Peter and the Starcatchers: Chapters 19–34

Not bloody likely they’ll make it, thought Stache. It’ll be dicey enough for us.

And Mr. Grempkin clouted Peter on the ear and told him not to ask so many questions.

With her right hand, she opened the lid of the locket. As she did, it was suffused by light, so that Peter couldn’t see the locket, only a small, glowing sphere of golden light.

In time they learned to guard their secret better, to use the power more subtly; instead of gods, they were called royalty.

For years the Others didn’t realize what was happening—only that it was more and more difficult to replenish their starstuff supplies.

Not so many years ago, some starstuff fell in Italy. Our agents got there soon enough, and thought they’d retrieved it all, but apparently they missed some, and some young men found it. Fortunately, they were not inclined toward evil.

“Occasionally,” Molly continued, “very occasionally, even one of the Starcatchers succumbs to the lure of the starstuff, and has to be...dealt with..."

I don’t mean we’ve eradicated evil from the world, of course—the world will always have evil—but because of the Starcatchers, it has been a good long time since any widespread evil has been the result of starstuff.

But I’m not very good at porpoise, and I thought I’d muddled it, and then Ammm came back and told me...he told me...

“DON’T YOU MOCK ME, YOU LITTLE URCHIN,” said Mrs. Bumbrake.

Their second stroke of luck came when Molly pulled on the padlock. It came off easily in her hand; their ruse had not been detected.

Peter stared into the glow, feeling lightheaded, euphoric. Feeling wonderful.

Struggling to their feet, Molly and Peter staggered on the lurching deck to the trunk, Molly reaching it first, leaning down and....

He liked the idea of a bloodless coup, with no sword soiled.

“THE CAP’N IS...INDISPOSED,” the other man said.

He sauntered up to Slank and pointed his pistol directly into his face.

He was terrified, of course, but at the same time, as he felt himself tumble in space, he was acutely aware of his terror, as if it were somebody else’s; he was also acutely aware of the pain in his head, of Molly’s anguished screams from the deck, of the sound of the wind, of everything around him.

Peter saw he was going to land in a trough between two waves.

Peter felt his body rising with the swell of the wave, and then, as the wave receded, he felt himself rise out of the wave, all the way out, back into the wind.

It was then that he noticed something disconcerting: he was starting to sink toward the water.

It was gradual, and with an effort, he was able to pull himself up again. But it was definitely getting more difficult to stay aloft.

Now there were bodies sprawling all over the pitching, rain-slicked deck: Stache, on his back, with the relentless girl still clawing at his face; the giant, beaten to the deck but still fighting, his massive thrashing arms and legs knocking down his pirate attackers like bowling pins.

He had time to look back to the deck of the Never Land, at Black Stache, screaming in fury; at the pirates, still battling to subdue the giant Little Richard...

And as he shouted those words, he felt his feet touch the crest of a wave. It passed, but Peter looked down, and saw he would be in the sea soon.

She had climbed up on the rail, and was balanced, precariously, as the ship tossed.

“And the others, Cap’n?” shouted Smee, pointing to the rest of the Never Land’s crew and passengers—a wretched, drenched lot of bedraggled sailors and small boys.

“Aye, Cap’n. Well, if he can’t fly, I reckon he’s gone for sure now, in these seas.”
“Stop reckoning,” shouted Stache, “and give the crew me orders.”

The lagoon teemed with life—turtles, jellyfish, crabs, and vast schools of lavishly multihued fish.

In time, as the storm began to subside, a large, sleek fish with a silver body and a bright green tail glided near, and then into, the glowing seawater.

Clinging to each other, Alf and the boys half crawled, half stumbled to the stern, where a battered dory tumbled back and forth on the deck, held tenuously on to the deck by a frayed line.

“We’re going to drown out here.”
“No we’re not!” reprimanded James, but he feared Prentiss was right.

“ALL HANDS ON DECK!” Stache hollered, and the disheveled crew, sleepless after a nerve-wracking, storm-tossed night, stumbled onto the deck in ones and twos.

They smiled at the welcome sight of the mountainous island, its lush greenery beckoning.

But he was still weak from his ordeal at sea, and when he reached the palms, he decided to rest a bit.

It was sealed with a thick cork stopper, which Peter managed, with considerable effort, to dislodge by banging it with a sharp piece of coral.

The water was warm and brackish, but they both drank greedily.

Then, at Molly’s insistence, they dragged the barrel into a depression in the land, and covered it with fallen palm fronds.

He wondered if there might be snakes—it certainly looked as though there might be snakes—but he did not voice this thought, as he didn’t want Molly, forging resolutely ahead, to think he was scared.

He wondered if there might be snakes—it certainly looked as though there might be snakes—but he did not voice this thought, as he didn’t want Molly, forging resolutely ahead, to think he was scared.

They were several hundred feet up now, looking down on the lagoon where Peter had come ashore; Peter could see the gouge in the sand they’d made when they dragged the water barrel up the beach.