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] . I have often noticed your strange dread of crocodiles.

(pettishly). Not of crocodiles but of that one crocodile. (He lays bare a lacerated heart.) The brute liked my arm so much, Smee, that he has followed me ever since, from sea to sea, and from land to land, licking his lips for the rest of me.

(looking for the bright side). In a way it is a sort of compliment.

(with dignity). I want no such compliments; I want Peter Pan, who first gave the brute his taste for me. Smee, that crocodile would have had me before now, but by a lucky chance he swallowed a clock, and it goes tick, tick, tick, tick inside him; and so before he can reach me I hear the tick and bolt. (He emits a hollow rumble.) Once I heard it strike six within him.

(sombrely). Some day the clock will run down, and then he’ll get you.

(a broken man). Ay, that is the fear that haunts me. (He rises.) Smee, this seat is hot; odds, bobs, hammer and tongs, I am burning.

(He has been sitting, he thinks, on one of the