Page:The Story of Peter Pan.djvu/57

Rh crocodile was asleep, and with that and a swift ship he had managed so far to escape. It was an awful life!

Fortunately for Hook, the crocodile had once, in an ill-advised moment, swallowed an alarum clock (one of those patent ninety-nine-years clocks, warranted to go any time, anywhere and anyhow). Go it did, and it ticked so loudly that the Captain could always hear it coming, and it was the signal for him to bolt!

Hook sat down on one of the enormous forest mushrooms (in the Never-Never-Never Land mushrooms grow to a gigantic size) to deliberate about his mode of revenge. He was in the middle of a torrent of braggings and boastings when he felt his seat getting not only warm, but much too warm, and little wonder in that, for when he furiously leapt up he found that he had really been sitting on a chimney of the underground home which Peter had cleverly disguised.