in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last
steep of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed
the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with
triumphant pleasure, so that immediately Ralph had to stand on his head.
Below them, boys were still laboring, though some of the small ones had lost
interest and were searching this new forest for fruit. Now the twins, with
unsuspected intelligence, came up the mountain with armfuls of dried leaves
and dumped them against the pile. One by one, as they sensed that the pile
was complete, the boys stopped going back for more and stood, with the pink,
shattered top of the mountain around them. Breath came evenly by now, and
sweat dried.
Ralph and Jack looked at each other while society paused about them.
The shameful knowledge grew in them and they did not know how to begin
confession.
Ralph spoke first, crimson in the face.
"Will your?"
He cleared his throat and went on.
"Will you light the fire?"
Now the absurd situation was open, Jack blushed too. He began to mutter
vaguely.
"You rub two sticks. You rub-"
He glanced at Ralph, who blurted out the last confession of
incompetence. "Has anyone got any matches?"
"You make a bow and spin the arrow," said Roger. He rubbed his hands in
mime. "Psss. Psss."
A little air was moving over the mountain. Piggy came with it, in
shorts and shirt, laboring cautiously out of the forest with the evening
sunlight gleaming from his glasses. He held the conch under his arm.
Ralph shouted at him.
"Piggy! Have you got any matches?"
The other boys took up the cry till the mountain rang. Piggy shook his
head and came to the pile.
"My! You've made a big heap, haven't you?"
Jack pointed suddenly.
"His specs-use them as burning glasses!"
Piggy was surrounded before he could back away.
"Here-let me go!" His voice rose to a shriek of terror as Jack snatched
toe glasses off his face. "Mind out! Give'em back! I can hardly see! You'll
break the conch!"
Ralph elbowed him to one side and knelt by the pile.
"Stand out of the light."
There was pushing and pulling and officious cries. Ralph moved the
lenses back and forth, this way and that, till a glossy white image of the
declining sun lay on a piece of rotten wood. Almost at once a thin trickle
of smoke rose up and made him cough. Jack knelt too and blew gently, so that
the smoke drifted away, thickening, and a tiny name appeared. The flame,
nearly invisible at first in that bright sunlight, enveloped a small twig,
grew, was enriched with color and reached up to a branch which exploded with
a sharp crack. The flame flapped higher and the boys broke into a cheer.
"My specs!" howled Piggy. "Give me my specs!"
Ralph stood away from the pile and put the glasses into Piggy s groping
hands. His voice subsided to a mutter.
"Jus` blurs, that's all. Hardly see my hand-"
The boys were dancing. The pile was so rotten, and now so tinder-dry,
that whole limbs yielded passionately to the yellow flames that poured
upwards and shook a great beard of flame twenty feet in the air. For yards
round the fire the heat was like a blow, and the breeze was a river of
sparks. Trunks crumbled to white dust.
Ralph shouted.
"More wood! All of you get more wood!"
Life became a race with the fire and the boys scattered through the
upper forest. To keep a clean flag of flame flying on the mountain was the
immediate end and no one looked further. Even the smallest boys, unless
fruit claimed them, brought little pieces of wood and threw them in. The air
moved a little faster and became a light wind, so that leeward and windward
side were clearly differentiated. On one side the air was cool, but on the
other the fire thrust out a savage arm of heat that crinkled hair on the
instant. Boys who felt the evening wind on their damp faces paused to enjoy
the freshness of it and then found they were exhausted. They flung
themselves down in the shadows that lay among die shattered rocks. The beard
of flame diminished quickly; then the pile fell inwards with a soft, cindery
sound, and sent a great tree of sparks upwards that leaned away and drifted
downwind. The boys lay, panting like dogs.
Ralph raised his head off his forearms.
"That was no good."
Roger spat efficiently into the hot dust.
"What d'you mean?"
"There wasn't any smoke. Only flame."
Piggy had settled himself in a space between two rocks, and sat with
the conch on his knees.
"We haven't made a fire," he said, "what's any use. We couldn't keep a
fire like that going, not if we tried.'
"A fat lot you tried," said Jack contemptuously. "You just sat."
"We used his specs," said Simon, smearing a black cheek with his
forearm. He helped that way."
"I got the conch," said Piggy indignantly. "You let me speak!"
"The conch doesn't count on top of the mountain," said Jack, "so you
shut up."
"I got the conch in my hand."
"Put on green branches," said Maurice. "That's the best way to make
smoke."
"I got the conch-"
Jack turned fiercely. "You shut up!"
Piggy wilted. Ralph took the conch from him and looked round the circle
of boys.
"We've got to have special people for looking after the fire. Any day
there may be a ship out there"-he waved his arm at the taut wire of the
horizon-"and if we have a signal going they'll come and take us off. And
another thing. We ought to have more rules. Where the conch is, that's a
meeting. The same up here as down there."
They assented. Piggy opened his mouth to speak, caught Jack's eye and
shut it again. Jack held out his hands for the conch and stood up, holding
the delicate thing carefully in his sooty hands.
"I agree with Ralph. We've got to have rules and obey them. After all,
we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything. So
we've got to do the right things."
He turned to Ralph.
"Ralph, I'll split up the choir-my hunters, that is-into groups, and
we'll be responsible for keeping the fire going-"
This generosity brought a spatter of applause from the boys, so that
Jack grinned at them, then waved the conch for silence.
"We'll let the fire burn out now. Who would see smoke at night-time,
anyway? And we can start the fire again whenever we like. Altos, you can
keep the fire going this week, and trebles the next-"
The assembly assented gravely.
"And we'll be responsible for keeping a lookout too. If we see a ship
out there"-they followed the direction of his bony arm with their
eyes-"we'll put green branches on. Then there'll be more smoke."
They gazed intently at the dense blue of the horizon, as if a little
silhouette might appear there at any moment.
The sun in the west was a drop of burning gold that slid nearer and
nearer the sill of the world. All at once they were aware of the evening as
the end of light and warmth.
Roger took the conch and looked round at them gloomily.
"I've been watching the sea. There hasn't been the trace of a ship.
Perhaps we'll never be rescued."
A murmur rose and swept away. Ralph took back the conch.
"I said before we'll be rescued sometime. We've just got to wait,
that's all."
Daring, indignant, Piggy took the conch.
"That's what I said! I said about our meetings and things and then you
said shut up-"
His voice lifted into the whine of virtuous recrimination. They stirred
and began to shout him down.
"You said you wanted a small fire and you been and built a pile like a
hayrick. If I say anything,' cried Piggy, with bitter realism, "you say shut
up; but if Jack or Maurice or Simon-"
He paused in the tumult, standing, looking beyond them and down the
unfriendly side of the mountain to the great patch where they had found dead
wood. Then he laughed so strangely that they were hushed, looking at the
flash of his spectacles in astonishment. They followed his gaze to find the
sour joke.
"You got your small fire all right."
Smoke was rising here and there among the creepers that festooned the
dead or dying trees. As they watched, a flash of fire appeared at the root
of one wisp, and then the smoke thickened. Small flames stirred at the trunk
of a tree and crawled away through leaves and brushwood, dividing and
increasing. One paten touched a tree trunk and scrambled up like a bright
squirrel. The smoke increased, sifted, rolled outwards. The squirrel leapt
on the wings of the wind and clung to another standing tree, eating
downwards. Beneath the dark canopy of leaves and smoke the fire laid hold on
the forest and began to gnaw. Acres of black and yellow smoke rolled
steadily toward the sea. At the sight of the flames and the irresistible
course of the fire, the boys broke into shrill, excited cheering. The
flames, as though they were a kind of wild life, crept as a jaguar creeps on
its belly toward a line of birch-like saplings that fledged an outcrop of
the pink rock. They flapped at the first of the trees, and the branches grew
a brief foliage of fire. The heart of flame leapt nimbly across the gap
between the trees and then went swinging and flaring along the whole row of
them. Beneath the capering boys a quarter of a mile square of forest was
savage with smoke and flame. The separate noises of the fire merged into a
drum-roll that seemed to shake the mountain.
"You got your small fire all right"
Startled, Ralph realized that the boys were falling still and silent,
feeling the beginnings of awe at the power set free below them. The
knowledge and the awe made him savage.
"Oh, shut up!"
"I got the conch," said Piggy, in a hurt voice. "I got a right to
speak."
They looked at him with eyes that lacked interest in what they saw, and
cocked ears at the drum-roll of the fire. Piggy glanced nervously into hell
and cradled the conch.
"We got to let that burn out now. And that was our firewood."
He licked his lips.
There ain't nothing we can do. We ought to be more careful. I'm
scared-"
Jack dragged his eyes away from the fire. You're always scared.
Yah-Fatty!"
"I got the conch," said Piggy bleakly. He turned to Ralph. "I got the
conch, ain't I Ralph?"
Unwillingly Ralph turned away from the splendid, awful sight
"What's that?"
"The conch. I got a right to speak."
The twins giggled together.
"We wanted smoke-"
"Now look-!"
A pall stretched for miles away from the island. All the boys except
Piggy started to giggle; presently they were shrieking with laughter.
Piggy lost his temper.
"I got the conch! Just you listen! The first thing we ought to have
made was shelters down there by the beach. It wasn't half cold down there in
the night. But the first time Ralph says 'fire' you goes howling and
screaming up this here mountain. Like a pack of kids!"
By now they were listening to the tirade.
"How can you expect to be rescued if you don't put first things first
and act proper?"
He took off his glasses and made as if to put down the conch; but the
sudden motion toward it of most of the older boys changed his mind. He
tucked the shell under his arm, and crouched back on a rock.
"Then when you get here you build a bonfire that isn't no use. Now you
been and set the whole island on fire. Won't we look funny if the whole
island burns up? Cooked fruit, that's what we'll have to eat, and roast
pork. And that's nothing to laugh at! You said Ralph was chief and you don't
give him time to think. Then when he says something you rush off, like,
like-"
He paused for breath, and the fire growled at them.
"And that's not all. Them kids. The little 'uns. Who took any notice of
'em? Who knows how many we got?"
Ralph took a sudden step forward.
"I told you to. I told you to get a list of names!"
"How could I," cried Piggy indignantly, "all by myself? They waited for
two minutes, then they fell in the sea; they went into the forest; they just
scattered everywhere. How was I to know which was which?"
Ralph licked pale lips.
Then you don't know how many of us there ought to be?"
"How could I with them little 'uns running round like insects? Then
when you three came back, as soon as you said make a fire, they all ran
away, and I never had a chance-"
"That's enough!" said Ralph sharply, and snatched back the conch. "If
you didn't you didn't."
"-then you come up here an' pinch my specs-"
Jack turned on him.
"You shut up!"
"-and them little 'uns was wandering about down there where the fire
is. How d'you know they aren't still there?"
Piggy stood up and pointed to the smoke and flames. A murmur rose among
the boys and died away. Something strange was happening to Piggy, for he was
gasping for breath.
That little 'un-" gasped Piggy-"him with the mark on his face, I don't
see him. Where is he now?"
The crowd was as silent as death.
"Him that talked about the snakes. He was down there-"
A tree exploded in the fire like a bomb. Tall swathes of creepers rose
for a moment into view, agonized, and went down again. The little boys
screamed at them.
"Snakes! Snakes! Look at the snakes!"
In the west, and unheeded, the sun lay only an inch or two above the
sea. Their faces were lit redly from beneath. Piggy fell against a rock and
clutched it with both hands.
"That little 'un that had a mark on his face-where is -he now? I tell
you I don't see him."
The boys looked at each other fearfully, unbelieving.
"-where is he now?"
Ralph muttered the reply as if in shame.
"Perhaps he went back to the, the-"
Beneath them, on the unfriendly side of the mountain, the drum-roll
continued.
CHAPTER THREE
Huts on the Beach
Jack was bent double. He was down like a sprinter, his nose only a few
inches from the humid earth. The tree trunks and the creepers that festooned
them lost themselves in a green dusk thirty feet above him, and all about
was the undergrowth. There was only the faintest indication of a trail here;
a cracked twig and what might be the impression of one side of a hoof. He
lowered his chin and stared at the traces as though he would force them to
speak to him. Then dog-like, uncomfortably on all fours yet unheeding his
discomfort, he stole forward five yards and stopped. Here was loop of
creeper with a tendril pendant from a node. The tendril was polished on the
underside; pigs, passing through the loop, brushed it with their bristly
hide.
Jack crouched with his face a few inches away from this clue, then
stared forward into the semi-darkness of the undergrowth. His sandy hair,
considerably longer than it had been when they dropped in, was lighter now;
and his bare back was a mass of dark freckles and peeling sunburn. A
sharpened stick about five feet long trailed from his right hand, and except
for a pair of tattered shorts held up by his knife-belt he was naked. He
closed his eyes, raised his head and breathed in gently with flared
nostrils, assessing the current of warm air for information. The forest and
he were very still.
At length he let out his breath in a long sigh and opened his eyes.
They were bright blue, eyes that in this frustration seemed bolting and
nearly mad. He passed his tongue across dry lips and scanned the
uncommunicative forest Then again he stole forward and cast this way and
that over the ground.
The silence of the forest was more oppressive than the heat, and at
this hour of the day there was not even the whine of insects. Only when Jack
himself roused a gaudy bird from a primitive nest of sticks was the silence
shattered and echoes set ringing by a harsh cry that seemed to come out of
the abyss of ages. Jack himself shrank at this cry with a hiss of indrawn
breath, and for a minute became less a hunter than a furtive thing, ape-like
among the tangle of trees. Then the trail, the frustration, claimed' him
again and he searched the ground avidly. By the trunk of a vast tree that
grew pale flowers on its grey bark he checked, closed his eyes, and once
more drew in the warm air; and this time his breath came short, there was
even a passing pallor in his face, and then the surge of blood again. He
passed like a shadow under the darkness of the tree and crouched, looking
down at the trodden ground at his feet.
The droppings were warm. They lay piled among turned earth. They were
olive green, smooth, and they steamed a little. Jack lifted his head and
stared at the inscrutable masses of creeper that lay across the trail. Then
he raised his spear and sneaked forward. Beyond the creeper, the trail
joined a pig-run that was wide enough and trodden enough to be a path. The
ground was hardened by an accustomed tread and as Jack rose to his full
height he heard something moving on it. He swung back his right arm and
hurled the spear with all his strength. From the pig-run came the quick,
hard patter of hoofs, a castanet sound, seductive, maddening-the promise of
meat. He rushed out of the undergrowth and snatched up his spear. The
pattering of pig's trotters died away in the distance.
Jack stood there, streaming with sweat, streaked with brown earth,
stained by all the vicissitudes of a day's hunting. Swearing, he turned off
the trail and pushed his way through until the forest opened a little and
instead of bald trunks supporting a dark roof there were light grey trunks
and crowns of feathery palm. Beyond these was the glitter of the sea and he
could hear voices. Ralph was standing by a contraption of palm trunks and
leaves, a rude shelter that faced the lagoon and seemed very near to falling
down. He did not notice when Jack spoke.
"Got any water?"
Ralph looked up, frowning, from the complication of leaves. He did not
notice Jack even when he saw him.
"I said have you got any water? I'm thirsty."
Ralph withdrew his attention from the shelter and realized Jack with a
start.
"Oh, hullo. Water? There by the tree. Ought to be some left."
Jack took up a coconut shell that brimmed with fresh water from among a
group that was arranged in the shade, and drank. The water splashed over his
chin and neck and chest. He breathed noisily when he had finished.
"Needed that."
Simon spoke from inside the shelter.
"Up a bit."
Ralph turned to the shelter and lifted a branch with a whole tiling of
leaves.
The leaves came apart and fluttered down. Simon's contrite face
appeared in the hole.
"Sorry."
Ralph surveyed the wreck with distaste.
"Never get it done."
He flung himself down at Jack's feet Simon remained, looking out of the
hole in the shelter. Once down, Ralph explained.
"Been working for days now. And look!"
Two shelters were in position, but shaky. This one was a ruin.
"And they keep running off. You remember the meeting? How everyone was
going to work hard until the shelters were finished?"
"Except me and my hunters-"
"Except the hunters. Well, the littluns are-"
He gesticulated, sought for a word.
"They're hopeless. The older ones aren't much better. D'you see? All
day I've been working with Simon. No one else. They're off bathing, or
eating, or playing."
Simon poked his head out carefully.
"You're chief. You tell 'em off."
Ralph lay flat and looked up at the palm trees and the sky.
"Meetings. Don't we love meetings? Every day. Twice a day. We talk." He
got on one elbow. "I bet if I blew the conch this minute, they'd come
running. Then we'd be, you know, very solemn, and someone would say we ought
to build a jet, or a submarine, or a TV set. When the meeting was over
they'd work for five minutes, then wander off or go hunting."
Jack flushed.
"We want meat."
"Well, we haven't got any yet. And we want shelters. Besides, the rest
of your hunters came back hours ago. They've been swimming."
"I went on," said Jack. "I let them go. I had to go on. I-"
He tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was
swallowing him up.
"I went on. I thought, by myself-"
The madness came into his eyes again.
"I thought I might loll."
"But you didn't."
"I thought I might."
Some hidden passion vibrated in Ralph's voice.
"But you haven't yet."
His invitation might have passed as casual, were it not for the
undertone.
"You wouldn't care to help with the shelters, I suppose?"
"We want meat-"
"And we don't get it."
Now the antagonism was audible.
"But I shall! Next time! I've got to get a barb on this spear! We
wounded a pig and the spear fell out. If we could only make barbs-"
"We need shelters."
Suddenly Jack shouted in rage.
"Are you accusing-?"
"All I'm saying is we've worked dashed hard. That's all."
They were both red in the face and found looking at each other
difficult. Ralph rolled on his stomach and began to play with the grass.
"If it rains like when we dropped in well need shelters all right. And
then another thing. We need shelters because of the-"
He paused for a moment and they both pushed their anger away. Then he
went on with the safe, changed subject.
"You've noticed, haven't you?"
Jack put down his spear and squatted.
'Noticed what?"
"Well. They're frightened."
He rolled over and peered into Jack's fierce, dirty face.
"I mean the way things are. They dream. You can hear 'em. Have you been
awake at night?"
Jack shook his head.
"They talk and scream. The littluns. Even some of the others. As if-"
"As if it wasn't a good island." .
Astonished at the interruption, they looked up at Simon's serious face.
"As if," said Simon, "the beastie, the beastie or the snake-thing, was
real. Remember?"
The two older boys flinched when they heard the shameful syllable.
Snakes were not mentioned now, were not mentionable.
"As if this wasn't a good island," said Ralph slowly. "Yes, that's
right."
Jack sat up and stretched out his legs.
"Crackers. Remember when we went exploring?"
They grinned at each other, remembering the glamour of the first day.
Ralph went on.
"So we need shelters as a sort of-"
"Home."
"That's right."
Jack drew up his legs, clasped his knees, and frowned in an effort to
attain clarity.
"All the same-in the forest. I mean when you're hunting, not when
you're getting fruit, of course, but when you're on your own-"
He paused for a moment, not sure if Ralph would take him seriously.
"Go on."
"If you're hunting sometimes you catch yourself feeling as if-" He
flushed suddenly. "There's nothing in it of course. Just a feeling. But you
can feel as if you're not hunting, but-being hunted, as if something's
behind you all the time in the jungle."
They were silent again: Simon intent, Ralph incredulous and faintly
indignant. He sat up, rubbing one shoulder with a dirty hand.
"Well, I don't know."
Jack leapt to his feet and spoke very quickly.
"That's how you can feel in the forest. Of course there's nothing in
it. Only-only-"
He took a few rapid steps toward the beach, then came back.
"Only I know how they feel. See? That's all."
"The best thing we can do is get ourselves rescued."
Jack had to think for a moment before he could remember what rescue
was.
"Rescue? Yes, of course! All the same, I'd like to catch a pig first-"
He snatched up his spear and dashed it into the: ground. The opaque, mad
look came into his eyes again. Ralph looked at him critically through his
tangle of fair hair.
"So long as your hunters remember the fire-"
"You and your fire-"
The two boys trotted down the beach, and, turning at the water's edge,
looked back at the pink mountain. The trickle of smoke sketched a chalky
line up the solid blue of the sky, wavered high up and faded. Ralph frowned.
"I wonder how far off you could see that"
"Miles."
"We don't make enough smoke."
The bottom part of the trickle, as though conscious of their gaze,
thickened to a creamy blur which crept up the feeble column.
"They've put on green branches," muttered Ralph. "I wonder!" He screwed
up his eyes and swung round to search the horizon."
"Got it!"
Jack shouted so loudly that Ralph jumped.
"What? Where? Is it a ship?"
But Jack was pointing to the high declivities that led down from the
mountain to the flatter part of the island.
"Of course! They'll Be up there-they must, when the sun's too hot-"
Ralph gazed bewildered at his rapt face.
"-they get up high. High up and in the shade, resting during the heat,
like cows at home-"
"I thought you saw a ship!"
"We could steal up on one-paint our faces so they wouldn't see-perhaps
surround them and then-"
Indignation took away Ralph's control.
"I was talking about smoke! Don't you want to be rescued? All you can
talk about is pig, pig, pig!"
"But we want meat!"
"And I work all day with nothing but Simon and you come back and don't
even notice the huts!"
"I was working too-"
"But you like it!" shouted Ralph. "You want to hunt! While I-"
They faced each other on the bright beach, astonished at the rub of
feeling. Ralph looked away first, pretending interest in a group of littluns
on the sand. From beyond the platform came the shouting of the hunters in
the swimming pool. On the end of the platform Piggy was lying flat, looking
down into the brilliant water.
"People don't help much."
He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they
were.
"Simon. He helps." He pointed at the shelters.
"All the rest rushed off. He's done as much as I have. Only-"
"Simon's always about."
Ralph started back to the shelters with Jack by his side.
"Do a bit for you," muttered Jack, "before I have a bathe."
"Don't bother."
But when they reached the shelters Simon was not to be seen. Ralph put
his head in the hole, withdrew it, and turned to Jack.
"He's buzzed off."
"Got fed up," said Jack, "and gone for a bathe."
Ralph frowned.
"He's queer. He's funny."
Jack nodded, as much for the sake of agreeing as anything, and by tacit
consent they left the shelter and went toward the bathing pool.
"And then," said Jack, "when I've had a bathe and something to eat,
I'll just trek over to the other side of the mountain and see if I can see
any traces. Coming?"
"But the sun's nearly set!"
"I might have time-"
They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling, unable to
communicate.
"If I could only get a pig!"
"I'll come back and go on with the shelter."
They looked at each other, baffled, in love and hate. All the warm salt
water of the bathing pool and the shouting and splashing and laughing were
only just sufficient to bring them together again.
Simon was not in the bathing pool as they had expected.
When the other two had trotted down the beach to look back at the
mountain he had followed them for a few yards and then stopped. He had stood
frowning down at a pile of sand on the beach where somebody had been trying
to build a little house or hut Then he turned his back on this and walked
into the forest with an air of purpose. He was a small, skinny boy, his chin
pointed, and his eyes so bright they had deceived Ralph into thinking him
delightfully gay and wicked. The coarse mop of black hair was long and swung
down, almost concealing a low, broad forehead. He wore the remains of shorts
and his feet were bare like Jack's. Always darkish in color, Simon was
burned by the sun to a deep tan that glistened with sweat.
He picked his way up the scar, passed the great rock where Ralph had
climbed on the first morning, then turned off to his right among the trees.
He walked with an accustomed tread through the acres of fruit trees, where
the least energetic could find an easy if unsatisfying meal. Flower and
fruit grew together on the same tree and everywhere was the scent of
ripeness and the booming of a million bees at pasture. Here the littlums who
had run after him caught up with him. They talked, cried out unintelligibly,
lugged him toward the trees. Then, amid the roar of bees in the afternoon
sunlight, Simon found for them the fruit they could not reach, pulled off
the choicest from up in the foliage, passed them back down to the endless,
outstretched hands. When he had satisfied them he paused and looked round.
The littluns watched him inscrutably over double handfuls of ripe fruit.
Simon turned away from them and went where the just perceptible path
led him. Soon high jungle closed in. Tall trunks bore unexpected pale
flowers all the way up to the dark canopy where life went on clamorously.
The air here was dark too, and the creepers dropped their ropes like the
rigging of foundered ships. His feet left prints in the soft soil and the
creepers shivered throughout their lengths when he bumped them.
He came at last to a place where more sunshine fell. Since they had not
so far to go for light the creepers had woven a great mat that hung at the
side of an open space in the jungle; for here a patch of rock came close to
the surface and would not allow more than little plants and ferns to grow.
The whole space was walled with dark aromatic bushes, and was a bowl of heat
and light. A great tree, fallen across one comer, leaned against the trees
that still stood arid a rapid climber flaunted red and yellow sprays right
to the top.
Simon paused. He looked over his shoulder as Jack had done at the close
ways behind him and glanced swiftly round to confirm that he was utterly
alone. For a moment his movements were almost furtive. Then he bent down and
wormed his way into the center of the mat. The creepers and the bushes were
so close that he left his sweat on them and they pulled together behind him.
When he was secure in the middle he was in a little cabin screened off from
the open space by a few leaves. He squatted down, parted the leaves arid
looked out into the clearing. Nothing moved but a pair of gaudy butterflies
that danced round each other in the hot air. Holding his breath he cocked a
critical ear at the sounds of the island. Evening was advancing toward the
island; the sounds of the bright fantastic birds, the bee-sounds, even the
crying of the gulls that were returning to their roosts among the square
rocks, were fainter. The deep sea breaking miles away on the reef made an
undertone less perceptible than the susurration of the blood.
Simon dropped the screen of leaves back into place. The slope of the
bars of honey-colored sunlight decreased; they slid up the bushes, passed
over the green candle-like buds, moved up toward tile canopy, and darkness
thickened under the trees. With the fading of the light the riotous colors
died and the heat and urgency cooled away. The candle-buds stirred. Their
green sepals drew back a little and the white tips of the flowers rose
delicately to meet the open air.
Now the sunlight had lifted clear of the open space and withdrawn from
the sky. Darkness poured out, submerging the ways between the trees tin they
were dim and strange as the bottom of the sea. The candle-buds opened their
wide white flowers glimmering under the light that pricked down from the
first stars. Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the
island.
CHAPTER FOUR
Painted Faces and Long Hair
The first rhythm that they became used to was the slow swing from dawn
to quick dusk. They accepted the pleasures of morning, the bright sun, the
whelming sea and sweet air, as a time when play was good and life so full
that hope was not necessary and therefore forgotten. Toward noon, as the
floods of light fell more nearly to the perpendicular, the stark colors of
the morning were smoothed in pearl and opalescence; and the heat-as though
the impending sun's height gave it momentum- became a blow that they ducked,
running to the shade and lying there, perhaps even sleeping.
Strange things happened at midday. The glittering sea rose up, moved
apart in planes of blatant impossibility; the coral reef and the few stunted
palms that clung to the more elevated parts would float up into the sky,
would quiver, be plucked apart, run like raindrops on a wire or be repeated
as in an odd succession of mirrors. Sometimes land loomed where there was no
land and flicked out like a bubble as the children watched. Piggy discounted
all this learnedly as a "mirage"; and since no boy could reach even the reef
over the stretch of water where the snapping sharks waited, they grew
accustomed to these mysteries and ignored them, just as they ignored the
miraculous, throbbing stars. At midday the illusions merged into the sky and
there the sun gazed down like an angry eye. Then, at the end of the
afternoon, the mirage subsided and the horizon became level and blue and
clipped as the sun declined. That was another time of comparative coolness
but menaced by the coming of the dark. When the sun sank, darkness dropped
on the island like an extinguisher and soon the shelters were full of
restlessness, under the remote stars.
Nevertheless, the northern European tradition of work, play, and food
right through the day, made it impossible for them to adjust themselves
wholly to this new rhythm. The littlun Percival had early crawled into a
shelter and stayed there for two days, talking, singing, and crying, till
they thought him batty and were faintly amused. Ever since then he had been
peaked, red-eyed, and miserable; a littlun who played little and cried
often.
The smaller boys were known now by the generic title of "littluns." The
decrease in size, from Ralph down, was gradual; and though there was a
dubious region inhabited by Simon and Robert and Maurice, nevertheless no
one had any difficulty in recognizing biguns at one end and littluns at the
other. The undoubted littluns, those aged about six, led a quite distinct,
and at the same time intense, life of their own. They ate most of the day,
picking fruit where they could reach it and not particular about ripeness
and quality. They were used now to stomach-aches and a sort of chronic
diarrhoea. They suffered untold terrors in the dark and huddled together for
comfort. Apart from food and sleep, they found time for play, aimless and
trivial, in the white sand by the bright water. They cried for their mothers
much less often than might have been expected; they were very brown, and
filthily dirty. They obeyed the summons of the conch, partly because Ralph
blew it, and he was big enough to be a link with the adult world of
authority; and partly because they enjoyed the entertainment of the
assemblies. But otherwise they seldom bothered with the biguns and their
passionately emotional and corporate life was their own.
They had built castles in the sand at the bar of the little river.
These castles were about one foot high and were decorated with shells,
withered flowers, and interesting stones. Round the castles was a complex of
marks, tracks, walls, railway lines, that were of significance only if
inspected with the eye at beach-level. The littluns played here, if not
happily at least with absorbed attention; and often as many as three of them
would play the same game together.
Three were playing here now. Henry was the biggest of them. He was also
a distant relative of that other boy whose mulberry-marked face had not been
seen since the evening of the great fire; but he was not old enough to
understand this, and if he had been told that the other boy had gone home in
an aircraft, he would have accepted the statement without fuss or disbelief.
Henry was a bit of a leader this afternoon, because the other two were
Percival and Johnny, the smallest boys on the island. Percival was
mouse-colored and had not been very attractive even to his mother; Johnny
was well built, with fair hair and a natural belligerence. Just now he was
being obedient because he was interested; and the three children, kneeling
in the sand, were at peace.
Roger and Maurice came out of the forest. They were relieved from duty
at the fire and had come down for a swim. Roger led the way straight through
the castles, kicking them over, burying the flowers, scattering the chosen
stones. Maurice followed, laughing, and added to the destruction. The three
littluns paused in their game and looked up. As it happened, the particular
marks in which they were interested had not been touched, so they made no
protest. Only Percival began to whimper with an eyeful of sand and Maurice
hurried away. In his other life Maurice had received chastisement for
filling a younger eye with sand. Now, though there was no parent to let fall
a heavy hand, Maurice still felt the unease of wrongdoing. At the back of
his mind formed the uncertain outlines of an excuse. He muttered something
about a swim and broke into a trot.
Roger remained, watching the littluns. He was not noticeably darker
than when he had dropped in, but the shock of black hair, down his nape and
low on his forehead, seemed to suit his gloomy face and made what had seemed
at first an unsociable remoteness into something forbidding. Percival
finished his whimper and went on playing, for the tears had washed the sand
away. Johnny watched him with china-blue eyes; then began to fling up sand
in a shower, and presently Percival was crying again.
When Henry tired of his play and wandered off along the beach, Roger
followed him, keeping beneath the palms and drifting casually in the same
direction. Henry walked at a distance from the palms and the shade because
he was too young to keep himself out of the sun. He went down the beach and.
busied himself at the water's edge. The great Pacific tide was coming in and
every few seconds the relatively still water of the lagoon heaved forwards
an inch, There were creatures that lived in this last fling of the sea, tiny
transparencies that came questing in with the water over the hot, dry sand.
With impalpable organs of sense they examined this new field. Perhaps food
had appeared where at the last incursion there had been none; bird
droppings, insects perhaps, any of the strewn detritus of landward life.
Lake a myriad of tiny teeth in a saw, the transparencies came scavenging
over the beach.
This was fascinating to Henry. He poked about with a bit of stick, that
itself was wave-worn and whitened and a vagrant, and tried to control the
motions of the scavengers. He made little runnels that the tide filled and
tried to crowd them with creatures. He became absorbed beyond mere happiness
as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them,
urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became
bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery. He
squatted on his hams at the water's edge, bowed, with a shock of hair
falling over his forehead and past his eyes, and the afternoon sun emptied
down invisible arrows.
Roger waited too. At first he had hidden behind a great palm; but
Henry's absorption with the transparencies was so obvious that at last he
stood out in full view. He looked along the beach. Percival had gone off,
crying, and Johnny was left in triumphant possession of the castles. He sat
there, crooning to himself and throwing sand at an imaginary Percival.
Beyond him, Roger could see the platform and the glints of spray where Ralph
and Simon and Piggy and Maurice were diving in the pool. He listened
carefully but could only just hear them.
A sudden breeze shook the fringe of palm trees, so that the fronds
tossed and fluttered. Sixty feet above Roger, several nuts, fibrous lumps as
big as rugby balls, were loosed from their stems. They fell about him with a
series of hard thumps and he was not touched. Roger did not consider his
escape, but looked from the nuts to Henry and back again.
The subsoil beneath the palm trees was a raised beach, and generations
of palms had worked loose in this the stones that had lain on the sands of
another shore. Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed, and threw it at
Henry - threw it to miss. The stone, that token of preposterous time,
bounced five yards to Henry's right and fell in the water. Roger gathered a
handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round
Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which, he dare not throw. Here,
invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting
child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law.
Roger's arm was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and
was in ruins.
Henry was surprised by the plopping sounds in the water. He abandoned
the noiseless transparencies and pointed at the center of the spreading
rings like a setter. This side and that the stones fell, and Henry turned
obediently but always too late to see the stones in the air. At last he saw
one and laughed, looking for the friend who was teasing him. But Roger had
whipped behind the palm again, was leaning against it breathing quickly, his
eyelids fluttering. Then Henry lost interest in stones and wandered off..
"Roger."
Jack was standing under a tree about ten yards away. When Roger opened
his eyes and saw him, a darker shadow crept beneath the swarthiness of his
skin; but Jack noticed nothing. He was eager, impatient, beckoning, so that
Roger went to him.
There was a small pool at the end of the river, dammed back by sand and
full of white water-lilies and needle-like reeds. Here Sam and Eric were
waiting, and Bill Jack, concealed from the sun, knelt by the pool and opened
the two large leaves that he carried. One of them contained white clay, and
the other red. By them lay a stick of charcoal brought down from the fire.
Jack explained to Roger as he worked.
"They don't smell me. They see me, I think. Something pink, under the
trees."
He smeared on the clay.
"If only I'd some green!"
He turned a halt-concealed face up to Roger and answered the
incomprehension of his gaze.
"For hunting. Like in the war. You know-dazzle paint Like things trying
to look like something else-" He twisted in the urgency of telling. "-lake
moths on a tree trunk."
Roger understood and nodded gravely. The twins moved toward Jack and
began to protest timidly about something. Jack waved them away.
"Shut up."
He rubbed the charcoal stick between the patches of red and white on
his face.
"No. You two come with me."
He peered at his reflection and disliked it. He bent down, took up a
double handful of lukewarm water and rubbed the mess from his face. Freckles
and sandy eyebrows appeared.
Roger smiled, unwillingly.
"You don't half look a mess."
Jack planned his new face. He made one cheek and one eye-socket white,
then he rubbed red over the other half of his face and slashed a black bar
of charcoal across from right ear to left jaw. He looked in the pool for his
reflection, but his breathing troubled the mirror.
"Samneric. Get me a coconut. An empty one."
He knelt, holding the shell of water. A rounded patch of sunlight fell
on his face and a brightness appeared in the depths of the water. He looked
in astonishment, no longer at himself but at an awesome stranger. He spilt
the water and leapt to his feet, laughing excitedly. Beside the pool his
sinewy body held up a mask that drew their eyes and appalled them. He began
to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling. He capered toward
Bill, and the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated
from shame and self-consciousness. The face of red and white and black swung
through the air and jigged toward Bill. Bill started up laughing; then
suddenly he fell silent and blundered away through the bushes.
Jack rushed toward the twins.
"The rest are making a line. Come on!"
"But-"
"-we-"
"Come on! I'll creep up and stab-"
The mask compelled them.
Ralph climbed out of the bathing pool and trotted up the beach and sat
in the shade beneath the palms. His fair hair was plastered over his
eyebrows and he pushed it back. Simon was floating in the water and kicking
with his feet, and Maurice was practicing diving. Piggy was mooning about,
aimlessly picking up things and discarding them. The rock-pools which so
fascinated him were covered by the tide, so he was without an interest until
the tide went back. Presently, seeing Ralph under the palms, he came and sat
by him.
Piggy wore the remainders of a pair of shorts, his fat body was golden
brown, and the glasses still flashed when he looked at anything. He was the
only boy on the island whose hair never seemed to grow. The rest were
shock-headed, but Piggy's hair still lay in wisps over his head as though
baldness were his natural state and this imperfect covering would soon go,
like the velvet on a young stag's antlers.
"I've been thinking," he said, "about a clock. We could make a sundial
We could put a stick in the sand, and then-"
The effort to express the mathematical processes involved was too
great. He made a few passes instead.
"And an airplane, and a TV set," said Ralph sourly, "and a steam
engine."
Piggy shook his head.
"You have to have a lot of metal things for that," he said, "and we
haven't got no metal. But we got a stick."
Ralph turned and smiled involuntarily. Piggy was a bore; his fat, his
ass-mar and his matter-of-fact ideas were dull, but there was always a
little pleasure to be got out of pulling his leg, even if one did it by
accident.
Piggy saw the smile and misinterpreted it as friendliness. There had
grown up tacitly among the biguns the opinion that Piggy was an outsider,
not only by accent, which did not matter, but by fat, and ass-mar, and
specs, and a certain disinclination for manual labor. Now, finding that
something he had said made Ralph smile, he rejoiced and pressed his
advantage.
"We got a lot of sticks. We could have a sundial each. Then we should
know what the time was."
"A fat lot of good that would be."
"You said you wanted things done. So as we could be rescued."
"Oh, shut up."
He leapt to his feet and trotted back to the pool, just as
Maurice did a rather poor dive. Ralph was glad of a chance to change
the subject. He shouted as Maurice came to the surface.
"Belly flop! Belly flop!"
Maurice flashed a smile at Ralph who slid easily into the water. Of all
the boys, he was the most at home there; but today, irked by the mention of
rescue, the useless, footling mention of rescue, even the green depths of
water and the shattered, golden sun held no balm. Instead of remaining and
playing, he swam with steady strokes under Simon and crawled out of the
other side of the pool to lie there, sleek and streaming like a seal. Piggy,
always clumsy, stood up and came to stand by him, so mat Ralph rolled on his
stomach and pretended not to see. The mirages had died away and gloomily he
ran his eye along the taut blue line of the horizon.
The next moment he was on his feet and shouting.
"Smoke! Smoke!"
Simon tried to sit up in the water and got a mouthful. Maurice, who had
been standing ready to dive, swayed back on his heels, made a bolt for the
platform, then swerved back to the grass under the palms. There he started
to pull on his tattered shorts, to be ready for anything.
Ralph stood, one hand holding back his hair, the other clenched. Simon
was climbing out of the water. Piggy was rubbing his glasses on his shorts
and squinting at the sea. Maurice had got both legs through one leg of his
shorts. Of all the boys, only Ralph was still.
1 can't see no smoke," said Piggy incredulously. "I can't see no smoke,
Ralph-where is it?"
Ralph said nothing. Now both his hands were clenched over his forehead
so that the fair hair was kept out of his eyes. He was leaning forward and
already the salt was whitening his body.
"Ralph-where s the ship?"
Simon stood by, looking from Ralph to the horizon. Maurice's trousers
gave way with a sigh and he abandoned them as a wreck, rushed toward the
forest, and then came back again.
The smoke was a tight little knot on the horizon and was uncoiling
slowly. Beneath the smoke was a dot that might be a funnel. Ralph's face was
pale as he spoke to himself.
They'll see our smoke."
Piggy was looking in the right direction now.
"It don't look much."
He turned round and peered up at the mountain. Ralph continued to watch
the ship, ravenously. Color was coming back into his face. Simon stood by
him, silent.
"I know I can't see very much," said Piggy, "but have we got any
smoke?"
Ralph moved impatiently, still watching the ship.
"The smoke on the mountain."
Maurice came running, and stared out to sea. Both Simon and Piggy were
looking up at the mountain. Piggy screwed up his face but Simon cried out as
though he had hurt himself.
"Ralph! Ralph!"
The quality of his speech twisted Ralph on the sand.
"You tell me," said Piggy anxiously. "Is there a signal?"
Ralph looked back at the dispersing smoke on the horizon, then up at
the mountain.
"Ralph-please! Is there a signal?"
Simon put out his hand, timidly, to touch Ralph; but Ralph started to
run, splashing through the shallow end of the bathing pool, across the hot,
white sand and under the palms. A moment later he was battling with the
complex undergrowth that was already engulfing the scar. Simon ran after
him, then Maurice. Piggy shouted.
"Ralph! Please-Ralph!"
Then he too started to run, stumbling over Maurice's discarded shorts
before he was across the terrace. Behind the four boys, the smoke moved
gently along the horizon; and on the beach, Henry and Johnny were throwing
sand at Percival who was crying quietly again; and all three were in
complete ignorance of the excitement.
By the time Ralph had reached the landward end of the scar he was using
precious breath to swear. He did desperate violence to his naked body among
the rasping creepers so that blood was sliding over him. Just where the
steep ascent of the mountain began, he stopped. Maurice was only a few yards
behind him.
"Piggy's specs!" shouted Ralph. "If the fire's all out, well need
them-"
He stopped shouting and swayed on his feet. Piggy was only just
visible, bumbling up from the beach. Ralphlooked at the horizon, then up to
the mountain. Was it better to fetch Piggy's glasses, or would the ship have
gone? Or if they climbed on, supposing the fire was all out, and they had to
watch Piggy crawling nearer and the ship sinking under the horizon? Balanced
on a high peak of need, agonized by indecision, Ralph cried out:
"Oh God, oh God!"
Simon, struggling with bushes, caught his breath. His face was twisted.
Ralph blundered on, savaging himself, as the wisp of smoke moved on.
The fire was dead. They saw that straight away; saw what they had
really known down on the beach when the smoke of home had beckoned. The fire
was out, smokeless and dead; the watchers were gone. A pile of unused fuel
lay ready.
Ralph turned to the sea. The horizon stretched, impersonal once more,
barren of all but the faintest trace of smoke. Ralph ran stumbling along the
rocks, saved himself on the edge of the pink cliff, and screamed at the
ship.
"Come back! Come back!"
He ran backwards and forwards along the cliff, his face always to the
sea, and his voice rose insanely.
"Come back! Come back!"
Simon and Maurice arrived. Ralph looked at them with unwinking eyes.
Simon turned away, smearing the water from his cheeks. Ralph reached inside
himself for the worst word he knew.
"They let the bloody fire go out."
He looked down the unfriendly side of the mountain. Piggy arrived, out
of breath and whimpering like a littlun. Ralph clenched his fist and went
very red. The intent-ness of his gaze, the bitterness of his voice, pointed
for him.
"There they are."
A procession had appeared, far down among the pink stones that lay near
the water's edge. Some of the boys wore black caps but otherwise they were
almost naked. They lifted sticks in the air together whenever they came to
an easy patch. They were chanting, something to do with the bundle that the
errant twins carried so carefully. Ralph picked out Jack easily, even at
that distance, tall, red-haired, and inevitably leading the procession.
Simon looked now, from Ralph to Jack, as he had looked from Ralph to
the horizon, and what he saw seemed to make him afraid. Ralph said nothing
more, but waited while the procession came nearer. The chant was audible but
at that distance still wordless. Behind Jack walked the twins, carrying a
great stake on their shoulders. The gutted carcass of a pig swung from the
stake, swinging heavily as the twins toiled over the uneven ground. The pigs
head hung down with gaping neck and seemed to search for something on the
ground. At last the words of the chant floated up to them, across the bowl
of blackened wood and ashes.
"Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood."
Yet as the words became audible, the procession reached the steepest
part of the mountain, and in a minute or two the chant had died away. Piggy
sniveled and Simon shushed him quickly as though he had spoken too loudly in
church.
Jack, his face smeared with clays, reached the top first and hailed
Ralph excitedly, with lifted spear.
"Look! We've killed a pig-we stole up on them-we got in a circle-"
Voices broke in from the hunters.
"We got in a circle-"
"We crept up-"
The pig squealed-"
The twins stood with the pig swinging between them, dropping black
gouts on the rock. They seemed to share one wide, ecstatic grin. Jack had
too many things to tell Ralph at once. Instead, he danced a step or two,
then remembered his dignity and stood still, grinning. He noticed blood on
his hands and grimaced distastefully, looked for something on which to clean
them, then wiped them on his shorts and laughed.
Ralph spoke.
"You let the fire go out."
Jack checked, vaguely irritated by this irrelevance but too happy to
let it worry him.
"We can light the fire again. You should have been with us, Ralph. We
had a smashing time. The twins got knocked over-"
"We hit the pig-"
"-I fell on top-"
"I cut the pig's throat," said Jack, proudly, and yet twitched as he
said it. "Can I borrow yours, Ralph, to make a nick in the hilt?"
The boys chattered and danced. The twins continued to grin.
There was lashings of blood," said Jack, laughing and shuddering, "you
should have seen it!"
"We'll go hunting every day-"
Ralph spoke again, hoarsely. He had not moved.
"You let the fire go out."
This repetition made Jack uneasy. He looked at the twins and then back
at Ralph.
"We had to have them in the hunt," he said, "or there wouldn't have
been enough for a ring."
He flushed, conscious of a fault.
"The fire's only been out an hour or two. We can light up again-"
He noticed Ralph's scarred nakedness, and the sombre silence of all
four of them. He sought, charitable in his happiness, to include them in the
thing that had happened. His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the
knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig,
knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon
it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.
He spread his arms wide.
"You should have seen the blood!"
The hunters were more silent now, but at this they buzzed again. Ralph
flung back his hair. One arm pointed at the empty horizon. His voice was
loud and savage, and struck them into silence.
"There was a ship."
Jack, faced at once with too many awful implications, ducked away from
them. He laid a hand on the pig and drew his knife. Ralph brought his arm
down, fist clenched, and his voice shook.
"There was a ship. Out there. You said you'd keep the fire going and
you let it out!" He took a step toward Jack, who turned and faced him.
"They might have seen us. We might have gone home-"
This was too bitter for Piggy, who forgot his timidity in the agony of
his loss. He began to cry out, shrilly:
"You and your blood, Jack Merridew! You and your hunting! We might have
gone home-"
Ralph pushed Piggy to one side.
"I was chief, and you were going to do what I said. You talk. But you
can't even build huts-then you go off hunting and let out the fire-"
He turned away, silent for a moment. Then his voice came again on a
peak of feeling.
"There was a ship-"
One of the smaller hunters began to wail. The dismal truth was
filtering through to everybody. Jack went very red as he hacked and pulled
at the pig.
"The job was too much. We needed everyone."
Ralph turned.
"You could have had everyone when the shelters were finished. But you
had to hunt-"
"We needed meat."
Jack stood up as he said this, the bloodied knife in his hand. The two
boys faced each other. There was the brilliant world of hunting, tactics,
fierce exhilaration, skill; and there was the world of longing and baffled
common-sense. Jack transferred the knife to his left hand and smudged blood
over his forehead as he pushed down the plastered hair.
Piggy began again.
"You didn't ought to have let that fire out. You said you'd keep the
smoke going-"
This from Piggy, and the wails of agreement from some of the hunters,
drove Jack to violence. The bolting look came into his blue eyes. He took a
step, and able at last to hit someone, stuck his fist into Piggy's stomach.
Piggy sat down with a grunt. Jack stood over him. His voice was vicious with
humiliation.
"You would, would you? Fatty!"
Ralph made a step forward and Jack smacked Piggy's head. Piggy's
glasses flew off and tinkled on the rocks. Piggy cried out in terror:
"My specs!"
He went crouching and feeling over the rocks but Simon, who got there
first, found them for him. Passions beat about Simon on the mountain-top
with awful wings.
"One side's broken."
Piggy grabbed and put on the glasses. He looked malevolently at Jack.
"I got to have them specs. Now I only got one eye. Jus` you wait-"
Jack made a move toward Piggy who scrambled away till a great rock lay
between them. He thrust his head over the top and glared at Jack through his
one flashing glass.
"Now I only got one eye. Just you wait-"
Jack mimicked the whine and scramble.
"Jus' you wait-yah!"
Piggy and the parody were so funny that the hunters began to laugh.
Jack felt encouraged. He went on scrambling and the laughter rose to a gale
of hysteria. Unwillingly Ralph felt his lips twitch; he was angry with
himself for giving way.
He muttered.
"That was a dirty trick."
Jack broke out of his gyration and stood facing Ralph. His words came
in a shout.
"All right, all right!"
He looked at Piggy, at the hunters, at Ralph.
"I'm sorry. About the fire, I mean. There. I-"
He drew himself up.
"-I apologize."
The buzz from the hunters was one of admiration at this handsome
behavior. Clearly they were of the opinion that Jack had done the decent
thing, had put himself in the right by his generous apology and Ralph,
obscurely, in the wrong. They waited for an appropriately decent answer.
Yet Ralph's throat refused to pass one. He resented, as an addition to
Jack's misbehavior, this verbal trick. The fire was dead, the ship was gone.
Could they not see? Anger instead of decency passed his throat.
"That was a dirty trick."
They were silent on the mountain-top while the opaque look appeared in
Jack's eyes and passed away.
Ralph's final word was an ungracious mutter.
"All right. Light the fire."
With some positive action before them, a little of die tension died.
Ralph said no more, did nothing, stood looking down at the ashes round his
feet. Jack was loud and active. He gave orders, sang, whistled, threw
remarks at the silent Ralph-remarks that did not need an answer, and
therefore could not invite a snub; and still Ralph was silent. No one, not
even Jack, would ask him to move and in the end they had to build the fire
three yards away and in a place not really as convenient. So Ralph asserted
his chieftainship and could not have chosen a better way if he had thought
for days. Against this weapon, so indefinable and so effective, Jack was
powerless and raged without knowing why. By the time the pile was built,
they were on different sides of a high barrier.
When they had dealt with the fire another crisis arose. Jack had no
means of lighting it. Then to his surprise, Ralph went to Piggy and took the
glasses from him. Not even Ralph knew now a link between him and Jack had
been snapped and fastened elsewhere.
'I'll bring 'em back."
"I'll come too."
Piggy stood behind him, islanded in a sea of meaningless color, while
Ralph knelt and focused the glossy spot. Instantly the fire was alight Piggy
held out his hands and grabbed the glasses back.
Before these fantastically attractive flowers of violet and red and
yellow, unkindness melted away. They became a circle of boys round a camp
fire and even Piggy and Ralph were half-drawn in. Soon some of the boys were
rushing down the slope for more wood while Jack hacked the pig. They tried
holding the whole carcass on a stake over the fire, but the stake burnt more
quickly than the pig roasted. In the end they skewered bits of meat on
branches and held them in the flames: and even then almost as much boy was
roasted as meat.
Ralph's mouth watered. He meant to refuse meat but his past diet of
fruit and nuts, with an odd crab or fish, gave him too little resistance. He
accepted a piece of half-raw meat and gnawed it like a wolf.
Piggy spoke, also dribbling.
"Aren't I having none?"
Jack had meant to leave him in doubt, as an assertion of power; but
Piggy by advertising his omission made more cruelty necessary.
"You didn't hunt."
"No more did Ralph," said Piggy wetly, "nor Simon." He amplified.
"There isn't more than a ha'porth of meat in a crab."
Ralph stirred uneasily. Simon, sitting between the twins and Piggy,
wiped his mouth and shoved his piece of meat over the rocks to Piggy, who
grabbed it. The twins giggled and Simon lowered his face in shame.
Then Jack leapt to his feet, slashed off a great hunk of meat, and
flung it down at Simon's feet.
"Eat! Damn you!"
He glared at Simon.
"Take it!"
He spun on his heel, center of a bewildered circle of boys.
"I got you meat!"
Numberless and inexpressible frustrations combined to make his rage
elemental and awe-inspiring.
"I painted my face-I stole up. Now you eat-all of you -and I-"
Slowly the silence on the mountain-top deepened till the click of the
fire and the soft hiss of roasting meat could be heard clearly. Jack looked
round for understanding but found only respect. Ralph stood among the ashes
of the signal fire, his hands full of meat, saying nothing.
Then at last Maurice broke the silence. He changed the subject to the
only one that could bring the majority of them together.
"Where did you find the pig?"
Roger pointed down the unfriendly side. "They were there-by the sea."
Jack, recovering, could not bear to have his story told. He broke in
quickly.
"We spread round. I crept, on hands and knees. The spears fell out
because they hadn't barbs on. The pig ran away and made an awful noise-"
"It turned back and ran into the circle, bleeding-"
All the boys were talking at once, relieved and excited.
"We closed in-"
The first blow had paralyzed its hind quarters, so then the circle
could close in and beat and beat-
"I cut the pig's throat-"
The twins, still sharing their identical grin, jumped up and ran round
each other. Then the rest joined in, making pig-dying noises and shouting.
"One for his nob!"
"Give him a fourpenny one!"
Then Maurice pretended to be the pig and ran squealing into the center,
and the hunters, circling still, pretended to beat him. As they danced, they
sang.
"Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Bash her in"
Ralph watched them, envious and resentful. Not till they flagged and
the chant died away, did he speak.
"I'm calling an assembly."
One by one, they halted, and stood watching him.
"With the conch. I'm calling a meeting even if we have to go on into
the dark. Down on the platform. When I blow it. Now."
He turned away and walked off, down the mountain.
CHAPTER FIVE
Beast from Water
The tide was coming in and there was only a narrow strip of firm beach
between the water and the white, stumbling stuff near the palm terrace.
Ralph chose the firm strip as a path because he needed to think, and only
here could he allow his feet to move without having to watch them. Suddenly,
pacing by the water, he was overcome with astonishment. He found himself
understanding the wearisomeness of this life, where every path was an
improvisation and a considerable part of one's waking life was spent
watching one's feet. He stopped, facing the strip; and remembering that
first enthusiastic exploration as though it were part of a brighter
childhood, he smiled jeeringly. He turned then and walked back toward the
platform with the sun in his face. The time had come for the assembly and as
he walked into the concealing splendors of the sunlight he went carefully
over the points of his speech. There must be no mistake about this assembly,
no chasing imaginary. . . .
He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his
lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again.
This meeting must not be fun, but business.
At that he walked faster, aware all at once of urgency and the
declining sun and a little wind created by his speed that breathed about his
face. This wind pressed his grey shirt against his chest so that he
noticed-in this new mood of comprehension-how the folds were stiff like
cardboard, and unpleasant; noticed too how the frayed edges of his shorts
were making an uncomfortable, pink area on the front of his thighs. With a
convulsion of the mind, Ralph discovered dirt and decay, understood how much
he disliked perpetually flicking the tangled hair out of his eyes, and at
last, when the sun was gone, rolling noisily to rest among dry leaves. At
that he began to trot.
The beach near the bathing pool was dotted with groups of boys waiting
for the assembly. They made way for him silently, conscious of his grim mood
and the fault at the fire.
The place of assembly in which he stood was roughly a triangle; but
irregular and sketchy, like everything they made. First there was the log on
which he himself sat; a dead tree that must have been quite exceptionally
big for the platform. Perhaps one of those legendary storms of the Pacific
had shifted it here. This palm trunk lay parallel to the beach, so that when
Ralph sat he faced the island but to the boys was a darkish figure against
the shimmer of the lagoon. The two sides of the triangle of which the log
was base were less evenly defined. On the right was a log polished by
restless seats along the top, but not so large as the chiefs and not so
comfortable. On the left were four small logs, one of them-the
farthest-lamentably springy. Assembly after assembly had broken up in
laughter when someone had leaned too far back and the log had whipped and
thrown half a dozen boys backwards into the grass. Yet now, he saw, no one
had had the wit-not himself nor Jack, nor Piggy-to bring a stone and wedge
the thing. So they would continue enduring the ill-balanced twister,
because, because. . . . Again he lost himself in deep waters.
Crass was worn away in front of each trunk but grew tall and untrodden
in tile center of the triangle. Then, at the apex, the grass was thick again
because no one sat there. All round the place of assembly the grey trunks
rose, straight or leaning, and supported the low roof of leaves. On two
sides was the beach; behind, the lagoon; in front, the darkness of the
island.
Ralph turned to the chief's seat. They had never had an assembly as
late before. That was why the place looked so different. Normally the
underside of the green roof was lit by a tangle of golden reflections, and
their faces were lit upside down-like, thought Ralph, when you hold an
electric torch in your hands. But now the sun was slanting in at one side,
so that the shadows were where they ought to be.
Again he fell into that strange mood of speculation that was so foreign
to him. If faces were different when lit from above or below-what was a
face? What was anything?
Ralph moved impatiently. The trouble was, if you were a chief you had
to think, you had to be wise. And then the occasion slipped by so that you
had to grab at a decision. This made you think; because thought was a
valuable thing, that got results. . . .
Only, decided Ralph as he faced the chiefs seat, I can't think. Not
like Piggy.
Once more that evening Ralph had to adjust his values. Piggy could
think. He could go step by step inside that fat head of his, only Piggy was
no chief. But Piggy, for all his ludicrous body, had brains. Ralph was a
specialist in thought now, and could recognize thought in another.
The sun in his eyes reminded him how time was passing, so he took the
conch down from the tree and examined the surface. Exposure to the air had
bleached the yellow and pink to near-white, and transparency. Ralph felt a
land of affectionate reverence for the conch, even though he had fished the
thing out of the lagoon himself. He faced the place of assembly and put the
conch to his lips.
The others were waiting for this and came straight away. Those who were
aware that a ship had passed the island while the fire was out were subdued
by the thought of Ralph's anger; while those, including the littluns who did
not know, were impressed by the general air of solemnity. The place of
assembly filled quickly; Jack, Simon, Maurice, most of the hunters, on
Ralph's right; the rest on the left, under the sun. Piggy came and stood
outside the triangle. This indicated that he wished to listen, but would not
speak; and Piggy intended it as a gesture of disapproval
"The thing is: we need an assembly."
No one said anything but the faces turned to Ralph were intent. He
flourished the conch. He had learnt as a practical business that fundamental
statements like this had to be said at least twice, before everyone
understood them. One had to sit, attracting all eyes to the conch, and drop
words like heavy round stones among the little groups that crouched or
squatted. He was searching his mind for simple words so that even the
littluns would understand what the assembly was about. Later perhaps,
practiced debaters-Jack, Maurice, Piggy-would use their whole art to twist
the meeting: but now at the beginning the subject of the debate must be laid
out clearly.
"We need an assembly. Not for fun. Not for laughing and falling off the
log"-the group of littluns on the twister giggled and looked at each
other-"not for making jokes, or for"-he lifted the conch in an effort to
find the compelling word-"for cleverness. Not for these things. But to put
things straight.''
He paused for a moment.
"I've been alone. By myself I went, thinking what's what I know what we
need. An assembly to put things straight And first of all, I'm speaking."
He paused for a moment and automatically pushed back his hair. Piggy
tiptoed to the triangle, his ineffectual protest made, and joined the
others.
Ralph went on.
"We have lots of assemblies. Everybody enjoys speaking and being
together. We decide things. But they don't get done. We were going to have
water brought from the stream and left in those coconut shells under fresh
leaves. So it was, for a few days. Now there's no water. The shells are dry.
People drink from the river."
There was a murmur of assent.
"Not that there's anything wrong with drinking from the river. I mean
I'd sooner have water from that place- you know, the pool where the
waterfall is-than out of an old coconut shell. Only we said we'd have the
water brought And now not There were only two full shells there this
afternoon."
He licked his lips.
"Then there's huts. Shelters."
The murmur swelled again and died away.
"You mostly sleep in shelters. Tonight, except for Sam-neric up by the
fire, you'll all sleep there. Who built the shelters?"
Clamor rose at once. Everyone had built the shelters. Ralph had to wave
the conch once more.
"Wait a minute! I mean, who built all three? We all built the first
one, four of us the second one, and me 'n Simon built the last one over
there. That's why it's so tottery. No. Don't laugh. That shelter might fall
down if the rain comes back. We'll need those shelters then."
He paused and cleared his throat.
"There's another thing. We chose those rocks right along beyond the
bathing pool as a lavatory. That was sensible too. The tide cleans the place
up. You littluns know about that."
There were sniggers here and there and swift glances.
"Now people seem to use anywhere. Even near the shelters and the
platform. You littluns, when you're getting fruit; if you're taken short-"
The assembly roared.
"I said if you're taken short you keep away from the fruit. That's
dirty."
Laughter rose again.
"I said that's dirty!"
He plucked at his stiff, grey shirt.
"That's realty dirty. If you're taken short you go right along the
beach to the rocks. See?"
Piggy held out his hands for the conch but Ralph shook his head. This
speech was planned, point by point.
"We've all got to use the rocks again. This place is getting dirty." He
paused. The assembly, sensing a crisis, was tensely expectant. "And then:
about the fire."
Ralph let out his spare breath with a little gasp that was echoed by
his audience. Jack started to chip a piece of wood with his knife and
whispered something to Robert, who looked away.
"The fire is the most important thing on the island. How can we ever be
rescued except by luck, if we don't keep a fire going? Is a fire too much
for us to make?"
He flung out an arm.
"Look at us! How many are we? And yet we can't keep a fire going to
make smoke. Don't you understand? Can't you see we ought to-ought to die
before we let the fire out?"
There was a self-conscious giggling among the hunters. Ralph turned on
them passionately.
"You hunters! You can laugh! But I tell you the smoke is more important
than the pig, however often you kill one. Do all of you see?" He spread his
arms wide and turned to the whole triangle.
"We've got to make smoke up there-or die."
He paused, feeling for his next point
"And another thing."
Someone called out.
"Too many things."
There came mutters of agreement. Ralph overrode them.
"And another thing. We nearly set the whole island on fire. And we
waste time, rolling rocks, and making little cooking fires. Now I say this
and make it a rule, because I'm chief. We won't have a fire anywhere but on
the mountain. Ever."
There was a row immediately. Boys stood up and shouted and Ralph
shouted back.
"Because if you want a fire to cook fish or crab, you can jolly well go
up the mountain. That way we'll be certain."
Hands were reaching for the conch in the light of the setting sun. He
held on and leapt on the trunk.
"All this I meant to say. Now I've said it. You voted me for chief. Now
you do what I say."
They quieted, slowly, and at last were seated again. Ralph dropped down
and spoke in his ordinary voice.
"So remember. The rocks for a lavatory. Keep the fire going and smoke
showing as a signal. Don't take fire from the mountain. Take your food up
mere."
Jack stood up, scowling in the gloom, and held out his hands.
"I haven't finished yet"
"But you've talked and talked!"
"I've got the conch."
Jack sat down, grumbling.
"Then the last mine. This is what people can talk about."
He waited till the platform was very still.
"Things are breaking up. I don't understand why. We began well; we were
happy. And then-"
He moved the conch gently, looking beyond them at nothing, remembering
the beastie, the snake, the fire, the talk of fear.
"Then people started getting frightened."
A murmur, almost a moan, rose and passed away. Jack had stopped
whittling. Ralph went on, abruptly.
"But that's littluns' talk. We'll get that straight. So the last part,
the bit we can all talk about, is kind of deciding on the fear."
The hair was creeping into his eyes again.
"We've got to talk about this fear and decide there's nothing in it.
I'm frightened myself, sometimes; only that's nonsense! Like bogies. Then,
when we've decided, we can start again and be careful about things like the
fire." A picture of three boys walking along the bright beach flitted
through his mind. "And be happy."
Ceremonially, Ralph laid the conch on the trunk beside him as a sign
that the speech was over. What sunlight reached them was level.
Jack stood up and took the conch.
"So this is a meeting to find out what's what, I`ll tell you what's
what. You littluns started all this, with the fear talk. Beasts! Where from?
Of course we're frightened sometimes but we put up with being frightened.
Only Ralph says you scream in the night. What does that mean but nightmares?
Anyway, you don't hunt or build or help-you're a lot of cry-babies and
sissies. That's what. And as for the fear- you'll have to put up with that
like the rest of us."
Ralph looked at Jack open-mouthed, but Jack took no notice.
'The thing is-fear can't hurt you any more than a dream. There aren't
any beasts to be afraid of on this island." He looked along the row of
whispering littluns. "Serve you right if something did get you, you useless
lot of cry-babies! But there is no animal-"
Ralph interrupted him testily.
"What is all this? Who said anything about an animal?"
"You did, the other day. You said they dream and cry out Now they
talk-not only the littluns, but my hunters sometimes-talk of a thing, a dark
thing, a beast, some sort of animal I've heard. You thought not, didn't you?
Now listen. You don't get big animals on small islands. Only pigs. You only
get lions and tigers in big countries like Africa and India-"
"And the Zoo-"
"I've got the conch. I'm not talking about the fear. I'm talking about
the beast. Be frightened if you like. But as for the beast-"
Jack paused, cradling the conch, and turned to his hunt" ers with their
dirty black caps.
"Am I a hunter or am I not?"
They nodded, simply. He was a hunter all right. No one doubted that.
"Well then-I've been all over this island. By myself. If there were a
beast I'd have seen it Be frightened because you're like that-but there is
no beast in the forest"
Jack handed back the conch and sat down. The whole assembly applauded
him with relief. Then Piggy held out his hand.
"I don't agree with all Jack said, but with some. `Course there isn't a
beast in the forest How could there be? What would a beast eat?"
"Pig."
"We eat pig."
"Piggy!"
"I got the conch!" said Piggy indignantly. "Ralph- they ought to shut
up, oughtn't they? You shut up, you littluns! What I mean is that I don't
agree about this here fear. Of course there isn't nothing to be afraid of in
the forest Why-I been there myself! You'll be talking about ghosts and such
things next We know what goes on and if there's something wrong, there's
someone to put it right."
He took off his glasses and blinked at them. The sun had gone as if the
light had been turned off.
He proceeded to explain.
"If you get a pain in your stomach, whether it's a little one or a big
one-"
"Yours is a big one."
"When you done laughing perhaps we can get on with the meeting. And if
them littluns climb back on the twister again they'll only fall off in a
sec. So they might as well sit on the ground and listen. No. You have
doctors for everything, even the inside of your mind. You don't really mean
that we got to be frightened all the time of nothing? Life," said Piggy
expansively, "is scientific, that's what it is. In a year or two when the
war's over they'll be traveling to Mars and back. I know there isn't no
beast-not with claws and all that, I mean-but I know there isn't no fear,
either."
Piggy paused.
"Unless-"
Ralph moved restlessly.
"Unless what?"
"Unless we get frightened of people."
A sound, half-laugh, half-jeer, rose among the seated boys. Piggy
ducked his head and went on hastily.
"So lets hear from that littlun who talked about a beast and perhaps we
can show him how silly he is."
The littluns began to jabber among themselves, then one stood forward.
"What's your name?"
"Phil."
For a littlun he was self-confident, holding out his hands, cradling
the conch as Ralph did, looking round at them to collect their attention
before he spoke.
"Last night I had a dream, a horrid dream, fighting with things. I was
outside the shelter by myself, fighting with things, those twisty things in
the trees."
He paused, and the other littluns laughed in horrified sympathy.
"Then I was frightened and I woke up. And I was outside the shelter by
myself in the dark and the twisty things had gone away."
The vivid horror of this, so possible and so nakedly terrifying, held
them all silent. The child's voice went piping on from behind the white
conch.
"And I was frightened and started to call out for Ralph and then I saw
something moving among the trees, something big and horrid."
He paused, half-frightened by the recollection yet proud of the
sensation he was creating.
"That was a nightmare," said Ralph. "He was walking in his sleep."
The assembly murmured in subdued agreement.
The littlun shook his head stubbornly.
"I was asleep when the twisty things were fighting and when they went
away I was awake, and I saw something big and horrid moving in the trees."
Ralph held out his hands for the conch and the littlun sat down.
"You were alseep. There wasn't anyone there. How could anyone be
wandering about in the forest at night? Was anyone? Did anyone go out?"
There was a long pause while the assembly grinned at
the thought of anyone going out in the darkness. Then Simon stood up
and Ralph looked at him in astonishment
"You! What were you mucking about in the dark for?"
Simon grabbed the conch convulsively.
"I wanted-to go to a place-a place I know."
"What place?"
"Just a place I know. A place in the jungle."
He hesitated.
Jack settled the question for them with that contempt in his voice that
could sound so funny and so final.
"He was taken short"
With a feeling of humiliation on Simon's behalf, Ralph took back the
conch, looking Simon sternly in the face as he did so.
"Well, don't do it again. Understand? Not at night There's enough silly
talk about beasts, without the litthlus seeing you gliding about like a-"
The derisive laughter that rose had fear in it and condemnation. Simon
opened his mouth to speak but Ralph had the conch, so he backed to his seat
When the assembly was silent Ralph turned to Piggy.
"Well, Piggy?"
"There was another one. Him."
The littlums pushed Percival forward, then left him by himself. He
stood knee-deep in the central grass, looking at his hidden feet, trying to
pretend he was in a tent Ralph remembered another small boy who had stood
like this and he flinched away from the memory. He had pushed the thought
down and out of sight, where only some positive reminder like this could
bring it to the surface. There had been no further numberings of the
littluns, partly because there was no means of insuring that all of them
were accounted for and partly because Ralph knew the answer to at least one
question Piggy had asked on the mountain-top. There were little boys, fair,
dark, freckled, and all dirty, but their faces were all dreadfully free of
major blemishes. No one had seen the mulberry-colored birthmark again. But
that time Piggy had coaxed and bullied. Tacitly admitting that he remembered
the unmentionable, Ralph nodded to Piggy.
"Go on. Ask him."
Piggy knelt, holding the conch.
"Now then. What's your name?"
The small boy twisted away into his tent Piggy turned helplessly to
Ralph, who spoke sharply.
"What's your name?"
Tormented by the silence and the refusal the assembly broke into a
chant.
"What's your name? What's your name?"
"Quiet!"
Ralph peered at the child in the twilight
"Now tell us. What's your name?"
"Percival Wemys Madison, The Vicarage, Harcourt St. Anthony, Hants,
telephone, telephone, tele-"
As if this information was rooted far down in the springs of sorrow,
the littlun wept. His face puckered, the tears leapt from his eves, his
mouth opened till they could see a square black hole. At first he was a
silent effigy of sorrow; but then the lamentation rose out of him, loud and
sustained as the conch.
"Shut up, you! Shut up!"
Percival Wemys Madison would not shut up. A spring had been tapped, far
beyond the reach of authority or even physical intimidation. The crying went
on, breath after breath, and seemed to sustain him upright as if he were
nailed to it.
"Shut up! Shut up!"
For now the littluns were no longer silent. They were reminded of their
personal sorrows; and perhaps felt themselves to share in a sorrow that was
universal. They began to cry in sympathy, two of them almost as loud as
Percival.
Maurice saved them. He cried out.
"Look at me!"
He pretended to fall over. He rubbed his rump and sat on the twister so
that he fell in the grass. He clowned badly, but Percival and the others
noticed and sniffed and laughed. Presently they were all laughing so
absurdly that the biguns joined in.
Jack was the first to make himself heard. He had not got the conch and
thus spoke against the rules; but nobody minded.
"And what about the beast?"
Something strange was happening to Percival. He yawned and staggered,
so that Jack seized and shook him.
"Where does the beast live?"
Percival sagged in Jack's grip.
"That's a clever beast," said Piggy, jeering, "if it can hide on this
island."
"Jack's been everywhere-"
"Where could a beast live?"
"Beast my foot!"
Percival muttered something and the assembly laughed again. Ralph
leaned forward.
"What does he say?"
Jack listened to Percival's answer and then let go of him. Percival,
released, surrounded by the comfortable presence of humans, fell in the long
grass and went to sleep.
Jack cleared his throat then reported casually.
"He says the beast comes out of the sea."
The last laugh died away. Ralph turned involuntarily, a black, humped
figure against the lagoon. The assembly looked with him, considered the vast
stretches of water, the high sea beyond, unknown indigo of infinite
possibility, heard silently the sough and whisper from the reef.
Maurice spoke, so loudly that they jumped.
"Daddy said they haven't found all the animals in the sea yet"
Argument started again. Ralph held out the glimmering conch and Maurice
took it obediently. The meeting subsided.
"I mean when Jack says you can be frightened because people are
frightened anyway that's all right. But when he says there's only pigs on
this island I expect he's right but he doesn't know, not really, not
certainly I mean-' Maurice took a breath. "My daddy says there's things,
what d`you call'em that make ink-squids-that are hundreds or yards long and
eat whales whole." He paused again ana laughed gaily. "I don't believe in
the beast of course. As Piggy says, life's scientific, but we don't know, do
we? Not certainly, I mean-"
Someone shouted.
"A squid couldn't come up out of the water!"
"Could!"
"Couldn't!"
In a moment the platform was full of arguing, gesticulating shadows. To
Ralph, seated, this seemed the breaking up of sanity. Fear, beasts, no
general agreement that the fire was all-important: and when one tried to get
the thing straight the argument sheered off, bringing up fresh, unpleasant
matter.
He could see a whiteness in the gloom near him so he grabbed it from
Maurice and blew as loudly as he could. The assembly was shocked into
silence. Simon was close to him, laying hands on the conch. Simon felt a
perilous necessity to speak; but to speak in assembly was a terrible thing
to him.
"Maybe," he said hesitantly, "maybe there is a beast."
The assembly cried out savagely and Ralph stood up in amazement.
"You, Simon? You believe in this?"
"I don't know," said Simon. His heartbeats were choking him. "But ..."
The storm broke.
"Sit down!"
"Shut up!"
"Take the conch!"
"Sod you!"
"Shut up!"
Ralph shouted.
"Hear him! He's got the conch!"
"What I mean is . . . maybe it's only us."
"Nuts!"
That was from Piggy, shocked out of decorum. Simon want on.
"We could be sort of. . . ."
Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential
illness. Inspiration came to him.
"What's the dirtiest thing there is?"
As an answer Jack dropped into the uncomprehending silence that
followed it the one crude expressive syllable. Release was immense. Those
littluns who had climbed back on the twister fell off again and did not
mind. The hunters were screaming with delight
Simon's effort fell about him in ruins; the laughter beat him cruelly
and he shrank away defenseless to his seat.
At last the assembly was silent again. Someone spoke out of turn.
"Maybe he means it's some sort of ghost"
Ralph Lifted the conch and peered into the gloom. The lightest thing
was the pale beach. Surely the littluns were nearer? Yes-there was no doubt
about it, they were huddled into a tight knot of bodies in the central
grass. A flurry of wind made the palms talk and the noise seemed very loud
now that darkness and silence made it so noticeable. Two grey trunks rubbed
each other with an evil squeaking that no one had noticed by day.
Piggy took the conch out of his hands. His voice was indignant.
"I don't believe in no ghosts-ever!"
Jack was up too, unaccountably angry.
"Who cares what you believe--Fatty!"
"I got the conch!"
There was the sound of a brief tussle and the conch moved to and fro.
"You gimme the conch back!"
Ralph pushed between them and got a thump on the chest. He wrested the
conch from someone and sat down breathlessly.
"There's too much talk about ghosts. We ought to have left all this for
daylight."
A hushed and anonymous voice broke in.
"Perhaps that's what the beast is-a ghost."
The assembly was shaken as by a wind.
"There's too much talking out of turn," Ralph said, "because we can't
have proper assemblies if you don't stick to the rules."
He stopped again. The careful plan of this assembly had broken down.
"What d'you want me to say then? I was wrong to call this assembly so
late. Well have a vote on them; on ghosts I mean; and then go to the
shelters because we're all tired. No-Jack is it?-wait a minute. I'll say
here and now that I don t believe in ghosts. Or I don't think I do. But I
don't like the thought of them. Not now that is, in the dark. But we were
going to decide what's what."
He raised the conch for a moment
"Very well then. I suppose what's what is whether there are ghosts or
not-"
He thought for a moment, formulating the question.
"Who thinks there may be ghosts?"
For a long time there was silence and no apparent movement. Then Ralph
peered into the gloom and made out the hands. He spoke flatly.
"I see."
The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.
Once there was this and that; and now-and the ship had gone.
The conch was snatched from his hands and Piggy's voice shrilled.
"I didn't vote for no ghosts!"
He whirled round on the assembly.
"Remember that, all of you!"
They heard him stamp.
"What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? What's grownups going to
think? Going off-hunting pigs-letting fires out-and now!"
A shadow fronted him tempestuously.
"You shut up, you fat slug!'
There was a moment's struggle and the glimmering conch jigged up and
down. Ralph leapt to his feet.
"Jack! Jack! You haven't got the conch! Let him speak."
Jack's face swam near him.
"And you shut up! Who are you, anyway? Sitting there telling people
what to do. You cant hunt, you can't sing-"
"I'm chief. I was chosen."
"Why should choosing make any difference? Just giving orders that don't
make any sense-"
"Piggy's got the conch."
That's right-favor Piggy as you always do-"
"Jack!"
"Jack's voice sounded in bitter mimicry.
"Jack! Jack!"
"The rules!" shouted Ralph. "You're breaking the rules!"
"Who cares?"
Ralph summoned his wits.
"Because the rules are the only thing we've got!"
But Jack was shouting against him.
"Bollocks to the rules! We're strong-we hunt! If there's a beast, we'll
hunt it down! Well close in and beat and beat and beat-!"
He gave a wild whoop and leapt down to the pale sand. At once the
platform was full of noise and excitement, scramblings, screams and
laughter. The assembly shredded away and became a discursive and random
scatter from the palms to the water and away along the beach, beyond
night-sight. Ralph found his cheek touching the conch and took it from
Piggy.
"What's grownups going to say?" cried Piggy again. "Look at 'em!"
The sound of mock hunting, hysterical laughter and real terror came
from the beach.
"Blow the conch, Ralph."
Piggy was so close that Ralph could see the glint of his one glass.
"There's the fire. Can't they see?"
"You got to be tough now. Make 'em do what you want."
Ralph answered in the cautious voice of one who rehearses a theorem.
"If I blow the conch and they don't come back; then we've had it. We
shan't keep the fire going. We'll be like animals. We'll never be rescued."
"If you don't blow, we'll soon be animals anyway. I can't see what
they're doing but I can hear."
The dispersed figures had come together on the sand and were a dense
black mass that revolved. They were chanting something and littluns that had
had enough were staggering away, howling. Ralph raised the conch to his lips
and then lowered it.
"The trouble is: Are there ghosts, Piggy? Or beasts?"
"Course there aren't."
"Why not?"
"'Cos things wouldn't make sense. Houses an` streets, an'-TV-they
wouldn't work."
The dancing, chanting boys had worked themselves away till their sound
was nothing but a wordless rhythm.
"But s'pose they don't make sense? Not here, on this island? Supposing
things are watching us and waiting?"
Ralph shuddered violently and moved closer to Piggy, so that they
bumped frighteningly.
"You stop talking like that! We got enough trouble, Ralph, an' I've had
as much as I can stand. If there is ghosts-"
"I ought to give up being chief. Hear 'em."
"Oh lord! Oh no!"
Piggy gripped Ralph's arm.
"If Jack was chief he'd have all hunting and no fire. We'd be here till
we died."
His voice ran up to a squeak.
"Who's that sitting there?"
"Me. Simon."
"Fat lot of good we are," said Ralph. "Three blind mice, I`ll give up."
"If you give up," said Piggy, in an appalled whisper, "what `ud happen
to me?"
"Nothing."
"He hates me. I dunno why. If he could do what he wanted-you're all
right, he respects you. Besides- you'd hit him."
"You were having a nice fight with him just now."
"I had the conch," said Piggy simply. "I had a right to speak."
Simon stirred in the dark.
"Go on being chief."
"You shut up, young Simon! Why couldn't you say there wasn't a beast?"
"I'm scared of him," said Piggy, "and that's why I know him. If you're
scared of someone you hate him but you can't stop thinking about him. You
Kid yourself he's all right really, an' then when you see him again; it's
like asthma an` you can't breathe. I tell you what. He hates you too,
Ralph-"
"Me? Why me?"
"I dunno. You got him over the fire; an` you're chief an` he isn't."
"But he's, he's, Jack Merridew!"
"I been in bed so much I done some thinking. I know about people. I
know about me. And him. He can't hurt you: but if you stand out of the way
he'd hurt the next thing. And that's me."
"Piggy's right, Ralph. There's you and Jack. Go on being chief."
"We're all drifting and things are going rotten. At home there was
always a grownup. Please, sir; please, miss; and then you got an answer. How
I wish!"
"I wish my auntie was here."
"I wish my father . . . Oh, what's the use?"
"Keep the fire going."
The dance was over and the hunters were going back to the shelters.
"Grownups know things," said Piggy. "They ain't afraid of the dark.
They'd meet and have tea and discuss. Then things 'ud be all right-"
"They wouldn't set fire to the island. Or lose-"
"They'd build a ship-"
The three boys stood in the darkness, striving unsuccessfully to convey
the majesty of adult life.
"They wouldn't quarrel-"
"Or break my specs-"
"Or talk about a beast-"
"If only they could get a message to us," cried Ralph desperately. "If
only they could send us something grown-up . . . a sign or something."
A thin wail out of the darkness chilled them and set them grabbing for
each other. Then the wail rose, remote and unearthly, and turned to an
inarticulate gibbering. Percival Wemys Madison, of the Vicarage, Harcourt
St. Anthony, lying in the long grass, was living through circumstances in
which the incantation of his address was powerless to help him.
CHAPTER SIX
Beast from Air
There was no light left save that of the stars. When they had
understood what made this ghostly noise and Percival was quiet again, Ralph
and Simon picked him up unhandily and carried him to a shelter. Piggy hung
about near for all his brave words, and the three bigger boys went