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--"
"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 hunters 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 let's 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 asleep. 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 littluns 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 littluns 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 mountaintop. 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 eyes, 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 downed 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 of yards long and eat whales whole." He paused again and 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.