skins. Above, where all had been so still, the air was rent with
shrieks and the clash of steel. Below, there was dead silence. Mouths
opened and remained open. Wendy fell on her knees, but her arms were
extended toward Peter. All arms were extended to him, as if suddenly
blown in his direction; they were beseeching him mutely not to desert
them. As for Peter, he seized his sword, the same he thought he had
slain Barbecue with, and the lust of battle was in his eye.

Chapter 12 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