decided that a toothbrush would come in handy too. Then there were his
nails-
Ralph turned his hand over and examined them. They were bitten down to
the quick though he could not remember when he had restarted this habit nor
any time when he indulged it.
"Be sucking my thumb next-"
He looked round, furtively. Apparently no one had heard. The hunters
sat, stuffing themselves with this easy meal, trying to convince themselves
that they got sufficient kick out of bananas and that other olive-grey,
jelly-like fruit With the memory of his sometime clean self as a standard,
Ralph looked them over. They were dirty, not with the spectacular dirt of
boys who have fallen into mud or been brought down hard on a rainy day. Not
one of them was an obvious subject for a shower, and yet-hair, much too
long, tangled here and there, knotted round a dead leaf or a twig; faces
cleaned fairly well by the process of eating and sweating but marked in the
less accessible angles with a kind of shadow; clothes, worn away, stiff like
his own with sweat, put on, not for decorum or comfort but out of custom;
the skin of the body, scurfy with brine-
He discovered with a little fall of the heart that these were the
conditions he took as normal now and that he did not mind. He sighed and
pushed away the stalk from which he had stripped the fruit. Already the
hunters were stealing away to do their business in the woods or down by the
rocks. He turned and looked out to sea.
Here, on the other side of the island, the view was utterly different.
The filmy enchantments of mirage could not endure the cold ocean water and
the horizon was hard, clipped blue. Ralph wandered down to the rocks. Down
here, almost on a level with the sea, you could follow with your eye the
ceaseless, bulging passage of the deep sea waves. They were miles wide,
apparently not breakers or the banked ridges of shallow water. They traveled
the length of the island with an air of disregarding it and being set on
other business; they were less a progress than a momentous rise and fall or
the whole ocean. Now the sea would suck down, making cascades and waterfalls
of retreating water, would sink past the rocks and plaster down the seaweed
like shining hair: then, pausing, gather and rise with a roar, irresistibly
swelling over point and outcrop, climbing the little cliff, sending at last
an arm of surf up a gully to end a yard or so from him in fingers of spray.
Wave after wave, Ralph followed the rise and fall until something of
the remoteness of the sea numbed his brain. Then gradually the almost
infinite size of this water forced itself on his attention. This was the
divider, the barrier. On the other side of the island, swathed at midday
with mirage, defended by the shield of the quiet lagoon, one might dream of
rescue; but here, faced by the brute obtuseness of the ocean, the miles of
division, one was clamped down, one was helpless, one was condemned, one
was-
Simon was speaking almost in his ear. Ralph found that he had rock
painfully gripped in both hands, found his body arched, the muscles of his
neck stiff, his mouth strained open.
"You'll get back to where you came from."
Simon nodded as he spoke. He was kneeling on one knee, looking down
from a higher rock which he held with both hands; his other leg stretched
down to Ralph's level.
Ralph was puzzled and searched Simon's face for a clue.
"It's so big, I mean-"
Simon nodded.
"All the same. You'll get back all right. I think so, anyway."
Some of the strain had gone from Ralph's body. He glanced at the sea
and then smiled bitterly at Simon.
"Got a ship in your pocket?"
Simon grinned and shook his head.
"How do you know, then?"
When Simon was still silent Ralph said curtly, "You're batty."
Simon shook his head violently till the coarse black hair flew
backwards and forwards across his face.
"No, I'm not. I just think you'll get back all right."
For a moment nothing more was said. And then they suddenly smiled at
each other.
Roger called from the coverts.
"Come and see!"
The ground was turned over near the pig-run and there were droppings
that steamed. Jack bent down to them as though he loved them.
"Ralph-we need meat even if we are hunting the other thing."
"If you mean going the right way, well hunt."
They set off again, the hunters bunched a little by fear of the
mentioned beast, while Jack quested ahead. They went more slowly than Ralph
had bargained for; yet in a way he was glad to loiter, cradling his spear.
Jack came up against some emergency of his craft and soon the procession
stopped. Ralph leaned against a tree and at once the daydreams came swarming
up. Jack was in charge of the mint and there would be time to get to the
mountain-
Once, following his father from Chatham to Devonport, they had lived in
a cottage on the edge of the moors. In the succession of houses that Ralph
had known, this one stood out with particular clarity because after that
house he had been sent away to school. Mummy had still been with them and
Daddy had come home every day. Wild ponies came to the stone wall at the
bottom of the garden, and it had snowed. Just behind the cottage there was a
sort of shed and you could lie up there, watching the flakes swirl past You
could see the damp spot where each flake died, then you could mark the first
flake that lay down without melting and watch the whole ground turn white.
You could go indoors when you were cold and look out of the window, past
that bright copper kettle and the plate with the little blue men.
When you went to bed there was a bowl of cornflakes with sugar and
cream. And the books-they stood on the shelf by the bed, leaning together
with always two or three laid flat on top because he had not bothered to put
them back properly. They were dog-eared and scratched. There was the bright,
shining one about Topsy and Mopsy that he never read because it was about
two girls; there was the one about the magician which you read with a kind
of tied-down terror, skipping page twenty-seven with the awful picture of
the spider; there was a book about people who had dug things up, Egyptian
things; there was The Boy's Book of Trains, The Boy's Book of Ships. Vividly
they came before him; he could have reached up and touched them, could feel
the weight and slow slide with which The Mammoth Book for Boys would come
out and slither down. . . . Everything was all right; everything was
good-humored and friendly.
The bushes crashed ahead of them. Boys flung themselves wildly from the
pig track and scrabbled in the creepers, screaming. Ralph saw Jack nudged
aside and fall. Then there was a creature bounding along the pig track
toward him, with tusks gleaming and an intimidating grunt. Ralph found he
was able to measure the distance coldly and take aim. With the boar only
five yards away, he flung the foolish wooden stick that he carried, saw it
hit the great snout and hang there for a moment. The boar's note changed to
a squeal and it swerved aside into the covert. The pig-run filled with
shouting boys again, Jack came running back, and poked about in the
undergrowth.
Through here-"
"But he'd do us!"
"Through here, I said-"
The boar was floundering away from them. They found another pig-run
parallel to the first and Jack raced away. Ralph was lull of night and
apprehension and pride.
"I hit him! The spear stuck in-"
Now they came, unexpectedly, to an open space by the sea. Jack cast
about on the bare rock and looked anxious.
"He's gone."
"I hit him," said Ralph again, "and the spear stuck in a bit."
He felt the need of witnesses.
"Didn't you see me?"
Maurice nodded.
"I saw you. Right bang on his snout- Wheee!"
Ralph talked on, excitedly.
"I hit him all right The spear stuck in. I wounded him!"
He sunned himself in their new respect and felt that hunting was good
after all.
"I walloped him properly. That was the beast, I think!" Jack came back.
"That wasn't the beast That was a boar."
"I bit him."
"Why didn't you grab him? I tried-"
Ralph's voice ran up.
"But a boar!"
Jack flushed suddenly.
"You said he'd do us. What did you want to throw for? Why didn't you
wait?"
He held out his arm.
"Look."
He turned his left forearm for them all to see. On the outside was a
rip; not much, but bloody. . "He did mat with his tusks. I couldn't get my
spear down in time."
Attention focused on Jack.
"That's a wound," said Simon, "and you ought to suck it Like
Berengaria."
Jack sucked.
"I hit him," said Ralph indignantly. "I bit him with my spear, I
wounded him."
He tried for their attention.
"He was coming along the path. I threw, like this-"
Robert snarled at him. Ralph entered into the play and everybody
laughed. Presently they were all jabbing at Robert who made mock rushes.
Jack shouted.
"Make a ring!"
The circle moved in and round. Robert squealed in mock terror, then in
real pain.
"Ow! Stop it! You're hurting!"
The butt end of a spear fell on his back as he blundered among them.
"Hold him!"
They got his arms and legs. Ralph, carried away by a sudden thick
excitement, grabbed Eric's spear and jabbed at Robert with it.
"Kill him! Kill him!"
All at once, Robert was screaming and struggling with the strength of
frenzy. Jack had him by the hair and was brandishing his knife. Behind him
was Roger, fighting to get close. The chant rose ritually, as at the last
moment of a dance or a hunt.
"Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!"
Ralph too was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown,
vulnerable flesh. The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.
Jack's arm came down; the heaving circle cheered and made pig-dying
noises. Then they lay quiet, panting, listening to Robert's frightened
snivels. He wiped his face with a dirty arm, and made an effort to retrieve
his status.
"Oh, my bum!"
He rubbed his rump ruefully. Jack rolled over.
"That was a good game."
"Just a game," said Ralph uneasily. "I got jolly badly hurt at rugger
once."
"We ought to have a drum," said Maurice, "then we could do it
properly."
Ralph looked at him.
"How properly?"
"I dunno. You want a fire, I think, and a drum, and you keep time to
the drum."
"You want a pig," said Roger, "Like in a real hunt."
"Or someone to pretend," said Jack. "You could get someone to dress up
as a pig and then he could act-you know, pretend to knock me over and all
that."
"You want a real pig," said Robert, still caressing his rump, "because
you've got to kill him."
"Use a littlun," said Jack, and everybody laughed.
Ralph sat up.
"Well. We shan't find what we're looking for at this rate."
One by one they stood up, twitching rags into place.
Ralph looked at Jack.
"Now for the mountain."
"Shouldn't we go back to Piggy," said Maurice, "before dark?"
The twins nodded like one boy.
"Yes, that's right. Let's go up there in the morning."
Ralph looked out and saw the sea.
"We've got to start the fire again."
"You haven't got Piggy's specs," said Jack, "so you can't."
"Then we'll find out if the mountain's clear."
Maurice spoke, hesitating, not wanting to seem a funk.
"Supposing the beast's up there?"
Jack brandished his spear.
"We`1l kill it."
The sun seemed a little cooler. He slashed with the spear.
"What are we waiting for?"
"I suppose," said Ralph, "if we keep on by the sea this way, well come
out below the burnt bit and then we can climb the mountain."
Once more Jack led them along by the suck and heave of the blinding
sea.
Once more Ralph dreamed, letting his skillful feet deal with the
difficulties of the path. Yet here his feet seemed less skillful than
before. For most of the way they were forced right down to the bare rock by
the water and had to edge along between that and the dark luxuriance of the
forest There were little cliffs to be scaled, some to be used as paths,
lengthy traverses where one used hands as well as feet. Here and there they
could clamber over wave-wet rock, leaping across clear pools that the tide
had left. They came to a gully that split the narrow foreshore like a
defense. This seemed to have no bottom and they peered awe-stricken into the
gloomy crack where water gurgled. Then the wave came back, the gully boiled
before them and spray dashed up to the very creeper so that the boys were
wet and shrieking. They tried the forest but ft was thick and woven like a
bird's nest In the end they had to jump one by one, waiting till the water
sank; and even so, some of them got a second drenching. After that the rocks
seemed to be growing impassable so they sat for a time, letting their rags
dry and watching the clipped outlines of the rollers that moved so slowly
past the island. They found fruit in a haunt of bright little birds that
hovered like insects. Then Ralph said they were going too slowly. He himself
climbed a tree and parted the canopy, and saw the square head of the
mountain seeming still a great way off. Then they tried to hurry along the
rocks and Robert cut his knee quite badly and they had to recognize that
this path must be taken slowly if they were to be safe. So they proceeded
after that as if they were climbing a dangerous mountain, until the rocks
became an uncompromising cliff, overhung with impossible jungle and falling
sheer into the sea.
Ralph looked at the sun critically.
"Early evening. After tea-time, at any rate."
"I don't remember this cliff," said Jack, crestfallen, "so this must be
the bit of the coast I missed."
Ralph nodded.
"Let me think."
By now, Ralph had no self-consciousness in public thinking but would
treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble
was that he would never be a very good chess player. He thought of the
littluns and Piggy. Vividly he imagined Piggy by himself, huddled in a
shelter that was silent except for the sounds of nightmare.
"We can't leave the littluns alone with Piggy. Not all night."
The other boys said nothing but stood round, watching him.
"If we went back we should take hours."
Jack cleared his throat and spoke in a queer, tight voice.
"We mustn't let anything happen to Piggy, must we?"
Ralph tapped his teeth with the dirty point of Eric's spear.
"If we go across-"
He glanced round him.
"Someone's got to go across the island and tell Piggy we'll be back
after dark."
Bill spoke, unbelieving.
"Through the forest by himself? Now?"
"We can't spare more than one."
Simon pushed his way to Ralph's elbow.
"I'll go if you like. I don't mind, honestly."
Before Ralph had time to reply, he smiled quickly, turned and climbed
into the forest
Ralph looked back at Jack, seeing him, infuriatingly, for the first
time.
"Jack-that time you went the whole way to the castle rock."
Jack glowered.
"Yes?"
"You came alone part of this shore-below the mountain, beyond there."
"Yes."
"And then?"
"I found a pig-run. It went for miles."
"So the pig-run must be somewhere in there."
Ralph nodded. He pointed at the forest
Everybody agreed, sagely.
"All right then. We'll smash a way through till we find the pig-run."
He took a step and halted.
"Wait a minute though! Where does the pig-run go to?"
"The mountain," said Jack, "I told you. He sneered. "Don't you want to
go to the mountain?"
Ralph sighed, sensing the rising antagonism, understanding that this
was how Jack felt as soon as he ceased to lead.
"I was thinking of the light. We'll be stumbling about."
"We were going to look for the beast."
"There won't be enough light."
"I don't mind going, said Jack hotly. "Ill go when we get there. Won't
you? Would you rather go back to the shelters and tell Piggy?"
Now it was Ralph's turn to flush but he spoke despairingly, out of the
new understanding that Piggy had given him.
"Why do you hate me?"
The boys stirred uneasily, as though something indecent had been said.
The silence lengthened.
Ralph, still hot and hurt, turned away first.
"Come on."
He led the way and set himself as by right to hack at the tangles. Jack
brought up the rear, displaced and brooding.
The pig-track was a dark tunnel, for the sun was sliding quickly toward
the edge of the world and in the forest shadows were never-far to seek. The
track was broad and beaten and they ran along at a swift trot, Then the roof
of leaves broke up and they halted, breathing quickly, looking at the few
stars that pricked round the head of the mountain.
"There you are."
The boys peered at each other doubtfully. Ralph made a decision.
"We'll go straight across to the platform and climb tomorrow."
They murmured agreement; but Jack was standing by his shoulder.
"If you're frightened of course-"
Ralph turned on him.
"Who went first on the castle rock?"
"I went too. And that was daylight."
"All right. Who wants to climb the mountain now?"
Silence was the only answer.
"Samneric? What about you?"
"We ought to go an' tell Piggy-"
"-yes, tell Piggy that-"
"But Simon went!"
"We ought to tell Piggy-in case-"
"Robert? Bill?"
They were going straight back to the platform now. Not, of course, that
they were afraid-but tired.
Ralph turned back to Jack.
"You see?"
"I'm going up the mountain." The words came from Jack viciously, as
though they were a curse. He looked at Ralph, his thin body tensed, his
spear held as if he threatened him.
"I'm going up the mountain to look for the beast-now." Then the supreme
sting, the casual, bitter, word. "Coming?"
At that word the other boys forgot their urge to be gone and turned
back to sample this fresh rub of two spirits in the dark. The word was too
good, too bitter, too successfully daunting to be repeated. It took Ralph at
low water when his nerve was relaxed for the return to the shelter and the
still, friendly waters of the lagoon.
"I don't mind."
Astonished, he heard his voice come out, cool and casual, so that the
bitterness of Jack's taunt fell powerless.
"If you don't mind, of course."
"Oh, not at all."
Jack took a step.
"Well then-"
Side by side, watched by silent boys, the two started up the mountain.
Ralph stopped.
"We're silly. Why should only two go? If we find anything, two won't be
enough."
There came the sound of boys scuttling away. Astonishingly, a dark
figure moved against the tide.
"Roger?"
"Yes."
"That's three, then."
Once more they set out to climb the slope of the mountain. The darkness
seemed to flow round them like a tide. Jack, who had said nothing, began to
choke and cough, and a gust of wind set all three spluttering. Ralph's eyes
were blinded with tears.
"Ashes. We're on the edge of the burnt patch."
Their footsteps and the occasional breeze were stirring up small devils
of dust. Now that they stopped again, Ralph had time while he coughed to
remember how silly they were. If there was no beast-and almost certainly
there was no beast-in tiiat case, well and good; but if there was something
waiting on top of the mountain-what was the use of three of them,
handicapped by the darkness and carrying only sticks?
"We're being fools."
Out of the darkness came the answer.
"Windy?"
Irritably Ralph shook himself. This was all Jack's fault
" 'Course I am. But we're still being fools."
"If you don't want to go on," said the voice sarcastically,
Ralph heard the mockery and hated Jack. The sting of ashes in his eyes,
tiredness, fear, enraged him. "Go on then! We'll wait here." There was
silence.
"Why don't you go? Are you frightened?"
A stain in the darkness, a stain that was Jack, detached itself and
began to draw away. "All right. So long."
The stain vanished. Another took its place.
Ralph felt his knee against something hard and rocked a charred trunk
that was edgy to the touch. He felt the sharp cinders that had been bark
push against the back of his knee and knew that Roger had sat down. He felt
with his hands and lowered himself beside Roger, while the trunk rocked
among invisible ashes. Roger, uncommunicative by nature, said nothing. He
offered no opinion on the beast nor told Ralph why he had chosen to come on
this mad expedition. He simply sat and rocked the trunk gently. Ralph
noticed a rapid and infuriating tapping noise and realized that Roger was
banging his silly wooden stick against something.
So they sat, the rocking, tapping, impervious Roger and Ralph, fuming;
round them the close sky was loaded with stars, save where the mountain
punched up a hole of blackness.
There was a slithering noise high above them, the sound of someone
taking giant and dangerous strides on rock or ash. Then Jack found them, and
was shivering and croaking in a voice they could just recognize as his.
"I saw a thing on top."
They heard him blunder against the trunk which rocked violently. He lay
silent for a moment, then muttered.
"Keep a good lookout. It may be following."
A shower of ash pattered round them. Jack sat up.
"I saw a thing bulge on the mountain."
"You only imagined it," said Ralph shakily, "because nothing would
bulge. Not any sort of creature."
Roger spoke; they jumped, for they had forgotten him.
"A frog."
Jack giggled and shuddered.
"Some frog. There was a noise too. A kind of 'plop' noise. Then the
thing bulged."
Ralph surprised himself, not so much by the quality of his voice, which
was even, but by the bravado of its intention.
"We'll go and look."
For the first time since he had first known Jack, Ralph could feel him
hesitate.
"Now-?"
His voice spoke for him.
"Of course."
He got off the trunk and led the way across the clinking cinders up
into the dark, and the others followed.
Now that his physical voice was silent the inner voice of reason, and
other voices too, made themselves heard. Piggy was calling him a kid.
Another voice told him not to be a fool; and the darkness and desperate
enterprise gave the night a kind of dentist's chair unreality.
As they came to the last slope, Jack and Roger drew near, changed from
the ink-stains to distinguishable figures. By common consent they stopped
and crouched together. Behind them, on the horizon, was a patch of lighter
sky where in a moment the moon would rise. The wind roared once in the
forest and pushed their rags against them.
Ralph stirred.
"Come on."
They crept forward, Roger lagging a little. Jack and Ralph turned the
shoulder of the mountain together. The glittering lengths of the lagoon lay
below them and beyond that a long white smudge that was the reef. Roger
joined them.
Jack whispered.
"Let's creep forward on hands and knees. Maybe it's asleep."
Roger and Ralph moved on, this time leaving Jack in the rear, for all
his brave words. They came to the fiat top where the rock was hard to hands
and knees. A creature that bulged.
Ralph put his hand in the cold, soft ashes of the fire and smothered a
cry. His hand and shoulder were twitching from the unlooked-for contact.
Green lights of nausea appeared for a moment and ate into the darkness.
Roger lay behind him and Jack's mouth was at his ear.
"Over there, where there used to be a gap in the rock. A sort of
hump-see?"
Ashes blew into Ralph's face from the dead fire. He could not see the
gap or anything else, because the green lights were opening again and
growing, and the top of the mountain was sliding sideways.
Once more, from a distance, he heard Jack's whisper.
"Scared?"
Not scared so much as paralyzed; hung up here immovable on the top of a
diminishing, moving mountain. Jack slid away from him, Roger bumped, fumbled
with a hiss of breath, and passed onwards. He heard them whispering.
"Can you see anything?"
"There-"
In front of them, only three or four yards away, was a rock-like hump
where no rock should be. Ralph could hear a tiny chattering noise coming
from somewhere-perhaps from his own mouth. He bound himself together with
his will, fused his fear and loathing into a hatred, and stood up. He took
two leaden steps forward.
Behind them the sliver of moon had drawn dear of the horizon. Before
them, something like a great ape was sitting asleep with its head between
its knees. Then the wind roared in the forest, there was confusion in the
darkness and the creature lifted its head, holding toward them the ruin of a
face.
Ralph found himself taking giant strides among the ashes, heard other
creatures crying out and leaping and dared the impossible on the dark slope;
presently the mountain was deserted, save for the three abandoned sticks and
the thing that bowed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Gift for the Darkness
Piggy looked up miserably from the dawn-pale beach to the dark
mountain. "Are you sure? Really sure, I mean?"
"I told you a dozen times now," said Ralph, "we saw it."
"D'you think we're safe down here?"
"How the hell should I know?"
Ralph jerked away from him and walked a few paces along the beach. Jack
was kneeling and drawing a circular pattern in the sand with his forefinger.
Piggy's voice came to them, hushed.
"Are you sure? Really?"
"Go up and see," said Jack contemptuously, "and good riddance."
"No fear."
"The beast had teeth," said Ralph, "and big black eyes."
He shuddered violently. Piggy took off his one round of glass and
polished the surface.
"What we going to do?"
Ralph turned toward the platform. The conch glimmered among the trees,
a white blob against the place where the sun would rise. He pushed back his
mop.
"I don't know."
He remembered the panic flight down the mountainside.
"I don't think we'd ever fight a thing that size, honestly, you know.
We'd talk but we wouldn't fight a tiger. We'd hide. Even Jack 'ud hide."
Jack still looked at the sand.
"What about my hunters?"
Simon came stealing out of the shadows by the shelters. Ralph ignored
Jack's question. He pointed to the touch of yellow above the sea.
"As long as there's light we're brave enough. But then? And now that
thing squats by the fire as though it didn't want us to be rescued-"
He was twisting his hands now, unconsciously. His voice rose.
"So we can't have a signal fire. . . . We're beaten."
A point of gold appeared above the sea and at once all the sky
lightened.
"What about my hunters?"
"Boys armed with sticks."
Jack got to his feet. His face was red as he marched away. Piggy put on
his one glass and looked at Ralph.
"Now you done it. You been rude about his hunters."
"Oh shut up!"
The sound of the inexpertly blown conch interrupted them. As though he
were serenading the rising sun, Jack went on blowing till the shelters were
astir and the hunters crept to the platform and the littluns whimpered as
now they so frequently did. Ralph rose obediently, and Piggy, and they went
to the platform.
"Talk," said Ralph bitterly, "talk, talk, talk."
He took the conch from Jack.
"This meeting-"
Jack interrupted him.
"I called it."
"If you hadn't called it I should have. You just blew the conch."
"Well, isn't that calling it?"
"Oh, take it! Go on-talk!"
Ralph thrust the conch into Jack's arms and sat down on the trunk.
"I've called an assembly," said Jack, "because of a lot of things.
First, you know now, we've seen the beast. We crawled up. We were only a few
feet away. The beast sat up and looked at us. I don't know what it does. We
don't even know what it is-"
"The beast comes out of the sea-"
"Out of the dark-"
"Trees-"
"Quiet!" shouted Jack. "You, listen. The beast is sitting up there,
whatever it is--"
"Perhaps it's waiting-"
"Hunting-"
"Yes, hunting."
"Hunting," said Jack. He remembered his age-old tremors in the forest.
"Yes. The beast is a hunter. Only- shut up! The next thing is that we
couldn't kill it. And the next thing is that Ralph said my hunters are no
good."
"I never said that!"
"I've got the conch. Ralph thinks you're cowards, running away from the
boar and the beast. And that's not all."
There was a kind of sigh on the platform as if everyone knew what was
coming. Jack's voice went on, tremulous yet determined, pushing against the
uncooperative silence.
"He's like Piggy. He says things like Piggy. He isn't a proper chief."
Jack clutched the conch to him.
"He's a coward himself."
For a moment he paused and then went on.
"On top, when Roger and me went on-he stayed back."
"I went too!"
"After."
The two boys glared at each other through screens of hair.
"I went on too," said Ralph, "then I ran away. So did you."
"Call me a coward then."
Jack turned to the hunters.
He's not a hunter. He'd never have got us meat He isn't a prefect and
we don't know anything about him. He just gives orders and expects people to
obey for nothing. All this talk-"
"All this talk!" shouted Ralph. "Talk, talk! Who wanted it? Who called
the meeting?"
Jack turned, red in the face, his chin sunk back. He glowered up under
his eyebrows.
"All right then," he said in tones of deep meaning, and menace, all
right."
He held the conch against his chest with one hand and stabbed the air
with his index finger.
"Who thinks Ralph oughtn't to be chief?"
He looked expectantly at the boys ranged round, who had frozen. Under
the palms there was deadly silence.
"Hands up," said Jack strongly, "whoever wants Ralph not to be chief?"
The silence continued, breathless and heavy and full of shame. Slowly
the red drained from Jack's cheeks, then came back with a painful rush. He
licked his lips and turned his head at an angle, so that his gaze avoided
the embarrassment of linking with another's eye.
"How many think-"
His voice tailed off. The hands that held the conch shook. He cleared
his throat, and spoke loudly.
"All right then."
He laid the conch with great care in the grass at his feet. The
humiliating tears were running from the comer of each eye.
"I'm not going to play any longer. Not with you."
Most of the boys were looking down now, at the grass or their feet.
Jack cleared his throat again.
"I'm not going to be part of Ralph's lot-"
He looked along the right-hand logs, numbering the hunters that had
been a choir.
"I'm going off by myself. He can catch his own pigs. Anyone who wants
to hunt when I do can come too."
He blundered out of the triangle toward the drop to the white sand.
"Jack!"
Jack turned and looked back at Ralph. For a moment he paused and then
cried out, high-pitched, enraged.
"No!"
He leapt down from the platform and ran along the beach, paying no heed
to the steady fall of his tears; and until he dived into the forest Ralph
watched him.
Piggy was indignant.
"I been talking, Ralph, and you just stood there like-"
Softly, looking at Piggy and not seeing him, Ralph spoke to himself.
"He'll come back. When the sun goes down he'll come." He looked at the
conch in Piggy's hand.
"What?"
"Well there!"
Piggy gave up the attempt to rebuke Ralph. He polished his glass again
and went back to his subject.
"We can do without Jack Merridew. There's others besides him on this
island. But now we really got a beast, though I can't hardly believe it,
well need to stay close to the platform; there'll be less need of him and
his hunting. So now we can really decide on what's what."
"There's no help, Piggy. Nothing to be done."
For a while they sat in depressed silence. Then Simon stood up and took
the conch from Piggy, who was so astonished that he zremained on his feet.
Ralph looked up at Simon.
"Simon? What is it this time?"
A half-sound of jeering ran round the circle and Simon shrank from it.
"I thought there might be something to do. Something we-"
Again die pressure of the assembly took his voice away. He sought for
help and sympathy and chose Piggy. He turned half toward him, clutching the
conch to his brown chest
"I think we ought to climb the mountain."
The circle shivered with dread. Simon broke off and turned to Piggy who
was looking at him with an expression of derisive incomprehension.
"What's the good of climbing up to this here beast when Ralph and the
other two couldn't do nothing?"
Simon whispered his answer.
"What else is there to do?"
His speech made, he allowed Piggy to lift the conch out of his hands.
Then he retired and sat as far away from the others as possible.
Piggy was speaking now with more assurance and with what, if the
circumstances had- not been so serious, the others would have recognized as
pleasure.
"I said we could all do without a certain person. Now I say we got to
decide on what can be done. And I think I could tell you what Ralph's going
to say next. The most important thing on the island is the smoke and you
can't have no smoke without a fire."
Ralph made a restless movement.
"No go, Piggy. We've got no fire. That thing sits up there-we'll have
to stay here."
Piggy lifted the conch as though to add power to his next words.
"We got no fire on the mountain. But what's wrong with a fire down
here? A fire could be built on them rocks. On the sand, even. We'd make
smoke just the same."
"That's right!"
"Smoke!"
"By the bathing pool!"
The boys began to babble. Only Piggy could have the intellectual daring
to suggest moving the fire from the mountain.
"So well have the fire down here," said Ralph. He looked about him. "We
can build it just here between the bathing pool and the platform. Of
course-"
He broke off, frowning, thinking the thing out, unconsciously tugging
at the stub of a nail with his teeth.
"Of course the smoke won't show so much, not be seen so far away. But
we needn't go near, near the-"
The others nodded in perfect comprehension. There would be no need to
go near.
"We'll build the fire now."
The greatest ideas are the simplest Now there was something to be done
they worked with passion. Piggy was so full of delight and expanding liberty
in Jack's departure, so full of pride in his contribution to the good of
society, that he helped to fetch wood. The wood he fetched was close at
hand, a fallen tree on the platform that they did not need for the assembly,
yet to the others the sanctity of the platform had protected even what was
useless there. Then the twins realized they would have a fire near them as a
comfort in the night and this set a few littluns dancing and clapping hands.
The wood was not so dry as the fuel they had used on the mountain. Much
of it was damply rotten and full of insects that scurried; logs had to be
lined from the soil with care or they crumbled into sodden powder. More than
this, in order to avoid going deep into the forest the boys worked near at
hand on any fallen wood no matter how tangled with new growth. The skirts of
the forest and the scar were familiar, near the conch and the shelters and
sufficiently friendly in daylight. What they might become in darkness nobody
cared to think. They worked therefore with great energy and cheerfulness,
though as time crept by there was a suggestion of panic in the energy and
hysteria in the cheerfulness. They built a pyramid of leaves and twigs,
branches and togs, on the bare sand by the platform. For the first time on
the island, Piggy himself removed his one glass, knelt down and focused the
sun on tinder. Soon there was a ceiling of smoke and a bush of yellow flame.
The littluns who had seen few fires since the first catastrophe became
wildly excited. They danced and sang and there was a partyish air about the
gathering.
At last Ralph stopped work and stood up, smudging the sweat from his
face with a dirty forearm.
"We'll have to have a small fire. This one's too big to keep up."
Piggy sat down carefully on the sand and began to polish his glass.
"We could experiment. We could find out how to make a small hot fire
and then put green branches on to make smoke. Some of them leaves must be
better for that than the others."
As the fire died down so did the excitement The littluns stopped
singing and dancing and drifted away toward the sea or the fruit trees or
the shelters.
Ralph flopped down in the sand.
"We'll have to make a new list of who's to took after the fire."
"If you can find 'em."
He looked round. Then for the first time he saw how few biguns there
were and understood why the work had been so hard.
"Where's Maurice?"
Piggy wiped his glass again.
"I expect ... no, he wouldn't go into the forest by himself, would he?"
Ralph jumped up, ran swiftly round the fire- and stood by Piggy,
holding up his hair.
"But we've got to have a list! There's you and me and Samneric and-"
He would not look at Piggy but spoke casually.
"Where's Bill and Roger?"
Piggy leaned forward and put a fragment of wood on the fire.
"I expect they've gone. I expect they won't play either."
Ralph sat down and began to poke little holes in the sand. He was
surprised to see that one had a drop of blood by it He examined his bitten
nail closely and watched the little globe of blood that gathered where the
quick was gnawed away.
Piggy went on speaking.
"I seen them stealing off when we was gathering wood. They went that
way. The same way as he went himself."
Ralph finished his inspection and looked up into the air. The sky, as
if in sympathy with the great changes among them, was different today and so
misty that in some places the hot air seemed white. The disc of the sun was
dull silver as though it were nearer and not so hot, yet the air stifled.
"They always been making trouble, haven't they?"
The voice came near his shoulder and sounded anxious.
"We can do without 'em. We'll be happier now, won't we?"
Ralph sat. The twins came, dragging a great log and grinning in their
triumph. They dumped the log among the embers so that sparks flew.
"We can do all right on our own, can't we?"
For a long time while the log dried, caught fire and turned red hot,
Ralph sat in the sand and said nothing. He did not see Piggy go to the twins
and whisper with them, nor how the three boys went together into the forest.
"Here you are."
He came to himself with a jolt. Piggy and the other two were by him.
They were laden with fruit
"I thought perhaps," said Piggy, "we ought to have a feast, kind of."
The three boys sat down. They had a great mass of the fruit with them
and all of it properly ripe. They grinned at Ralph as he took some and began
to eat.
'Thanks," he said. Then with an accent of pleased surprise-"Thanks!"
"Do all right on our own," said Piggy. "It's them that haven't no
common sense that make trouble on this island. We'll make a little hot
fire-"
Ralph remembered what had been worrying him.
"Where's Simon?"
"I don't know."
"You don't think he's climbing the mountain?"
Piggy broke into noisy laughter and took more fruit.
"He might be." He gulped his mouthful. "He's cracked."
Simon had passed through the area of fruit trees but today the littluns
had been too busy with the fire on the beach and they had not pursued him
there. He went on among the creepers until he reached the great mat that was
woven by the open space and crawled inside. Beyond the screen of leaves the
sunlight pelted down and the butterflies danced in the middle their unending
dance. He knelt down and the arrow of the sun fell on him. That other time
the air had seemed to vibrate with heat; but now it threatened. Soon the
sweat was running from his long coarse hair. He shifted restlessly but there
was no avoiding the sun. Presently he was thirsty, and then very thirsty.
He continued to sit
Far off alone the beach, Jack was standing before a small group of
boys. He was looking brilliantly happy.
"Hunting," he said. He sized them up. Each of them wore the remains of
a black cap and ages ago they had stood in two demure rows and their voices
had been the song of angels.
"We'll hunt. I'm going to be chief."
They nodded, and the crisis passed easily.
"And then-about the beast."
They moved, looked at the forest.
"I say this. We aren't going to bother about the beast."
He nodded at them.
"We're going to forget the beast."
"That's right!"
"Yes!"
"Forget the beast!"
If Jack was astonished by their fervor he did not show it.
"And another thing. We shan't dream so much down here. This is near the
end of the island."
They agreed passionately out of the depths of their tormented private
lives.
"Now listen. We might go later to the castle rock. But now I'm going to
get more of the biguns away from the conch and all that We'll kill a pig and
give a feast." He paused and went on more slowly. "And about the beast When
we kill we'll leave some of the kill for it. Then it won't bother us,
maybe."
He stood up abruptly.
"We'll go into the forest now and hunt."
He turned and trotted away and after a moment they followed him
obediently.
They spread out, nervously, in the forest. Almost at once Jack found
the dung and scattered roots that told of pig and soon the track was fresh.
Jack signaled the rest of the hunt to be quiet and went forward by himself.
He was happy and wore the damp darkness of the forest like his old clothes.
He crept down a slope to rocks and scattered trees by the sea.
The pigs lay, bloated bags of fat, sensuously enjoying the shadows
under the trees. There was no wind and they were unsuspicious; and practice
had made Jack silent as the shadows. He stole away again and instructed his
hidden hunters. Presently they all began to inch forward sweating in the
silence and heat. Under the trees an ear flapped idly. A little apart from
the rest, sunk in deep maternal bliss, lay the largest sow of the lot. She
was black and pink; and the great bladder of her belly was fringed with a
row of piglets that slept or burrowed and squeaked.
Fifteen yards from the drove Jack stopped, and his arm, straightening,
pointed at the sow. he looked round in inquiry to make sure that everyone
understood and the other boys nodded at him. The row of right arms slid
back.
"Now!"
The drove of pigs started up; and at a range of only ten yards the
wooden spears with fire-hardened points flew toward the chosen pig. One
piglet, with a demented shriek, rushed into the sea trailing Roger's spear
behind it. The sow gave a gasping squeal and staggered up, with two spears
sticking in her fat flank. The boys shouted and rushed forward, the piglets
scattered and the sow burst the advancing line and went crashing away
through the forest.
"After her!"
They raced along the pig-track, but the forest was too dark and tangled
so that Jack, cursing, stopped them and cast among the trees. Then he said
nothing for a time but breathed fiercely so that they were awed by him and
looked at each other in uneasy admiration. Presently he stabbed down at the
ground with his finger.
"There-"
Before the others could examine the drop of blood, Jack had swerved
off, judging a trace, .touching a bough that gave. So he followed,
mysteriously right and assured, and the hunters trod behind him.
He stopped before a covert.
"In there."
They surrounded the covert but the sow got away with the sting of
another spear in her flank. The trailing butts hindered her and the sharp,
cross-cut points were a torment She blundered into a tree, forcing a spear
still deeper; and after that any of the hunters could follow her easily by
the drops of vivid blood. The afternoon wore on, hazy and dreadful with damp
heat; the sow staggered her way ahead of them, bleeding and mad, and the
hunters followed, wedded to her in lust, excited by the long chase and the
dropped blood. They could see her now, nearly got up with her, out she
nails-
Ralph turned his hand over and examined them. They were bitten down to
the quick though he could not remember when he had restarted this habit nor
any time when he indulged it.
"Be sucking my thumb next-"
He looked round, furtively. Apparently no one had heard. The hunters
sat, stuffing themselves with this easy meal, trying to convince themselves
that they got sufficient kick out of bananas and that other olive-grey,
jelly-like fruit With the memory of his sometime clean self as a standard,
Ralph looked them over. They were dirty, not with the spectacular dirt of
boys who have fallen into mud or been brought down hard on a rainy day. Not
one of them was an obvious subject for a shower, and yet-hair, much too
long, tangled here and there, knotted round a dead leaf or a twig; faces
cleaned fairly well by the process of eating and sweating but marked in the
less accessible angles with a kind of shadow; clothes, worn away, stiff like
his own with sweat, put on, not for decorum or comfort but out of custom;
the skin of the body, scurfy with brine-
He discovered with a little fall of the heart that these were the
conditions he took as normal now and that he did not mind. He sighed and
pushed away the stalk from which he had stripped the fruit. Already the
hunters were stealing away to do their business in the woods or down by the
rocks. He turned and looked out to sea.
Here, on the other side of the island, the view was utterly different.
The filmy enchantments of mirage could not endure the cold ocean water and
the horizon was hard, clipped blue. Ralph wandered down to the rocks. Down
here, almost on a level with the sea, you could follow with your eye the
ceaseless, bulging passage of the deep sea waves. They were miles wide,
apparently not breakers or the banked ridges of shallow water. They traveled
the length of the island with an air of disregarding it and being set on
other business; they were less a progress than a momentous rise and fall or
the whole ocean. Now the sea would suck down, making cascades and waterfalls
of retreating water, would sink past the rocks and plaster down the seaweed
like shining hair: then, pausing, gather and rise with a roar, irresistibly
swelling over point and outcrop, climbing the little cliff, sending at last
an arm of surf up a gully to end a yard or so from him in fingers of spray.
Wave after wave, Ralph followed the rise and fall until something of
the remoteness of the sea numbed his brain. Then gradually the almost
infinite size of this water forced itself on his attention. This was the
divider, the barrier. On the other side of the island, swathed at midday
with mirage, defended by the shield of the quiet lagoon, one might dream of
rescue; but here, faced by the brute obtuseness of the ocean, the miles of
division, one was clamped down, one was helpless, one was condemned, one
was-
Simon was speaking almost in his ear. Ralph found that he had rock
painfully gripped in both hands, found his body arched, the muscles of his
neck stiff, his mouth strained open.
"You'll get back to where you came from."
Simon nodded as he spoke. He was kneeling on one knee, looking down
from a higher rock which he held with both hands; his other leg stretched
down to Ralph's level.
Ralph was puzzled and searched Simon's face for a clue.
"It's so big, I mean-"
Simon nodded.
"All the same. You'll get back all right. I think so, anyway."
Some of the strain had gone from Ralph's body. He glanced at the sea
and then smiled bitterly at Simon.
"Got a ship in your pocket?"
Simon grinned and shook his head.
"How do you know, then?"
When Simon was still silent Ralph said curtly, "You're batty."
Simon shook his head violently till the coarse black hair flew
backwards and forwards across his face.
"No, I'm not. I just think you'll get back all right."
For a moment nothing more was said. And then they suddenly smiled at
each other.
Roger called from the coverts.
"Come and see!"
The ground was turned over near the pig-run and there were droppings
that steamed. Jack bent down to them as though he loved them.
"Ralph-we need meat even if we are hunting the other thing."
"If you mean going the right way, well hunt."
They set off again, the hunters bunched a little by fear of the
mentioned beast, while Jack quested ahead. They went more slowly than Ralph
had bargained for; yet in a way he was glad to loiter, cradling his spear.
Jack came up against some emergency of his craft and soon the procession
stopped. Ralph leaned against a tree and at once the daydreams came swarming
up. Jack was in charge of the mint and there would be time to get to the
mountain-
Once, following his father from Chatham to Devonport, they had lived in
a cottage on the edge of the moors. In the succession of houses that Ralph
had known, this one stood out with particular clarity because after that
house he had been sent away to school. Mummy had still been with them and
Daddy had come home every day. Wild ponies came to the stone wall at the
bottom of the garden, and it had snowed. Just behind the cottage there was a
sort of shed and you could lie up there, watching the flakes swirl past You
could see the damp spot where each flake died, then you could mark the first
flake that lay down without melting and watch the whole ground turn white.
You could go indoors when you were cold and look out of the window, past
that bright copper kettle and the plate with the little blue men.
When you went to bed there was a bowl of cornflakes with sugar and
cream. And the books-they stood on the shelf by the bed, leaning together
with always two or three laid flat on top because he had not bothered to put
them back properly. They were dog-eared and scratched. There was the bright,
shining one about Topsy and Mopsy that he never read because it was about
two girls; there was the one about the magician which you read with a kind
of tied-down terror, skipping page twenty-seven with the awful picture of
the spider; there was a book about people who had dug things up, Egyptian
things; there was The Boy's Book of Trains, The Boy's Book of Ships. Vividly
they came before him; he could have reached up and touched them, could feel
the weight and slow slide with which The Mammoth Book for Boys would come
out and slither down. . . . Everything was all right; everything was
good-humored and friendly.
The bushes crashed ahead of them. Boys flung themselves wildly from the
pig track and scrabbled in the creepers, screaming. Ralph saw Jack nudged
aside and fall. Then there was a creature bounding along the pig track
toward him, with tusks gleaming and an intimidating grunt. Ralph found he
was able to measure the distance coldly and take aim. With the boar only
five yards away, he flung the foolish wooden stick that he carried, saw it
hit the great snout and hang there for a moment. The boar's note changed to
a squeal and it swerved aside into the covert. The pig-run filled with
shouting boys again, Jack came running back, and poked about in the
undergrowth.
Through here-"
"But he'd do us!"
"Through here, I said-"
The boar was floundering away from them. They found another pig-run
parallel to the first and Jack raced away. Ralph was lull of night and
apprehension and pride.
"I hit him! The spear stuck in-"
Now they came, unexpectedly, to an open space by the sea. Jack cast
about on the bare rock and looked anxious.
"He's gone."
"I hit him," said Ralph again, "and the spear stuck in a bit."
He felt the need of witnesses.
"Didn't you see me?"
Maurice nodded.
"I saw you. Right bang on his snout- Wheee!"
Ralph talked on, excitedly.
"I hit him all right The spear stuck in. I wounded him!"
He sunned himself in their new respect and felt that hunting was good
after all.
"I walloped him properly. That was the beast, I think!" Jack came back.
"That wasn't the beast That was a boar."
"I bit him."
"Why didn't you grab him? I tried-"
Ralph's voice ran up.
"But a boar!"
Jack flushed suddenly.
"You said he'd do us. What did you want to throw for? Why didn't you
wait?"
He held out his arm.
"Look."
He turned his left forearm for them all to see. On the outside was a
rip; not much, but bloody. . "He did mat with his tusks. I couldn't get my
spear down in time."
Attention focused on Jack.
"That's a wound," said Simon, "and you ought to suck it Like
Berengaria."
Jack sucked.
"I hit him," said Ralph indignantly. "I bit him with my spear, I
wounded him."
He tried for their attention.
"He was coming along the path. I threw, like this-"
Robert snarled at him. Ralph entered into the play and everybody
laughed. Presently they were all jabbing at Robert who made mock rushes.
Jack shouted.
"Make a ring!"
The circle moved in and round. Robert squealed in mock terror, then in
real pain.
"Ow! Stop it! You're hurting!"
The butt end of a spear fell on his back as he blundered among them.
"Hold him!"
They got his arms and legs. Ralph, carried away by a sudden thick
excitement, grabbed Eric's spear and jabbed at Robert with it.
"Kill him! Kill him!"
All at once, Robert was screaming and struggling with the strength of
frenzy. Jack had him by the hair and was brandishing his knife. Behind him
was Roger, fighting to get close. The chant rose ritually, as at the last
moment of a dance or a hunt.
"Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!"
Ralph too was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown,
vulnerable flesh. The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.
Jack's arm came down; the heaving circle cheered and made pig-dying
noises. Then they lay quiet, panting, listening to Robert's frightened
snivels. He wiped his face with a dirty arm, and made an effort to retrieve
his status.
"Oh, my bum!"
He rubbed his rump ruefully. Jack rolled over.
"That was a good game."
"Just a game," said Ralph uneasily. "I got jolly badly hurt at rugger
once."
"We ought to have a drum," said Maurice, "then we could do it
properly."
Ralph looked at him.
"How properly?"
"I dunno. You want a fire, I think, and a drum, and you keep time to
the drum."
"You want a pig," said Roger, "Like in a real hunt."
"Or someone to pretend," said Jack. "You could get someone to dress up
as a pig and then he could act-you know, pretend to knock me over and all
that."
"You want a real pig," said Robert, still caressing his rump, "because
you've got to kill him."
"Use a littlun," said Jack, and everybody laughed.
Ralph sat up.
"Well. We shan't find what we're looking for at this rate."
One by one they stood up, twitching rags into place.
Ralph looked at Jack.
"Now for the mountain."
"Shouldn't we go back to Piggy," said Maurice, "before dark?"
The twins nodded like one boy.
"Yes, that's right. Let's go up there in the morning."
Ralph looked out and saw the sea.
"We've got to start the fire again."
"You haven't got Piggy's specs," said Jack, "so you can't."
"Then we'll find out if the mountain's clear."
Maurice spoke, hesitating, not wanting to seem a funk.
"Supposing the beast's up there?"
Jack brandished his spear.
"We`1l kill it."
The sun seemed a little cooler. He slashed with the spear.
"What are we waiting for?"
"I suppose," said Ralph, "if we keep on by the sea this way, well come
out below the burnt bit and then we can climb the mountain."
Once more Jack led them along by the suck and heave of the blinding
sea.
Once more Ralph dreamed, letting his skillful feet deal with the
difficulties of the path. Yet here his feet seemed less skillful than
before. For most of the way they were forced right down to the bare rock by
the water and had to edge along between that and the dark luxuriance of the
forest There were little cliffs to be scaled, some to be used as paths,
lengthy traverses where one used hands as well as feet. Here and there they
could clamber over wave-wet rock, leaping across clear pools that the tide
had left. They came to a gully that split the narrow foreshore like a
defense. This seemed to have no bottom and they peered awe-stricken into the
gloomy crack where water gurgled. Then the wave came back, the gully boiled
before them and spray dashed up to the very creeper so that the boys were
wet and shrieking. They tried the forest but ft was thick and woven like a
bird's nest In the end they had to jump one by one, waiting till the water
sank; and even so, some of them got a second drenching. After that the rocks
seemed to be growing impassable so they sat for a time, letting their rags
dry and watching the clipped outlines of the rollers that moved so slowly
past the island. They found fruit in a haunt of bright little birds that
hovered like insects. Then Ralph said they were going too slowly. He himself
climbed a tree and parted the canopy, and saw the square head of the
mountain seeming still a great way off. Then they tried to hurry along the
rocks and Robert cut his knee quite badly and they had to recognize that
this path must be taken slowly if they were to be safe. So they proceeded
after that as if they were climbing a dangerous mountain, until the rocks
became an uncompromising cliff, overhung with impossible jungle and falling
sheer into the sea.
Ralph looked at the sun critically.
"Early evening. After tea-time, at any rate."
"I don't remember this cliff," said Jack, crestfallen, "so this must be
the bit of the coast I missed."
Ralph nodded.
"Let me think."
By now, Ralph had no self-consciousness in public thinking but would
treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble
was that he would never be a very good chess player. He thought of the
littluns and Piggy. Vividly he imagined Piggy by himself, huddled in a
shelter that was silent except for the sounds of nightmare.
"We can't leave the littluns alone with Piggy. Not all night."
The other boys said nothing but stood round, watching him.
"If we went back we should take hours."
Jack cleared his throat and spoke in a queer, tight voice.
"We mustn't let anything happen to Piggy, must we?"
Ralph tapped his teeth with the dirty point of Eric's spear.
"If we go across-"
He glanced round him.
"Someone's got to go across the island and tell Piggy we'll be back
after dark."
Bill spoke, unbelieving.
"Through the forest by himself? Now?"
"We can't spare more than one."
Simon pushed his way to Ralph's elbow.
"I'll go if you like. I don't mind, honestly."
Before Ralph had time to reply, he smiled quickly, turned and climbed
into the forest
Ralph looked back at Jack, seeing him, infuriatingly, for the first
time.
"Jack-that time you went the whole way to the castle rock."
Jack glowered.
"Yes?"
"You came alone part of this shore-below the mountain, beyond there."
"Yes."
"And then?"
"I found a pig-run. It went for miles."
"So the pig-run must be somewhere in there."
Ralph nodded. He pointed at the forest
Everybody agreed, sagely.
"All right then. We'll smash a way through till we find the pig-run."
He took a step and halted.
"Wait a minute though! Where does the pig-run go to?"
"The mountain," said Jack, "I told you. He sneered. "Don't you want to
go to the mountain?"
Ralph sighed, sensing the rising antagonism, understanding that this
was how Jack felt as soon as he ceased to lead.
"I was thinking of the light. We'll be stumbling about."
"We were going to look for the beast."
"There won't be enough light."
"I don't mind going, said Jack hotly. "Ill go when we get there. Won't
you? Would you rather go back to the shelters and tell Piggy?"
Now it was Ralph's turn to flush but he spoke despairingly, out of the
new understanding that Piggy had given him.
"Why do you hate me?"
The boys stirred uneasily, as though something indecent had been said.
The silence lengthened.
Ralph, still hot and hurt, turned away first.
"Come on."
He led the way and set himself as by right to hack at the tangles. Jack
brought up the rear, displaced and brooding.
The pig-track was a dark tunnel, for the sun was sliding quickly toward
the edge of the world and in the forest shadows were never-far to seek. The
track was broad and beaten and they ran along at a swift trot, Then the roof
of leaves broke up and they halted, breathing quickly, looking at the few
stars that pricked round the head of the mountain.
"There you are."
The boys peered at each other doubtfully. Ralph made a decision.
"We'll go straight across to the platform and climb tomorrow."
They murmured agreement; but Jack was standing by his shoulder.
"If you're frightened of course-"
Ralph turned on him.
"Who went first on the castle rock?"
"I went too. And that was daylight."
"All right. Who wants to climb the mountain now?"
Silence was the only answer.
"Samneric? What about you?"
"We ought to go an' tell Piggy-"
"-yes, tell Piggy that-"
"But Simon went!"
"We ought to tell Piggy-in case-"
"Robert? Bill?"
They were going straight back to the platform now. Not, of course, that
they were afraid-but tired.
Ralph turned back to Jack.
"You see?"
"I'm going up the mountain." The words came from Jack viciously, as
though they were a curse. He looked at Ralph, his thin body tensed, his
spear held as if he threatened him.
"I'm going up the mountain to look for the beast-now." Then the supreme
sting, the casual, bitter, word. "Coming?"
At that word the other boys forgot their urge to be gone and turned
back to sample this fresh rub of two spirits in the dark. The word was too
good, too bitter, too successfully daunting to be repeated. It took Ralph at
low water when his nerve was relaxed for the return to the shelter and the
still, friendly waters of the lagoon.
"I don't mind."
Astonished, he heard his voice come out, cool and casual, so that the
bitterness of Jack's taunt fell powerless.
"If you don't mind, of course."
"Oh, not at all."
Jack took a step.
"Well then-"
Side by side, watched by silent boys, the two started up the mountain.
Ralph stopped.
"We're silly. Why should only two go? If we find anything, two won't be
enough."
There came the sound of boys scuttling away. Astonishingly, a dark
figure moved against the tide.
"Roger?"
"Yes."
"That's three, then."
Once more they set out to climb the slope of the mountain. The darkness
seemed to flow round them like a tide. Jack, who had said nothing, began to
choke and cough, and a gust of wind set all three spluttering. Ralph's eyes
were blinded with tears.
"Ashes. We're on the edge of the burnt patch."
Their footsteps and the occasional breeze were stirring up small devils
of dust. Now that they stopped again, Ralph had time while he coughed to
remember how silly they were. If there was no beast-and almost certainly
there was no beast-in tiiat case, well and good; but if there was something
waiting on top of the mountain-what was the use of three of them,
handicapped by the darkness and carrying only sticks?
"We're being fools."
Out of the darkness came the answer.
"Windy?"
Irritably Ralph shook himself. This was all Jack's fault
" 'Course I am. But we're still being fools."
"If you don't want to go on," said the voice sarcastically,
Ralph heard the mockery and hated Jack. The sting of ashes in his eyes,
tiredness, fear, enraged him. "Go on then! We'll wait here." There was
silence.
"Why don't you go? Are you frightened?"
A stain in the darkness, a stain that was Jack, detached itself and
began to draw away. "All right. So long."
The stain vanished. Another took its place.
Ralph felt his knee against something hard and rocked a charred trunk
that was edgy to the touch. He felt the sharp cinders that had been bark
push against the back of his knee and knew that Roger had sat down. He felt
with his hands and lowered himself beside Roger, while the trunk rocked
among invisible ashes. Roger, uncommunicative by nature, said nothing. He
offered no opinion on the beast nor told Ralph why he had chosen to come on
this mad expedition. He simply sat and rocked the trunk gently. Ralph
noticed a rapid and infuriating tapping noise and realized that Roger was
banging his silly wooden stick against something.
So they sat, the rocking, tapping, impervious Roger and Ralph, fuming;
round them the close sky was loaded with stars, save where the mountain
punched up a hole of blackness.
There was a slithering noise high above them, the sound of someone
taking giant and dangerous strides on rock or ash. Then Jack found them, and
was shivering and croaking in a voice they could just recognize as his.
"I saw a thing on top."
They heard him blunder against the trunk which rocked violently. He lay
silent for a moment, then muttered.
"Keep a good lookout. It may be following."
A shower of ash pattered round them. Jack sat up.
"I saw a thing bulge on the mountain."
"You only imagined it," said Ralph shakily, "because nothing would
bulge. Not any sort of creature."
Roger spoke; they jumped, for they had forgotten him.
"A frog."
Jack giggled and shuddered.
"Some frog. There was a noise too. A kind of 'plop' noise. Then the
thing bulged."
Ralph surprised himself, not so much by the quality of his voice, which
was even, but by the bravado of its intention.
"We'll go and look."
For the first time since he had first known Jack, Ralph could feel him
hesitate.
"Now-?"
His voice spoke for him.
"Of course."
He got off the trunk and led the way across the clinking cinders up
into the dark, and the others followed.
Now that his physical voice was silent the inner voice of reason, and
other voices too, made themselves heard. Piggy was calling him a kid.
Another voice told him not to be a fool; and the darkness and desperate
enterprise gave the night a kind of dentist's chair unreality.
As they came to the last slope, Jack and Roger drew near, changed from
the ink-stains to distinguishable figures. By common consent they stopped
and crouched together. Behind them, on the horizon, was a patch of lighter
sky where in a moment the moon would rise. The wind roared once in the
forest and pushed their rags against them.
Ralph stirred.
"Come on."
They crept forward, Roger lagging a little. Jack and Ralph turned the
shoulder of the mountain together. The glittering lengths of the lagoon lay
below them and beyond that a long white smudge that was the reef. Roger
joined them.
Jack whispered.
"Let's creep forward on hands and knees. Maybe it's asleep."
Roger and Ralph moved on, this time leaving Jack in the rear, for all
his brave words. They came to the fiat top where the rock was hard to hands
and knees. A creature that bulged.
Ralph put his hand in the cold, soft ashes of the fire and smothered a
cry. His hand and shoulder were twitching from the unlooked-for contact.
Green lights of nausea appeared for a moment and ate into the darkness.
Roger lay behind him and Jack's mouth was at his ear.
"Over there, where there used to be a gap in the rock. A sort of
hump-see?"
Ashes blew into Ralph's face from the dead fire. He could not see the
gap or anything else, because the green lights were opening again and
growing, and the top of the mountain was sliding sideways.
Once more, from a distance, he heard Jack's whisper.
"Scared?"
Not scared so much as paralyzed; hung up here immovable on the top of a
diminishing, moving mountain. Jack slid away from him, Roger bumped, fumbled
with a hiss of breath, and passed onwards. He heard them whispering.
"Can you see anything?"
"There-"
In front of them, only three or four yards away, was a rock-like hump
where no rock should be. Ralph could hear a tiny chattering noise coming
from somewhere-perhaps from his own mouth. He bound himself together with
his will, fused his fear and loathing into a hatred, and stood up. He took
two leaden steps forward.
Behind them the sliver of moon had drawn dear of the horizon. Before
them, something like a great ape was sitting asleep with its head between
its knees. Then the wind roared in the forest, there was confusion in the
darkness and the creature lifted its head, holding toward them the ruin of a
face.
Ralph found himself taking giant strides among the ashes, heard other
creatures crying out and leaping and dared the impossible on the dark slope;
presently the mountain was deserted, save for the three abandoned sticks and
the thing that bowed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Gift for the Darkness
Piggy looked up miserably from the dawn-pale beach to the dark
mountain. "Are you sure? Really sure, I mean?"
"I told you a dozen times now," said Ralph, "we saw it."
"D'you think we're safe down here?"
"How the hell should I know?"
Ralph jerked away from him and walked a few paces along the beach. Jack
was kneeling and drawing a circular pattern in the sand with his forefinger.
Piggy's voice came to them, hushed.
"Are you sure? Really?"
"Go up and see," said Jack contemptuously, "and good riddance."
"No fear."
"The beast had teeth," said Ralph, "and big black eyes."
He shuddered violently. Piggy took off his one round of glass and
polished the surface.
"What we going to do?"
Ralph turned toward the platform. The conch glimmered among the trees,
a white blob against the place where the sun would rise. He pushed back his
mop.
"I don't know."
He remembered the panic flight down the mountainside.
"I don't think we'd ever fight a thing that size, honestly, you know.
We'd talk but we wouldn't fight a tiger. We'd hide. Even Jack 'ud hide."
Jack still looked at the sand.
"What about my hunters?"
Simon came stealing out of the shadows by the shelters. Ralph ignored
Jack's question. He pointed to the touch of yellow above the sea.
"As long as there's light we're brave enough. But then? And now that
thing squats by the fire as though it didn't want us to be rescued-"
He was twisting his hands now, unconsciously. His voice rose.
"So we can't have a signal fire. . . . We're beaten."
A point of gold appeared above the sea and at once all the sky
lightened.
"What about my hunters?"
"Boys armed with sticks."
Jack got to his feet. His face was red as he marched away. Piggy put on
his one glass and looked at Ralph.
"Now you done it. You been rude about his hunters."
"Oh shut up!"
The sound of the inexpertly blown conch interrupted them. As though he
were serenading the rising sun, Jack went on blowing till the shelters were
astir and the hunters crept to the platform and the littluns whimpered as
now they so frequently did. Ralph rose obediently, and Piggy, and they went
to the platform.
"Talk," said Ralph bitterly, "talk, talk, talk."
He took the conch from Jack.
"This meeting-"
Jack interrupted him.
"I called it."
"If you hadn't called it I should have. You just blew the conch."
"Well, isn't that calling it?"
"Oh, take it! Go on-talk!"
Ralph thrust the conch into Jack's arms and sat down on the trunk.
"I've called an assembly," said Jack, "because of a lot of things.
First, you know now, we've seen the beast. We crawled up. We were only a few
feet away. The beast sat up and looked at us. I don't know what it does. We
don't even know what it is-"
"The beast comes out of the sea-"
"Out of the dark-"
"Trees-"
"Quiet!" shouted Jack. "You, listen. The beast is sitting up there,
whatever it is--"
"Perhaps it's waiting-"
"Hunting-"
"Yes, hunting."
"Hunting," said Jack. He remembered his age-old tremors in the forest.
"Yes. The beast is a hunter. Only- shut up! The next thing is that we
couldn't kill it. And the next thing is that Ralph said my hunters are no
good."
"I never said that!"
"I've got the conch. Ralph thinks you're cowards, running away from the
boar and the beast. And that's not all."
There was a kind of sigh on the platform as if everyone knew what was
coming. Jack's voice went on, tremulous yet determined, pushing against the
uncooperative silence.
"He's like Piggy. He says things like Piggy. He isn't a proper chief."
Jack clutched the conch to him.
"He's a coward himself."
For a moment he paused and then went on.
"On top, when Roger and me went on-he stayed back."
"I went too!"
"After."
The two boys glared at each other through screens of hair.
"I went on too," said Ralph, "then I ran away. So did you."
"Call me a coward then."
Jack turned to the hunters.
He's not a hunter. He'd never have got us meat He isn't a prefect and
we don't know anything about him. He just gives orders and expects people to
obey for nothing. All this talk-"
"All this talk!" shouted Ralph. "Talk, talk! Who wanted it? Who called
the meeting?"
Jack turned, red in the face, his chin sunk back. He glowered up under
his eyebrows.
"All right then," he said in tones of deep meaning, and menace, all
right."
He held the conch against his chest with one hand and stabbed the air
with his index finger.
"Who thinks Ralph oughtn't to be chief?"
He looked expectantly at the boys ranged round, who had frozen. Under
the palms there was deadly silence.
"Hands up," said Jack strongly, "whoever wants Ralph not to be chief?"
The silence continued, breathless and heavy and full of shame. Slowly
the red drained from Jack's cheeks, then came back with a painful rush. He
licked his lips and turned his head at an angle, so that his gaze avoided
the embarrassment of linking with another's eye.
"How many think-"
His voice tailed off. The hands that held the conch shook. He cleared
his throat, and spoke loudly.
"All right then."
He laid the conch with great care in the grass at his feet. The
humiliating tears were running from the comer of each eye.
"I'm not going to play any longer. Not with you."
Most of the boys were looking down now, at the grass or their feet.
Jack cleared his throat again.
"I'm not going to be part of Ralph's lot-"
He looked along the right-hand logs, numbering the hunters that had
been a choir.
"I'm going off by myself. He can catch his own pigs. Anyone who wants
to hunt when I do can come too."
He blundered out of the triangle toward the drop to the white sand.
"Jack!"
Jack turned and looked back at Ralph. For a moment he paused and then
cried out, high-pitched, enraged.
"No!"
He leapt down from the platform and ran along the beach, paying no heed
to the steady fall of his tears; and until he dived into the forest Ralph
watched him.
Piggy was indignant.
"I been talking, Ralph, and you just stood there like-"
Softly, looking at Piggy and not seeing him, Ralph spoke to himself.
"He'll come back. When the sun goes down he'll come." He looked at the
conch in Piggy's hand.
"What?"
"Well there!"
Piggy gave up the attempt to rebuke Ralph. He polished his glass again
and went back to his subject.
"We can do without Jack Merridew. There's others besides him on this
island. But now we really got a beast, though I can't hardly believe it,
well need to stay close to the platform; there'll be less need of him and
his hunting. So now we can really decide on what's what."
"There's no help, Piggy. Nothing to be done."
For a while they sat in depressed silence. Then Simon stood up and took
the conch from Piggy, who was so astonished that he zremained on his feet.
Ralph looked up at Simon.
"Simon? What is it this time?"
A half-sound of jeering ran round the circle and Simon shrank from it.
"I thought there might be something to do. Something we-"
Again die pressure of the assembly took his voice away. He sought for
help and sympathy and chose Piggy. He turned half toward him, clutching the
conch to his brown chest
"I think we ought to climb the mountain."
The circle shivered with dread. Simon broke off and turned to Piggy who
was looking at him with an expression of derisive incomprehension.
"What's the good of climbing up to this here beast when Ralph and the
other two couldn't do nothing?"
Simon whispered his answer.
"What else is there to do?"
His speech made, he allowed Piggy to lift the conch out of his hands.
Then he retired and sat as far away from the others as possible.
Piggy was speaking now with more assurance and with what, if the
circumstances had- not been so serious, the others would have recognized as
pleasure.
"I said we could all do without a certain person. Now I say we got to
decide on what can be done. And I think I could tell you what Ralph's going
to say next. The most important thing on the island is the smoke and you
can't have no smoke without a fire."
Ralph made a restless movement.
"No go, Piggy. We've got no fire. That thing sits up there-we'll have
to stay here."
Piggy lifted the conch as though to add power to his next words.
"We got no fire on the mountain. But what's wrong with a fire down
here? A fire could be built on them rocks. On the sand, even. We'd make
smoke just the same."
"That's right!"
"Smoke!"
"By the bathing pool!"
The boys began to babble. Only Piggy could have the intellectual daring
to suggest moving the fire from the mountain.
"So well have the fire down here," said Ralph. He looked about him. "We
can build it just here between the bathing pool and the platform. Of
course-"
He broke off, frowning, thinking the thing out, unconsciously tugging
at the stub of a nail with his teeth.
"Of course the smoke won't show so much, not be seen so far away. But
we needn't go near, near the-"
The others nodded in perfect comprehension. There would be no need to
go near.
"We'll build the fire now."
The greatest ideas are the simplest Now there was something to be done
they worked with passion. Piggy was so full of delight and expanding liberty
in Jack's departure, so full of pride in his contribution to the good of
society, that he helped to fetch wood. The wood he fetched was close at
hand, a fallen tree on the platform that they did not need for the assembly,
yet to the others the sanctity of the platform had protected even what was
useless there. Then the twins realized they would have a fire near them as a
comfort in the night and this set a few littluns dancing and clapping hands.
The wood was not so dry as the fuel they had used on the mountain. Much
of it was damply rotten and full of insects that scurried; logs had to be
lined from the soil with care or they crumbled into sodden powder. More than
this, in order to avoid going deep into the forest the boys worked near at
hand on any fallen wood no matter how tangled with new growth. The skirts of
the forest and the scar were familiar, near the conch and the shelters and
sufficiently friendly in daylight. What they might become in darkness nobody
cared to think. They worked therefore with great energy and cheerfulness,
though as time crept by there was a suggestion of panic in the energy and
hysteria in the cheerfulness. They built a pyramid of leaves and twigs,
branches and togs, on the bare sand by the platform. For the first time on
the island, Piggy himself removed his one glass, knelt down and focused the
sun on tinder. Soon there was a ceiling of smoke and a bush of yellow flame.
The littluns who had seen few fires since the first catastrophe became
wildly excited. They danced and sang and there was a partyish air about the
gathering.
At last Ralph stopped work and stood up, smudging the sweat from his
face with a dirty forearm.
"We'll have to have a small fire. This one's too big to keep up."
Piggy sat down carefully on the sand and began to polish his glass.
"We could experiment. We could find out how to make a small hot fire
and then put green branches on to make smoke. Some of them leaves must be
better for that than the others."
As the fire died down so did the excitement The littluns stopped
singing and dancing and drifted away toward the sea or the fruit trees or
the shelters.
Ralph flopped down in the sand.
"We'll have to make a new list of who's to took after the fire."
"If you can find 'em."
He looked round. Then for the first time he saw how few biguns there
were and understood why the work had been so hard.
"Where's Maurice?"
Piggy wiped his glass again.
"I expect ... no, he wouldn't go into the forest by himself, would he?"
Ralph jumped up, ran swiftly round the fire- and stood by Piggy,
holding up his hair.
"But we've got to have a list! There's you and me and Samneric and-"
He would not look at Piggy but spoke casually.
"Where's Bill and Roger?"
Piggy leaned forward and put a fragment of wood on the fire.
"I expect they've gone. I expect they won't play either."
Ralph sat down and began to poke little holes in the sand. He was
surprised to see that one had a drop of blood by it He examined his bitten
nail closely and watched the little globe of blood that gathered where the
quick was gnawed away.
Piggy went on speaking.
"I seen them stealing off when we was gathering wood. They went that
way. The same way as he went himself."
Ralph finished his inspection and looked up into the air. The sky, as
if in sympathy with the great changes among them, was different today and so
misty that in some places the hot air seemed white. The disc of the sun was
dull silver as though it were nearer and not so hot, yet the air stifled.
"They always been making trouble, haven't they?"
The voice came near his shoulder and sounded anxious.
"We can do without 'em. We'll be happier now, won't we?"
Ralph sat. The twins came, dragging a great log and grinning in their
triumph. They dumped the log among the embers so that sparks flew.
"We can do all right on our own, can't we?"
For a long time while the log dried, caught fire and turned red hot,
Ralph sat in the sand and said nothing. He did not see Piggy go to the twins
and whisper with them, nor how the three boys went together into the forest.
"Here you are."
He came to himself with a jolt. Piggy and the other two were by him.
They were laden with fruit
"I thought perhaps," said Piggy, "we ought to have a feast, kind of."
The three boys sat down. They had a great mass of the fruit with them
and all of it properly ripe. They grinned at Ralph as he took some and began
to eat.
'Thanks," he said. Then with an accent of pleased surprise-"Thanks!"
"Do all right on our own," said Piggy. "It's them that haven't no
common sense that make trouble on this island. We'll make a little hot
fire-"
Ralph remembered what had been worrying him.
"Where's Simon?"
"I don't know."
"You don't think he's climbing the mountain?"
Piggy broke into noisy laughter and took more fruit.
"He might be." He gulped his mouthful. "He's cracked."
Simon had passed through the area of fruit trees but today the littluns
had been too busy with the fire on the beach and they had not pursued him
there. He went on among the creepers until he reached the great mat that was
woven by the open space and crawled inside. Beyond the screen of leaves the
sunlight pelted down and the butterflies danced in the middle their unending
dance. He knelt down and the arrow of the sun fell on him. That other time
the air had seemed to vibrate with heat; but now it threatened. Soon the
sweat was running from his long coarse hair. He shifted restlessly but there
was no avoiding the sun. Presently he was thirsty, and then very thirsty.
He continued to sit
Far off alone the beach, Jack was standing before a small group of
boys. He was looking brilliantly happy.
"Hunting," he said. He sized them up. Each of them wore the remains of
a black cap and ages ago they had stood in two demure rows and their voices
had been the song of angels.
"We'll hunt. I'm going to be chief."
They nodded, and the crisis passed easily.
"And then-about the beast."
They moved, looked at the forest.
"I say this. We aren't going to bother about the beast."
He nodded at them.
"We're going to forget the beast."
"That's right!"
"Yes!"
"Forget the beast!"
If Jack was astonished by their fervor he did not show it.
"And another thing. We shan't dream so much down here. This is near the
end of the island."
They agreed passionately out of the depths of their tormented private
lives.
"Now listen. We might go later to the castle rock. But now I'm going to
get more of the biguns away from the conch and all that We'll kill a pig and
give a feast." He paused and went on more slowly. "And about the beast When
we kill we'll leave some of the kill for it. Then it won't bother us,
maybe."
He stood up abruptly.
"We'll go into the forest now and hunt."
He turned and trotted away and after a moment they followed him
obediently.
They spread out, nervously, in the forest. Almost at once Jack found
the dung and scattered roots that told of pig and soon the track was fresh.
Jack signaled the rest of the hunt to be quiet and went forward by himself.
He was happy and wore the damp darkness of the forest like his old clothes.
He crept down a slope to rocks and scattered trees by the sea.
The pigs lay, bloated bags of fat, sensuously enjoying the shadows
under the trees. There was no wind and they were unsuspicious; and practice
had made Jack silent as the shadows. He stole away again and instructed his
hidden hunters. Presently they all began to inch forward sweating in the
silence and heat. Under the trees an ear flapped idly. A little apart from
the rest, sunk in deep maternal bliss, lay the largest sow of the lot. She
was black and pink; and the great bladder of her belly was fringed with a
row of piglets that slept or burrowed and squeaked.
Fifteen yards from the drove Jack stopped, and his arm, straightening,
pointed at the sow. he looked round in inquiry to make sure that everyone
understood and the other boys nodded at him. The row of right arms slid
back.
"Now!"
The drove of pigs started up; and at a range of only ten yards the
wooden spears with fire-hardened points flew toward the chosen pig. One
piglet, with a demented shriek, rushed into the sea trailing Roger's spear
behind it. The sow gave a gasping squeal and staggered up, with two spears
sticking in her fat flank. The boys shouted and rushed forward, the piglets
scattered and the sow burst the advancing line and went crashing away
through the forest.
"After her!"
They raced along the pig-track, but the forest was too dark and tangled
so that Jack, cursing, stopped them and cast among the trees. Then he said
nothing for a time but breathed fiercely so that they were awed by him and
looked at each other in uneasy admiration. Presently he stabbed down at the
ground with his finger.
"There-"
Before the others could examine the drop of blood, Jack had swerved
off, judging a trace, .touching a bough that gave. So he followed,
mysteriously right and assured, and the hunters trod behind him.
He stopped before a covert.
"In there."
They surrounded the covert but the sow got away with the sting of
another spear in her flank. The trailing butts hindered her and the sharp,
cross-cut points were a torment She blundered into a tree, forcing a spear
still deeper; and after that any of the hunters could follow her easily by
the drops of vivid blood. The afternoon wore on, hazy and dreadful with damp
heat; the sow staggered her way ahead of them, bleeding and mad, and the
hunters followed, wedded to her in lust, excited by the long chase and the
dropped blood. They could see her now, nearly got up with her, out she