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
     <i>Painted Faces and Long Hair</i>

     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.
     <i>"Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood."</i>
     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."