Chapter XII THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED OFF

{CHAPTER_XII
CHAPTER XII.
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 moccasins 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.
{CHAPTER_XII ^paragraph 5}
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 the
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, the 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 now. They knew it; but as their fathers’ 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 the 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.
{CHAPTER_XII ^paragraph 10}
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 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.
{CHAPTER_XII ^paragraph 15}
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 to 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.
{CHAPTER_XII ^paragraph 20}
“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.