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. Towards noon, as the floods of light fell more nearly to the perpendicular, the stark colours 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 rain-drops 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, among 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- coloured 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 wrong-doing. 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 the last incursion there had been none; bird droppings, insects perhaps, any of the strewn detritus of landward life. Like 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 bole; 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, a cluster of 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 centre 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 bole 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 pool at the end of the river, a tiny mere 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 half-concealed face up to Roger and answered the comprehension 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. ‘—like moths on a tree trunk.’
Roger understood and nodded gravely. The twins moved towards 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 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 mere for his reflection, but his breathing troubled the mirror.
‘Samneric. Get me a coco-nut. 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 mere, 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 towards 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 towards Bill. Bill started up laughing; then suddenly he fell silent and blundered away through the bushes.
Jack rushed towards 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 practising 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 labour. 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 that 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.
‘I 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 towards 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. Colour 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 slewed 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 right out, we’ll need them—’ He stopped shouting and swayed on his feet. Piggy was only just visible,
bumbling up from the beach. Ralph looked 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 right 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 right 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 out.’
He looked down the unfriendly side of the mountain. Piggy arrived, out of breath and whimpering like a littlun. Ralph clenched his fists and went very red. The intentness of his gaze, the bitterness of his voice pointed for him.
‘There they are.’
A procession had appeared, far down among the pink screes 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 pig’s 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 snivelled 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 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 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 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 towards 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 on 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 towards 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 behaviour. Clearly they were of the opinion that Jack had done the right 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 misbehaviour, 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 the 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 how 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 colour, while Ralph knelt and focused the glossy spot. Instantly the fire was alight Piggy held out his hand 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 dribbled. 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, almost dribbling. ‘Aren’t I having none?’
Jack had meant to leave him in doubt, as an assertion of power; but Piggy by advertising this 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, centre 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 paralysed 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 centre, 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.
