Chapter 10: The Happy Home

After Peter saves Tiger Lily’s life, the redskins unite with the lost boys. The redskins begin to refer to Peter as “Peter the Great White Father,” and Peter relishes their admiration of him. Together, the groups are awaiting the pirates’ inevitable attack. Wendy has grown frustrated with the lost boys and their mischievous behavior; however, because the boys respect her as their mother, they follow her rules. After Wendy refers to Peter as “father,” the boys have a discussion about who should be father; this boils over into an argument, with the boys complaining about each other.

Peter and Wendy continue to embrace their roles as parents to the boys, and the two pretend to be an old married couple. Nevertheless, Peter expresses concern about being a father, because that would make him a man, though Wendy assures him it is make-believe. Wendy then asks him about his feelings toward her, and she is offended when he tells her, “those of a devoted son.” She insinuates to Peter that she has romantic feelings toward him, but Peter does not seem to understand, and Wendy snaps at him after Peter suggests that Tinker Bell could be his mother. Before the chapter ends, Peter surprisingly decides to sit and listen to a story of Wendy’s that he usually refuses to listen to. 

Chapter 11: Wendy’s Story

Wendy begins telling the boys her story, which turns out to be about her parents. She tells them how the Darlings had three children, and after Mr. Darling tied Nana up outside, “all the children flew away . . . to the Neverland, where the lost children are.” As the story progresses, she tells them how “our heroine” knew that Mrs. Darling would leave the window open until the children returned. When the boys implore Wendy to tell them whether the children ever do come home, she jumps forward in time. In the story, Wendy and her brothers are in London, discovering the window to their nursery still open; they fly in and reunite with their parents.

As the story ends, Peter’s negative reaction to the story is evident, and he tells Wendy that she is wrong about mothers. He reveals that his own mother never left the window open for him, and when he flew back “moons and moons later,” she had another son.

John, Michael, and Wendy decide that they need to go home, and Wendy is taken aback by Peter’s cold response to this decision. The lost boys then turn on Wendy, but Tootles warns that he will kill anyone who “does not behave to Wendy like an English gentleman.” The other boys comply, knowing that Peter would never keep a girl hostage.

Afterward, Peter tells Wendy that the redskins will lead her through the woods and that Tinker Bell will lead her across the sea. The boys are sad to see their mother go, which prompts Wendy to suggest—hoping Peter will accept—that the boys come with her and her brother back to London, feeling confident that her parents would adopt all of them. When the boys ask Peter if they can go, he obliges, but soon after, he tells Wendy that he will not be going with them and feigns indifference toward their impending departure. Wendy says that he can perhaps find his mother, but Peter resists, still believing that he does not need one. Peter hastily says goodbye, commanding Tinker Bell to lead the way; however, before the group takes off, they learn that the pirates have attacked the redskins. Knowing a battle is coming, they anxiously look to Peter to protect them.

Chapter 12: The Children Are Carried Off

The narrator explains how, by attacking the redskins first, the pirates violated the “unwritten laws of savage warfare.” Hook and the other pirates set foot on their land, to the surprise of the redskins, who anticipate deadly results from the pirates’ attack. Hook relentlessly carries out the attack, and “because the noble savage must never express surprise in the presence of a white,” the redskins wait too long to retaliate, resulting in a massacre with many deaths on both sides.

Afterwards, Hook is still unsatisfied, because more than anything, he wants to defeat Peter Pan. The narrator explains that, above all, Hook obsessively despises Peter for his cockiness and that “while Peter lived, the tortured man felt that he was a lion in a cage into which a sparrow had come.”

The pirates, now eavesdropping on the boys from the trees, hear Peter say that the redskins would have beaten their tom-toms if they had won the battle. Hook then commands Smee to beat the tom-tom, deceiving the children into believing that the redskins won. While the lost boys continue saying goodbye to Peter, the pirates wait in the trees to attack, eagerly awaiting the opportunity to capture Peter.