"Well," I said, pausing to consider it. "I'm not so sure anymore. When Peter took me from London, it was a very long time ago, and I was only eight years old. I think I might be around fifteen or sixteen now, but I spent much more than eight years on his Island. It was... I'm not sure exactly. Probably closer to thirty or forty years."

But I wasn't thirty or forty years old. I was pretty clearly around sixteen. Just as I had pretty clearly been somewhere around twelve in the months before coming to Darrow, and eight for years before that.

"But the more I started to realize how cruel Peter was, how little he truly cared for his boys, the more I started to grow up," I continued. "I think I might have grown up all the way if I had stayed there instead of coming here and I think if I did that I would have had to go join the pirates." There was nowhere else for a man on Peter's Island. And there was no way to get back home.