for such guidance, and he could not
wait. The upper world had called him, but would give no help.

The crocodile passed him, but not another living thing, not a sound, not
a movement; and yet he knew well that sudden death might be at the next
tree, or stalking him from behind.

He swore this terrible oath: 'Hook or me this time.'

Now he crawled forward like a snake; and again, erect, he darted across
a space on which the moonlight played: one finger on his lip and his
dagger at the ready. He was frightfully happy.

CHAPTER XIV

THE PIRATE SHIP

One green light squinting over Kidd's Creek, which is near the mouth of
the pirate river, marked where the brig, the _Jolly Roger_, lay, low in
the water; a rakish-looking craft foul to the hull, every beam in her
detestable like ground strewn with mangled feathers. She was the
cannibal of the seas, and scarce needed that watchful eye, for she
floated immune in the horror of her name.

She was wrapped in the blanket of night, through which no sound from her
could have reached the shore. There was little sound, and none agreeable
save the whir of the ship's sewing machine at which Smee sat, ever
industrious and obliging, the essence of the commonplace, pathetic Smee.
I know not why he was so infinitely pathetic, unless it were because he
was so pathetically unaware of it; but even strong men had to turn
hastily from looking at him, and more than once on summer evenings he
had touched the fount of Hook's tears and made it flow. Of this, as of
almost everything else, Smee was quite unconscious.

A few of the pirates leant over the bulwarks drinking in the miasma of
the night; others sprawled by barrels over games of dice and cards; and
the exhausted four who had carried the little house lay prone on the
deck, where even in their sleep they rolled skilfully to this side or
that out of Hook's reach, lest he should claw them mechanically in
passing.

Hook trod the deck in thought. O man unfathomable. It was his hour of
triumph. Peter had been removed for ever from his path, and all the
other boys were on the brig, about to walk the plank. It was his
grimmest deed since the days when he had brought Barbecue to heel; and
knowing as we do how vain a tabernacle is man, could we be surprised had
he now paced the deck unsteadily, bellied out by the winds of his
success?

But there was no elation in his gait, which kept pace with the action
of his sombre mind. Hook was