if he spoke in syrup, ‘you are to see your children walk the plank.’

Fine gentleman though he was, the intensity of his communings had soiled his ruff, and suddenly he knew that she was gazing at it. With a hasty gesture he tried to hide it, but he was too late.

‘Are they to die?’ asked Wendy, with a look of such frightful contempt that he nearly fainted.

‘They are,’ he snarled. ‘Silence all,’ he called gloatingly, ‘for a mother’s last words to her children.’

At this moment Wendy was grand. ‘These are my last words, dear boys,’ she said firmly. ‘I feel that I have a message to you from your real mothers, and it is this: “We hope our sons will die like English gentlemen.”’

Even the pirates were awed; and Tootles cried out hysterically, ‘I am going to do what my mother hopes. What are you to do, Nibs?’

‘What my mother hopes. What are you to do, Twin?’

‘What my mother hopes. John, what are——?’

But Hook had found his voice again.

‘Tie her up,’ he shouted.

It was Smee who tied her to the mast. ‘See here, honey,’ he whispered, ‘I’ll save you if you promise to be my mother.’

But not even for Smee would she make such a promise. ‘I would almost rather have no children at all,’ she said disdainfully.

It is sad to know that not a boy was looking at her as Smee tied her to the mast; the eyes of all were on the plank; that last little walk they were about to take. They were no longer able to hope that they would walk it manfully, for the capacity to think had gone from them; they could stare and shiver only.

Hook smiled on them with his teeth closed, and took a step toward Wendy. His intention was to turn her face so that she should see the boys walking the plank one by one. But he never reached her, he never heard the cry of anguish he hoped to wring from her. He heard something else instead.

It was the terrible tick-tick of the crocodile.

They all heard it—pirates, boys, Wendy; and immediately every head was blown in one direction; not to the water whence the sound proceeded, but toward Hook. All knew that what was about to happen concerned him alone, and that from being actors they were suddenly become spectators.

Very frightful was it to see the change that came over him. It was as if he had been clipped at every joint. He fell in a little heap.

The sound came steadily nearer; and in advance of it came this ghastly thought, ‘The crocodile is about to board the ship.’

Even the iron claw hung inactive; as if knowing that it was no intrinsic part of what the attacking force wanted. Left so fearfully alone, any other man would have lain with his eyes shut where he fell; but the gigantic brain of Hook was still working, and under its guidance he crawled on his knees along the deck as far from the sound as he could go. The pirates respectfully cleared a passage for him, and it was only when he brought up against the bulwarks that he spoke.