amingo with the broken leg.'

'Look, Michael, there's your cave.'

'John, what's that in the brushwood?'

'It's a wolf with her whelps. Wendy, I do believe that's your little
whelp.'

'There's my boat, John, with her sides stove in.'

'No, it isn't. Why, we burned your boat.'

'That's her, at any rate. I say, John, I see the smoke of the redskin
camp.'

'Where? Show me, and I'll tell you by the way the smoke curls whether
they are on the war-path.'

'There, just across the Mysterious River.'

'I see now. Yes, they are on the war-path right enough.'

Peter was a little annoyed with them for knowing so much; but if he
wanted to lord it over them his triumph was at hand, for have I not told
you that anon fear fell upon them?

It came as the arrows went, leaving the island in gloom.

In the old days at home the Neverland had always begun to look a little
dark and threatening by bedtime. Then unexplored patches arose in it and
spread; black shadows moved about in them; the roar of the beasts of
prey was quite different now, and above all, you lost the certainty that
you would win. You were quite glad that the night-lights were in. You
even liked Nana to say that this was just the mantelpiece over here, and
that the Neverland was all make-believe.

Of course the Neverland had been make-believe in those days; but it was
real now, and there were no night-lights, and it was getting darker
every moment, and where was Nana?

They had been flying apart, but they huddled close to Peter now. His
careless manner had gone at last, his eyes were sparkling, and a tingle
went through them every time they touched his body. They were now over
the fearsome island, flying so low that sometimes a tree grazed their
feet. Nothing horrid was visible in the air, yet their progress had
become slow and laboured, exactly as if they were pushing their way
through hostile forces. Sometimes they hung in the air until Peter had
beaten on it with his fists.

'They don't want us to land,' he explained.

'Who are they?' Wendy whispered, shuddering.

But he could not or would not say. Tinker Bell had been asleep on his
shoulder, but now he wakened her and sent her on in front.

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. '