Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie, Jack Zipes Page B

name.
    “I’m Wendy,” she said agitatedly.
    He was very sorry. “I say, Wendy,” he whispered to her, “always if you see me forgetting you, just keep on saying ‘I’m Wendy,’ and then I’ll remember.”
    Of course this was rather unsatisfactory. However, to make amends he showed them how to lie out flat on a strong wind that was going their way, and this was such a pleasant change that they tried it several times and found they could sleep thus with security. Indeed they would have slept longer, but Peter tired quickly of sleeping, and soon he would cry in his captain voice, “We get off here.” So with occasional tiffs, but on thewhole rollicking, they drew near the Neverland; for after many moons they did reach it, and, what is more, they had been going pretty straight all the time, not perhaps so much owing to the guidance of Peter or Tink as because the island was out looking for them. It is only thus that any one may sight those magic shores.
    “There it is,” said Peter calmly.
    “Where, where?”
    “Where all the arrows are pointing.”
    Indeed a million golden arrows were pointing it out to the children, all directed by their friend the sun, who wanted them to be sure of their way before leaving them for the night.
    Wendy and John and Michael stood on tip-toe in the air to get their first sight of the island. Strange to say, they all recognised it at once, and until fear fell upon them they hailed it, not as something long dreamt of and seen at last, but as a familiar friend to whom they were returning home for the holidays.
    “John, there’s the lagoon!”
    “Wendy, look at the turtles burying their eggs in the sand.”
    “I say, John, I see your flamingo 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 warpath.”
    “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 unexploredpatches 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