“What do we do, Peter?” one child asked on behalf of them all.
“We head to the beach,” he declared. “And we prepare to do what we must.”
The children gathered their slingshots, croquette mallets, weapons from the redskins, and all other manner of offensive tools. The impending conflict concerned Gwen.
They took off through the woods, Peter spinning cocksure tales of past encounters with pirates as they went. Everyone's confidence seemed to soar… until they broke the tree line. On this opposite side of the island, the adults' navy was nowhere in sight. All the children saw was the great flagship, not more than a nautical mile away.
Peter peered at it through his spyglass and the children bombarded him with questions.
“Is it the skull and stars?”
“Is it skull and crossbones?”
“It looks like the skull and swords!”
“It's…” Peter began, troubled, “a skull and… pens.”
“What!” Jam complained. “What kind of pirate has pens on his flag?”
“A pirate who was once a schoolmaster,” Peter replied.
“Starkey,” Gwen whispered.
Eyes turned to Twill. He didn't look happy. “My dad's coming? No… no! You can't let him come! He'll take me home! You can't let him!”
“Never!” Rosemary cried, hugging him tight.
“Don't worry, Twill,” Peter told him, collapsing his spyglass. “I've never let a pirate steal one of my boys, and I won't start today.” He handed the telescope to the other children, passing it around once again. The situation felt uncanny to Gwen, and the moment seemed dusted with finely ground déjà vu.
“We need to figure out who is aboard that ship and what they're planning,” Peter announced.
“We can ask them when they get here,” Spurt replied, staring through the wooden telescope. “It looks like they're rowing ashore!”
A new babble broke out among the children, as they witnessed a small red dinghy lower into the water with three pirates aboard.
“If some of them are coming ashore, they won't fire cannons at us, at least,” Rosemary reasoned.
“We still need a reconnaissance mission to know what's going on aboard the ship,” Peter argued.
“I'll go, Peter!” Spurt volunteered, waving his hand. Several others echoed his enthusiastic offer.
“No, it has to be a stealth mission,” Peter told them.
Blink stepped forward, standing at attention and saying nothing.
“No,” Peter mused. “I think it's a doubles mission… Newt, Sal, are you ready to unearth intelligence for the sake of your homeland?”
“Yes!” they cheered.
“Good,” he replied. “Fly low and stay out of sight. Don't get captured! If either of you are fool enough to get captured, I might leave you to walk their plank.”
“Understood, sir!” Sal announced, saluting him. He and Newt jumped into the air and took off, keeping their bellies almost against the waves. They took a roundabout course, ensuring the pirates would never see them coming from the shore.
Hushed speculation turned to hysterical speculation among the children. Only Twill withheld comment on this new development. Rosemary patted his shoulder and reassured him, much as Peter reassured Gwen.
“I don't like this,” Gwen muttered to him. “I'm scared, Peter.”
He smiled at her, his starlight smile easing her worries down to a reasonable level. “Don't worry, Gwenny,” he commanded. “It's only pirates—and there's nothing in the world I'm better at than fighting nefarious seafarers.”
She let out a nervous chuckle. “Well that must really be saying something,” she replied. “Seeing as though you're so good at everything.”
Her sarcasm went straight past him. “Precisely,” he declared.
The last thing Peter needed was someone feeding his ego. Gwen didn't know why she did it, or why she found his bursts of conceit so encouraging.
They waited with tense impatience as they watched the dinghy row to shore. As it approached, Peter paced down the pebbled beach and the children followed. Gwen stayed close by his side. They watched as two scar-covered pirates rowed the dinghy with Polk High School's speech and debate teacher standing tall in it.
“Salutations, Peter Pan!” Starkey cried out, his voice booming with villainous cheer.
“Starkey!” Peter sneered.
“Ah ah ah—” Starkey replied, wagging a finger at him. “It's Captain Starkey now, Pan.” He turned to Gwen and tipped his dark tricorn hat to her. “Hello, Miss Hoffman.”
She felt her cheeks burning. She probably should have explained to Peter how she and Starkey had known each other before Neverland.
Starkey still carried himself with the same confidence that had seemed almost out-of-place in the dismal environment of a public high school. He didn't look that different now. He had always seemed a bit odd: too chipper and gentlemanly for a modern adult. The collar of his brown overcoat turned up, he had knotted his usual scarf around his neck in a different fashion. He wore tall black boots and a loose white shirt, but even the worn leather of his gauntlets did not seem like costume pieces. Starkey was a real pirate, and he had the cutlass sword holstered at his hip to prove it.
The other two pirates seemed out of breath from rowing their captain ashore. One had a tattoo of a sinister snake winding around his neck and a blood stained bandanna tied over his bald head. Gwen had no idea where Starkey had found him. The other, a wiry and scruffy man, simply wore blue coveralls. Gwen recognized him at once as Mr. Grouse, Polk High School's janitor.
“Mr. Grouse?” she asked. “You're a pirate too?”
A frightened look haunted his eyes, and he could not place Gwen as anything more than one of the many students he had cleaned up after. “I have no idea what's going on!” he yelled. “I was mopping the floors after hours and heard someone in a classroom. Someone hit me over the head, and I woke up on the open sea! Starkey kidnapped me!”
“Shut up, you,” Starkey barked, kicking the poor janitor in the back and causing the grounded dinghy to shake. “We needed someone to swab the decks.”
“How'd you get this ship?” Peter demanded.
“Ah yes, the Grammarian.
