CHAPTER XII
THE CHILDREN ARE CARRIED OFF
The pirate attack had been a complete surprise: a sure proof that theunscrupulous Hook had conducted it improperly, for to surprise redskinsfairly is beyond the wit of the white man.
By all the unwritten laws of savage warfare it is always the redskin whoattacks, and with the wiliness of his race he does it just before thedawn, at which time he knows the courage of the whites to be at itslowest ebb. The white men have in the meantime made a rude stockade onthe summit of yonder undulating ground, at the foot of which a streamruns; for it is destruction to be too far from water. There they awaitthe onslaught, the inexperienced ones clutching their revolvers andtreading on twigs, but the old hands sleeping tranquilly until justbefore the dawn. Through the long black night the savage scouts wriggle,snake-like, among the grass without stirring a blade. The brushwoodcloses behind them as silently as sand into which a mole has dived. Nota sound is to be heard, save when they give vent to a wonderfulimitation of the lonely call of the coyote. The cry is answered by otherbraves; and some of them do it even better than the coyotes, who are notvery good at it. So the chill hours wear on, and the long suspense ishorribly trying to the paleface who has to live through it for the firsttime; but to the trained hand those ghastly calls and still ghastliersilences are but an intimation of how the night is marching.
That this was the usual procedure was so well known to Hook that indisregarding it he cannot be excused on the plea of ignorance.
The Piccaninnies, on their part, trusted implicitly to his honour, andtheir whole action of the night stands out in marked contrast to his.They left nothing undone that was consistent with the reputation oftheir tribe. With that alertness of the senses which is at once themarvel and despair of civilised peoples, they knew that the pirates wereon the island from the moment one of them trod on a dry stick; and in anincredibly short space of time the coyote cries began. Every foot ofground between the spot where Hook had landed his forces and the homeunder the trees was stealthily examined by braves wearing theirmocassins with the heels in front. They found only one hillock with astream at its base, so that Hook had no choice; here he must establishhimself and wait for just before the dawn. Everything being thus mappedout with almost diabolical cunning, the main body of the redskins foldedtheir blankets around them, and in the phlegmatic manner that is to themthe pearl of manhood squatted above the children's home, awaiting thecold moment when they should deal pale death.
Here dreaming, though wide-awake, of the exquisite tortures to whichthey were to put him at break of day, those confiding savages were foundby the treacherous Hook. From the accounts afterwards supplied by suchof the scouts as escaped the carnage, he does not seem even to havepaused at the rising ground, though it is certain that in that greylight he must have seen it: no thought of waiting to be attacked appearsfrom first to last to have visited his subtle mind; he would not evenhold off till the night was nearly spent; on he pounded with no policybut to fall to. What could the bewildered scouts do, masters as theywere of every warlike artifice save this one, but trot helplessly afterhim, exposing themselves fatally to view, the while they gave patheticutterance to the coyote cry.
Around the brave Tiger Lily were a dozen of her stoutest warriors, andthey suddenly saw the perfidious pirates bearing down upon them. Fellfrom their eyes then the film through which they had looked at victory.No more would they torture at the stake. For them the happyhunting-grounds now. They knew it; but as their fathers' sons theyacquitted themselves. Even then they had time to gather in a phalanxthat would have been hard to break had they risen quickly, but this theywere forbidden to do by the traditions of their race. It is written thatthe noble savage must never express surprise in the presence of thewhite. Thus terrible as the sudden appearance of the pirates must havebeen to them, they remained stationary for a moment, not a musclemoving; as if the foe had come by invitation. Then, indeed, thetradition gallantly upheld, they seized their weapons, and the air wastorn with the warcry; but it was now too late.
It is no part of ours to describe what was a massacre rather than afight. Thus perished many of the flower of the Piccaninny tribe. Not allunavenged did they die, for with Lean Wolf fell Alf Mason, to disturbthe Spanish Main no more; and among others who bit the dust were Geo.Scourie, Chas. Turley, and the Alsatian Foggerty. Turley fell to thetomahawk of the terrible Panther, who ultimately cut a way through thepirates with Tiger Lily and a small remnant of the tribe.
To what extent Hook is to blame for his tactics on this occasion is forthe historian to decide. Had he waited on the rising ground till theproper hour he and his men would probably have been butchered; and injudging him it is only fair to take this into account. What he shouldperhaps have done was to acquaint his opponents that he proposed tofollow a new method. On the other hand this, as destroying the elementof surprise, would have made his strategy of no avail, so that the wholequestion is beset with difficulties. One cannot at least withhold areluctant 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? Fainwould his dogs have known, as breathing heavily and wiping theircutlasses, they gathered at a discreet distance from his hook, andsquinted through their ferret eyes at this extraordinary man. Elationmust have been in his heart, but his face did not reflect it: ever adark and solitary enigma, he stood aloof from his followers in spirit asin substance.
The night's work was not yet over, for it was not the redskins he hadcome out to destroy; they were but the bees to be smoked, so that heshould get at the honey. It was Pan he wanted, Pan and Wendy and theirband, but chiefly Pan.
Peter was such a small boy that one tends to wonder at the man's hatredof him. True he had flung Hook's arm to the crocodile; but even this andthe increased insecurity of life to which it led, owing to thecrocodile's pertinacity, hardly account for a vindictiveness sorelentless and malignant. The truth is that there was a something aboutPeter which goaded the pirate captain to frenzy. It was not his courage,it was not his engaging appearance, it was not--. There is no beatingabout the bush, for we know quite well what it was, and have got totell. It was Peter's cockiness.
This had got on Hook's nerves; it made his iron claw twitch, and atnight it disturbed him like an insect. While Peter lived, the torturedman 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 dogsdown? He ran his greedy eyes over them, searching for the thinnest ones.They wriggled uncomfortably, for they knew he would not scruple to ramthem down with poles.
In the meantime, what of the boys? We have seen them at the first clangof weapons, turned as it were into stone figures, open-mouthed, allappealing with outstretched arms to Peter; and we return to them astheir mouths close, and their arms fall to their sides. The pandemoniumabove has ceased almost as suddenly as it arose, passed like a fiercegust of wind; but they know that in the passing it has determined theirfate.
Which side had won?
The pirates, listening avidly at the mouths of the trees, heard thequestion 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 isalways 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 ofcourse, for strict silence had been enjoined. To his amazement Hooksigned to him to beat the tom-tom; and slowly there came to Smee anunderstanding 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 listengleefully.
'The tom-tom,' the miscreants heard Peter cry; 'an Indian victory!'
The doomed children answered with a cheer that was music to the blackhearts above, and almost immediately they repeated their goodbyes toPeter. This puzzled the pirates, but all their other feelings wereswallowed by a base delight that the enemy were about to come up thetrees. They smirked at each other and rubbed their hands. Rapidly andsilently Hook gave his orders: one man to each tree, and the others toarrange themselves in a line two yards apart.