孩子们被掳走
海盗的袭击完全出乎意料：这确凿地证明了毫无廉耻的胡克行事不正，因为要正大光明地偷袭红人，是白人智力所不及的。
依照野蛮战争所有不成文的法则，发起进攻的向来是红人；凭着他那个种族的狡诈，他总在黎明前动手，因为他知道那时白人的勇气已跌至谷底。白人这边，则在那起伏不平的远处高地顶端草草筑起栅栏，栅栏脚下有溪水流过，因为离水太远是致命的。他们在那里等候冲锋，没经验的人紧攥左轮手枪，踩得枯枝啪啪响，老手却安然入睡，直到黎明将至才醒。漫长的黑夜里，野蛮的斥候像蛇一样在草丛中蜿蜒爬行，连一片草叶也不曾惊动。灌木在他们身后合拢，静默如沙土吞没钻入的地鼠。听不到一丝声响，除非他们发出惟妙惟肖的孤狼嗥叫。这叫声由其他勇士应答；其中有些人学得比郊狼还像，而郊狼本就不擅长此道。寒夜就这样一点点挨过去，对头回熬过这种漫长悬疑的苍白面孔而言，煎熬可怕至极；但对训练有素的老手，那些骇人的嗥叫与更骇人的死寂，不过是夜色行进的讯号。
胡克对这套惯例心知肚明，因此他置之不理，不能以不知情为由开脱。
皮卡尼尼人那边，却全然信任他的荣誉，他们整夜的举动与胡克形成鲜明对照。凡关乎部落声望的事，他们一件也没落下。文明人又惊又叹、自愧不如的那种敏锐感官，让他们从胡克手下踩响枯枝的那一刻起，便知海盗上了岛；极短时间内，郊狼的嗥叫便起。从胡克登陆处到树下家园之间的每一寸土地，都被勇士们脚穿后跟朝前的鹿皮靴悄然探查。他们只找到一座山丘，脚下有溪，胡克别无选择；他只能在此扎营，等黎明前动手。一切既已如此恶魔般狡诈地排布妥当，红人主力裹紧毛毯，以他们眼中男子汉的沉着，蹲踞在孩子们家园上方，等候那送 pale 死神的清冷时刻。
那些轻信的野人醒着做梦，盘算破晓时施于胡克的精致酷刑，却被背信的胡克撞见。从大屠杀中逃生的斥候日后所述，胡克似乎连那隆起的高地也未驻足，尽管灰光中他定已望见：他诡谲的心思里，从头到尾未有等候被攻的念头；他甚至不愿挨到夜尽，只顾闷头冲杀。那些斥候虽精通百般战法，独独不谙此道，除却无助地跟在他身后小跑、暴露身形于死地，悲凉地发出郊狼嗥，又能何为？
勇毅的虎莉周围有十余名最精壮的战士，忽见奸诈海盗压境。蒙在他们眼上的胜利之膜骤落。再不能在火刑柱上施虐。猎场乐土此刻便是他们的归宿。他们心知肚明；但作为先祖之子，他们死得其所。即便那时，他们尚来得及迅速结阵，本难击破，然族规禁其如此。书上写道，高贵野人绝不可在白人前露惊色。故海盗突现虽必令其骇然，他们却立定片刻，肌肉不动；宛若来敌系受邀而至。而后，传统既已壮烈恪守，他们执起兵刃，喊杀撕裂长空；然为时已晚。
此役近乎屠戮而非战斗，非我等笔墨所及。皮卡尼尼部落的精英多殒于此。然他们死亦非全无报复：瘦狼倒下时，阿尔夫·梅森随之坠亡，永扰西班牙主航道不得；饮恨黄沙者尚有乔·斯库里、查斯·特利，及阿尔萨斯人福格蒂。特利丧于可怖黑豹的战斧，黑豹终偕虎莉与部落残部杀穿海盗。
胡克此役战术该担几分成败之责，留待史家裁断。若他候于高地至其时辰，恐与部众同遭屠戮；评断之时，此节不可不察。他或许本该知会对手，自己欲用新法。然如此则失奇袭之效，谋略尽废，故全案困顿难解。至少，对其构思之胆略与施行之狠绝，人不能不勉予叹服。
凯旋此刻，他心头自况如何？群狗喘息拭刀，于其铁钩稍远处聚拢，狐眼斜睨这异人，极欲探知。欣悦必盈其心，然面无流露：他永是幽暗孤谜，形神俱远离部众。
夜事未竟，红人非其欲灭之的；他们不过是待熏之蜂，以便取蜜。他要的是潘，是温蒂与其众，而首要是潘。
彼得不过幼童，令人费解胡克何故恨之入骨。诚然，他曾将胡克之臂掷与鳄鱼，然即便此节，加以鳄鱼纠缠致性命愈危，也难解此般残忍不休之怨。实情是，彼得身上有某物，将海盗船长逼至狂乱。非其勇，非其貌，非——。毋庸迂回，吾辈深知其物，不得不言。乃彼得之自得。
此态恼乱胡克神经；令其铁爪抽搐，夜不能寐如虫噬。彼得一日不死，此受刑者便觉己如笼中狮，而一雀擅入。
今之难题，何以下树，或何以遣狗下树？他贪眼扫过众狗，寻最瘦者。他们不安扭动，知他不惜以杆塞之而下。
其间，众孩何如？吾等曾见兵刃初响，他们如化石像，张嘴伸臂向彼得乞援；今返其侧，见嘴合臂垂。头上乱象几如骤起般猝息，似狂风烈过；然他们知，其过处已定命运。
谁胜？
海盗贴树口饥听，闻每孩皆问，可叹，亦闻彼得答。
“若红人胜，”曰，“必击手鼓；此恒为胜利之号。”
斯米已寻得手鼓，正坐其上。“汝永不复闻鼓声，”其喃语，然自不可闻，因严令静默。胡克竟示意击鼓，斯米渐悟此令之恶，恐此朴人从未如此钦佩胡克。
斯米击鼓两通，止而窃听。
“手鼓，”恶徒闻彼得呼，“印第安之胜！”
待戮之童欢喝，如乐入上黑心，旋复向彼得道别。海盗惑之，然卑喜敌将上树，吞没余情。相狞笑，搓手。胡克疾默传令：一树一人，余者列距两码之线。
THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED OFF
The pirate attack had been a complete surprise: a sure proof that the
unscrupulous Hook had conducted it improperly, for to surprise redskins
fairly is beyond the wit of the white man.
By all the unwritten laws of savage warfare it is always the redskin
who attacks, and with the wiliness of his race he does it just before
the dawn, at which time he knows the courage of the whites to be at its
lowest ebb. The white men have in the meantime made a rude stockade on
the summit of yonder undulating ground, at the foot of which a stream
runs, for it is destruction to be too far from water. There they await
the onslaught, the inexperienced ones clutching their revolvers and
treading on twigs, but the old hands sleeping tranquilly until just
before the dawn. Through the long black night the savage scouts
wriggle, snake-like, among the grass without stirring a blade. The
brushwood closes behind them, as silently as sand into which a mole has
dived. Not a sound is to be heard, save when they give vent to a
wonderful imitation of the lonely call of the coyote. The cry is
answered by other braves; and some of them do it even better than the
coyotes, who are not very good at it. So the chill hours wear on, and
the long suspense is horribly trying to the paleface who has to live
through it for the first time; but to the trained hand those ghastly
calls and still ghastlier silences are but an intimation of how the
night is marching.
That this was the usual procedure was so well known to Hook that in
disregarding it he cannot be excused on the plea of ignorance.
The Piccaninnies, on their part, trusted implicitly to his honour, and
their whole action of the night stands out in marked contrast to his.
They left nothing undone that was consistent with the reputation of
their tribe. With that alertness of the senses which is at once the
marvel and despair of civilised peoples, they knew that the pirates
were on the island from the moment one of them trod on a dry stick; and
in an incredibly short space of time the coyote cries began. Every foot
of ground between the spot where Hook had landed his forces and the
home under the trees was stealthily examined by braves wearing their
mocassins with the heels in front. They found only one hillock with a
stream at its base, so that Hook had no choice; here he must establish
himself and wait for just before the dawn. Everything being thus mapped
out with almost diabolical cunning, the main body of the redskins
folded their blankets around them, and in the phlegmatic manner that is
to them, the pearl of manhood squatted above the children’s home,
awaiting the cold moment when they should deal pale death.
Here dreaming, though wide-awake, of the exquisite tortures to which
they were to put him at break of day, those confiding savages were
found by the treacherous Hook. From the accounts afterwards supplied by
such of the scouts as escaped the carnage, he does not seem even to
have paused at the rising ground, though it is certain that in that
grey light he must have seen it: no thought of waiting to be attacked
appears from first to last to have visited his subtle mind; he would
not even hold off till the night was nearly spent; on he pounded with
no policy but to fall to. What could the bewildered scouts do, masters
as they were of every war-like artifice save this one, but trot
helplessly after him, exposing themselves fatally to view, while they
gave pathetic utterance to the coyote cry.
Around the brave Tiger Lily were a dozen of her stoutest warriors, and
they suddenly saw the perfidious pirates bearing down upon them. Fell
from their eyes then the film through which they had looked at victory.
No more would they torture at the stake. For them the happy
hunting-grounds was now. They knew it; but as their father’s sons they
acquitted themselves. Even then they had time to gather in a phalanx
that would have been hard to break had they risen quickly, but this
they were forbidden to do by the traditions of their race. It is
written that the noble savage must never express surprise in the
presence of the white. Thus terrible as the sudden appearance of the
pirates must have been to them, they remained stationary for a moment,
not a muscle moving; as if the foe had come by invitation. Then,
indeed, the tradition gallantly upheld, they seized their weapons, and
the air was torn with the war-cry; but it was now too late.
It is no part of ours to describe what was a massacre rather than a
fight. Thus perished many of the flower of the Piccaninny tribe. Not
all unavenged did they die, for with Lean Wolf fell Alf Mason, to
disturb the Spanish Main no more, and among others who bit the dust
were Geo. Scourie, Chas. Turley, and the Alsatian Foggerty. Turley fell
to the tomahawk of the terrible Panther, who ultimately cut a way
through the pirates with Tiger Lily and a small remnant of the tribe.
To what extent Hook is to blame for his tactics on this occasion is for
the historian to decide. Had he waited on the rising ground till the
proper hour he and his men would probably have been butchered; and in
judging him it is only fair to take this into account. What he should
perhaps have done was to acquaint his opponents that he proposed to
follow a new method. On the other hand, this, as destroying the element
of surprise, would have made his strategy of no avail, so that the
whole question is beset with difficulties. One cannot at least withhold
a reluctant admiration for the wit that had conceived so bold a scheme,
and the fell genius with which it was carried out.
What were his own feelings about himself at that triumphant moment?
Fain would his dogs have known, as breathing heavily and wiping their
cutlasses, they gathered at a discreet distance from his hook, and
squinted through their ferret eyes at this extraordinary man. Elation
must have been in his heart, but his face did not reflect it: ever a
dark and solitary enigma, he stood aloof from his followers in spirit
as in substance.
The night’s work was not yet over, for it was not the redskins he had
come out to destroy; they were but the bees to be smoked, so that he
should get at the honey. It was Pan he wanted, Pan and Wendy and their
band, but chiefly Pan.
Peter was such a small boy that one tends to wonder at the man’s hatred
of him. True he had flung Hook’s arm to the crocodile, but even this
and the increased insecurity of life to which it led, owing to the
crocodile’s pertinacity, hardly account for a vindictiveness so
relentless and malignant. The truth is that there was a something about
Peter which goaded the pirate captain to frenzy. It was not his
courage, it was not his engaging appearance, it was not—. There is no
beating about the bush, for we know quite well what it was, and have
got to tell. It was Peter’s cockiness.
This had got on Hook’s nerves; it made his iron claw twitch, and at
night it disturbed him like an insect. While Peter lived, the tortured
man felt that he was a lion in a cage into which a sparrow had come.
The question now was how to get down the trees, or how to get his dogs
down? He ran his greedy eyes over them, searching for the thinnest
ones. They wriggled uncomfortably, for they knew he would not scruple
to ram them down with poles.
In the meantime, what of the boys? We have seen them at the first clang
of the weapons, turned as it were into stone figures, open-mouthed, all
appealing with outstretched arms to Peter; and we return to them as
their mouths close, and their arms fall to their sides. The pandemonium
above has ceased almost as suddenly as it arose, passed like a fierce
gust of wind; but they know that in the passing it has determined their
fate.
Which side had won?
The pirates, listening avidly at the mouths of the trees, heard the
question put by every boy, and alas, they also heard Peter’s answer.
“If the redskins have won,” he said, “they will beat the tom-tom; it is
always their sign of victory.”
Now Smee had found the tom-tom, and was at that moment sitting on it.
“You will never hear the tom-tom again,” he muttered, but inaudibly of
course, for strict silence had been enjoined. To his amazement Hook
signed him to beat the tom-tom, and slowly there came to Smee an
understanding of the dreadful wickedness of the order. Never, probably,
had this simple man admired Hook so much.
Twice Smee beat upon the instrument, and then stopped to listen
gleefully.
“The tom-tom,” the miscreants heard Peter cry; “an Indian victory!”
The doomed children answered with a cheer that was music to the black
hearts above, and almost immediately they repeated their good-byes to
Peter. This puzzled the pirates, but all their other feelings were
swallowed by a base delight that the enemy were about to come up the
trees. They smirked at each other and rubbed their hands. Rapidly and
silently Hook gave his orders: one man to each tree, and the others to
arrange themselves in a line two yards apart.
