Finally Hook bent to sniff at the food, took fork in hand, prepared to take a bite, and then stopped. He placed the fork back on the plate.
"How can I eat!" he lamented. "Smee, do you know what it's like to look forward to something so badly that you can taste it? Do you have any idea what it's like to anticipate an event with all your heart and soul?"
Smee thought he might, but he wasn't sure what sort of answer the captain was looking for. Experience had taught him that with Hook if you didn't know the correct answer, it was best not to speak.
Hook was still staring at the table. "The day before yesterday I couldn't sleep, so great was my anticipation. I wished to sleep, of course-that would have made the next day come quicker. Yesterday, I could only think of how long it would be until today. And today? Today I was knotted into knots, all jumbled up inside. The sheer, unbearable anticipation, Smee! Pan's arrival and the commencement of my glorious war!"
A smile crossed his features and his brown eyes lit up with delight. For an instant the wrinkles of despair departed and he was the old Hook, cunning and ruthless.
Then the brightness departed, and the frustration returned. Gloom built upon his brow until it was a thunder-head. Up he rose with a roar, and his claw raked the wooden surface of the table before him in fury.
"I'm so disappointed! I hate being disappointed! I hate Neverland! I hate everything!" His voice rose to a scream. "But most of all I hate Peter Pan!"
He wheeled from the table and yanked a gold-inlaid, diamond-studded dueling pistol from his sash.
"Not again," groaned Smee.
"My life is over!" Hook declaimed dramatically. "I'm not going to have my war! Pan stole it! My lovely, glorious war! I could smell the cannons and taste the steel! Now it's gone! My war is gone!"
He put the barrel of the pistol to his heart and cocked the hammer.
"Cap'n, stop that," scolded Smee, hands waving.
Hook straightened, rising to his full height. "There will be no stopping me this time, Smee. Farewell!"
His jaw jutted forth and his finger tightened about the trigger. His eyes squinched shut, but he managed to peek surreptitiously out of the corners. Seeing Smee hesitate, he screamed, "Smeeee!"
Smee lunged, jammed his finger between the cap and hammer as the trigger released, and yelled in pain. Hook hissed in response, pried the offending finger loose, and jammed the barrel of the pistol into Smee's nose. Smee grabbed the gun with both hands, trying to turn the barrel away. Around and around they danced, grappling with the pistol and each other.
"I want to die!" howled Hook. "There's no more adventure in Neverland! I've been cursed with a fat Pan! Death is all that remains for me!"
"Cap'n, that's not the answer, Cap'n," Smee huffed into the pistol barrel.
They careened into the dinner table and toppled onto it. The table held them for only an instant, then collapsed, wood splinters flying everywhere. Hook's pistol discharged with a deafening roar. Smee, fortunately, had moved the barrel off his nose. The pistol ball whistled past his ear, struck the replica of the Jolly Roger at anchor, and sank her on the spot. Hook and Smee stared in shock as the tiny ship disappeared in a cloud of bubbles. They faced each other, still locked together in a tangle of arms and legs, panting from their struggle.
"Even this," whispered Hook, "isn't as much fun as it used to be."
He disengaged himself, rose, brushed away the crumbs and smoothed the wrinkles from his coat, straightened his mustaches, righted his chair, seated himself, and began the painstaking process of reloading the pistol.
Smee rolled back his eyes, exhaled wearily, and followed his captain up from the floor. There was crumb cake in his beard and jam on the end of his nose. When the reloading process was complete, Smee reached over quickly-trying not to appear too anxious-and extracted the weapon from the captain's hand. Patting the other solicitously, he placed the pistol in the drawer of the Queen Anne bureau and locked it safely away.
"There now, Cap'n," he said soothingly. "Things will look better in the mawnin'. Let's get you off to sleep. Smee will tuck you in. That's a good cap'n. You know you look a Marley poop without your proper rest."
Hook looked up gratefully, the weariness apparent in his eyes. Smee moved to a large wooden crank set in the wall and began to turn. Slowly Hook's bed lowered out of the ceiling, settling in place finally over the map of Neverland.
Smee crossed back again. "Now, I ask you," he posited. "What kind of world would it be without Captain Hook? Aye?"
He led Hook across the room like a small child and sat him down on the edge of the bed.
"Good form, Smee," Hook announced softly, something vaguely akin to gratitude in his eyes. "What would the world be like without Captain Hook?"
And overcome by a sudden rush of emotions, he clasped Smee to him, hugging him as he would a long-lost friend- had he any.
Smee disengaged himself carefully, one eye on Hook's claw. "Cap'n, methinks you need a little mischief to take yer mind off this Pan business."
Nose to nose, they stared at each other. Smee reached up to lift off Hook's tricorne, then bent down to pull off his boots. Hook lost almost a foot of height in the bargain.
"First thing tomorrow mawnin' let's you and me go shoot some Lost Boys out of Long Tom. That should do the trick."
Long Tom was the monstrous cannon mounted on the aft deck. It was Hook's favorite weapon. Hook thought it over for a moment, then shook is head dejectedly.
"We can always kill Lost Boys," he whined. "I don't want to kill Lost Boys. I want to kill Pan!"
Smee worked the buttons loose on the captain's coat and slipped the garment from his shoulders. Within was a framework of padding designed to make the captain appear twice his real size, brawny and tough. Bereft of it as he was now, sitting hunched over on the bed, he looked very small indeed.
"Don't torture yourself, Cap'n," Smee went on, oblivious of what he had seen countless times before. "It doesn't do a skewer's worth of good. Besides, you can't let the men see you this way, now, can you?" He paused in his endeavors. "Lookit the bright side, Cap'n. You still get to deep-six his ruddy curtain climbers."
Hook shook his ebony locks, so that they swished like snakes. "Oh, Smee, terribly bad form. Terribly bad. To kill the defenseless children of a defenseless foe? I should think you would know better."
Smee shrugged, bent close, and began pulling off Hook's bushy eyebrows.
"Gently, gently," Hook admonished.
' 'Quickly,'' Smee replied, and yanked them free.' 'Better a sharp stab than a lingrin' pain, you always say."
Hook grimaced. "Don't quote me, Smee." He rubbed the nearly hairless patches of skin that remained. "Oh, I wish I could devise the most lingering of pains for Peter Pan!"
Smee considered the prospect as he lifted Hook's wig from his head. Hook was almost bald beneath. Sitting there bereft of his hat, hair, eyebrows, padded coat, and boots, he had the look of a frail, wizened Lost Boy. Smee gathered up the captain's discarded clothing and carried it behind the dressing screen at the far end of the room.
Suddenly he stopped dead, his shadow behind the screen straightening. "Sir! Lightnin' just struck me brains! Cap'n, you could make the little buggers like-no, mo'rn like-you could make 'em love you! Love you like, like…" Here, words failed him.
Hook buried his head in his hands, dejected anew. "No, no, Smee. No little children love me."
He peeked through his fingers at the screen concealing Smee, reached surreptitiously beneath the pillow on his bed, and removed a small key. Slipping the key into the bureau lock, he turned it, pulled open the drawer, and removed his pistol. Hand on the butt, hammer cocked once more, he placed the barrel to his heart.