"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.
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 themlves 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--kill."
"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 we'll 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.
"They're batty."
"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 lie 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.