Lord of the Flies (12 page)

           
"Have some sense. What can Piggy do with only one eye?"

           
The rest of the boys were looking from Jack to Ralph, curiously.

           
"And another thing. You can't have an ordinary hunt because the beast doesn't leave tracks. If it did you'd have seen them. For all we know, the beast may swing through the trees like what's its name."

           
They nodded.

           
"So we've got to think."

           
Piggy took off his damaged glasses and cleaned the remaining lens.

           
"How about us, Ralph?"

           
"You haven't got the conch. Here."

           
"I mean--how about us? Suppose the beast comes when you're all away. I can't see proper, and if I get scared--"

           
Jack broke in, contemptuously.

           
"You're always scared."

           
"I got the conch--"

           
"Conch! Conch!" shouted Jack. "We don't need the conch any more. We know who ought to say things. What good did Simon do speaking, or Bill, or Walter? It's time some people knew they've got to keep quiet and leave deciding things to the rest of us."

           
Ralph could no longer ignore his speech. The blood was hot in his cheeks.

           
"You haven't got the conch," he said. "Sit down."

           
Jack's face went so white that the freckles showed as clear, brown flecks. He licked his lips and remained standing.

           
"This is a hunter's job."

           
The rest of the boys watched intently. Piggy, finding himself uncomfortably embroiled, slid the conch to Ralph's knees and sat down. The silence grew oppressive and Piggy held his breath.

           
"This is more than a hunter's job," said Ralph at last, "because you can't track the beast. And don't you want to be rescued?"

           
He turned to the assembly.

           
"Don't you all want to be rescued?"

           
He looked back at Jack.

           
"I said before, the fire is the main thing. Now the fire must be out--"

           
The old exasperation saved him and gave him the energy to attack.

           
"Hasn't anyone got any sense? We've got to relight that fire. You never thought of that, Jack, did you? Or don't any of you want to be rescued?"

           
Yes, they wanted to be rescued, there was no doubt about that; and with a violent swing to Ralph's side, the crisis passed. Piggy let out his breath with a gasp, reached for it again and failed. He lay against a log, his mouth gaping, blue shadows creeping round his lips. Nobody minded him.

           
"Now think, Jack. Is there anywhere on the island you haven't been?"

           
Unwillingly Jack answered.

           
"There's only--but of course! You remember? The tail-end part, where the rocks are all piled up. I've been near there. The rock makes a sort of bridge. There's only one way up."

           
"And the thing might live there."

           
All the assembly talked at once.

           
"Quite! All right. That's where we'll look. If the beast isn't there we'll go up the mountain and look; and light the fire."

           
"Let's go."

           
"We'll eat first. Then go." Ralph paused. "We'd better take spears."

           
After they had eaten, Ralph and the biguns set out along the beach. They left Piggy propped up on the platform. This day promised, like the others, to be a sunbath under a blue dome. The beach stretched away before them in a gentle curve till perspective drew it into one with the forest; for the day was not advanced enough to be obscured by the shifting veils of mirage. Under Ralph's direction, they picked up a careful way along the palm terrace, rather than dare the hot sand down by the water. He let Jack lead the way; and Jack trod with theatrical caution though they could have seen an enemy twenty yards away. Ralph walked in the rear, thankful to have escaped responsibility for a time.

           
Simon, walking in front of Ralph, felt a flicker of incredulity--a beast with claws that scratched, that sat on a mountain-top, that left no tracks and yet was not fast enough to catch Samneric. However Simon thought of the beast, there rose before his inward sight the picture of a human at once heroic and sick.

           
He sighed. Other people could stand up and speak to an assembly, apparently, without that dreadful feeling of the pressure of personality; could say what they would as though they were speaking to only one person. He stepped aside and looked back. Ralph was coming along, holding his spear over his shoulder. Diffidently, Simon allowed his pace to slacken until he was walking side by side with Ralph and looking up at him through the coarse black hair that now fell to his eyes. Ralph glanced sideways, smiled constrainedly as though he had forgotten that Simon had made a fool of himself, then looked away again at nothing. For a moment or two Simon was happy to be accepted and then he ceased to think about himself. When he bashed into a tree Ralph looked sideways impatiently and Robert sniggered. Simon reeled and a white spot on his forehead turned red and trickled. Ralph dismissed Simon and returned to his personal hell. They would reach the castle some time; and the chief would have to go forward.

           
Jack came trotting back. "We're in sight now."

           
"All right. We'll get as close as we can."

           
He followed Jack toward the castle where the ground rose slightly. On their left was an impenetrable tangle of creepers and trees.

           
"Why couldn't there be something in that?"

           
"Because you can see. Nothing goes in or out."

           
"What about the castle then?"

           
"Look."

           
Ralph parted the screen of grass and looked out. There were only a few more yards of stony ground and then the two sides of the island came almost together so that one expected a peak of headland. But instead of this a narrow ledge of rock, a few yards wide and perhaps fifteen long, continued the island out into the sea. There lay another of those pieces of pink squareness that underlay the structure of the island. This side of the castle, perhaps a hundred feet high, was the pink bastion they had seen from the mountain-top. The rock of the cliff was split and the top littered with great lumps that seemed to totter.

           
Behind Ralph the tall grass had filled with silent hunters. Ralph looked at Jack.

           
"You're a hunter."

           
Jack went red.

           
"I know. All right."

           
Something deep in Ralph spoke for him.

           
"I'm chief. I'll go. Don't argue."

           
He turned to the others.

           
"You. Hide here. Wait for me."

           
He found his voice tended either to disappear or to come out too loud. He looked at Jack.

           
"Do you--think?"

           
Jack muttered.

           
"I've been all over. It must be here."

           
"I see."

           
Simon mumbled confusedly: "I don't believe in the beast."

           
Ralph answered him politely, as if agreeing about the weather.

           
"No. I suppose not."

           
His mouth was tight and pale. He put back his hair very slowly.

           
"Well. So long."

           
He forced his feet to move until they had carried him out on to the neck of land.

           
He was surrounded on all sides by chasms of empty air. There was nowhere to hide, even if one did not have to go on. He paused on the narrow neck and looked down. Soon, in a matter of centuries, the sea would make an island of the castle. On the right hand was the lagoon, troubled by the open sea; and on the left-- Ralph shuddered. The lagoon had protected them from the Pacific: and for some reason only Jack had gone right down to the water on the other side. Now he saw the landsman's view of the swell and it seemed like the breathing of some stupendous creature. Slowly the waters sank among the rocks, revealing pink tables of granite, strange growths of coral, polyp, and weed. Down, down, the waters went, whispering like the wind among the heads of the forest. There was one flat rock there, spread like a table, and the waters sucking down on the four weedy sides made them seem like cliffs. Then the sleeping leviathan breathed out, the waters rose, the weed streamed, and the water boiled over the table rock with a roar. There was no sense of the passage of waves; only this minute-long fall and rise and fall.

           
Ralph turned away to the red cliff. They were waiting behind him in the long grass, waiting to see what he would do. He noticed that the sweat in his palm was cool now; realized with surprise that he did not really expect to meet any beast and didn't know what he would do about it if he did.

           
He saw that he could climb the cliff but this was not necessary. The squareness of the rock allowed a sort of plinth round it, so that to the right, over the lagoon, one could inch along a ledge and turn the corner out of sight. It was easy going, and soon he was peering round the rock.

           
Nothing but what you might expect: pink, tumbled boulders with guano layered on them like icing; and a steep slope up to the shattered rocks that crowned the bastion.

           
A sound behind him made him turn. Jack was edging along the ledge.

           
"Couldn't let you do it on your own."

           
Ralph said nothing. He led the way over the rocks, inspected a sort of half-cave that held nothing more terrible than a clutch of rotten eggs, and at last sat down, looking round him and tapping the rock with the butt of his spear.

           
Jack was excited.

           
"What a place for a fort!"

           
A column of spray wetted them.

           
"No fresh water."

           
"What's that then?"

           
There was indeed a long green smudge half-way up the rock. They climbed up and tasted the trickle of water.

           
"You could keep a coconut shell there, filling all the time."

           
"Not me. This is a rotten place."

           
Side by side they scaled the last height to where the diminishing pile was crowned by the last broken rock. Jack struck the near one with his fist and it grated slightly.

           
"Do you remember--?"

           
Consciousness of the bad times in between came to them both. Jack talked quickly.

           
"Shove a palm trunk under that and if an enemy came-- look!"

           
A hundred feet below them was the narrow causeway, then the stony ground, then the grass dotted with heads, and behind that the forest.

           
"One heave," cried Jack, exulting, "and--wheee--!"

           
He made a sweeping movement with his hand. Ralph looked toward the mountain.

           
"What's the matter?"

           
Ralph turned.

           
"Why?"

           
"You were looking--I don't know why."

           
"There's no signal now. Nothing to show."

           
"You're nuts on the signal."

           
The taut blue horizon encircled them, broken only by the mountain-top.

           
"That's all we've got."

           
He leaned his spear against the rocking stone and pushed back two handfuls of hair.

           
"We'll have to go back and climb the mountain. That's where they saw the beast."

           
"The beast won't be there."

           
"What else can we do?"

           
The others, waiting in the grass, saw Jack and Ralph unharmed and broke cover into the sunlight. They forgot the beast in the excitement of exploration. They swarmed across the bridge and soon were climbing and shouting. Ralph stood now, one hand against an enormous red block, a block large as a mill wheel that had been split off and hung, tottering. Somberly he watched the mountain. He clenched his fist and beat hammer-wise on the red wall at his right. His lips were tightly compressed and his eyes yearned beneath the fringe of hair.

           
"Smoke."

           
He sucked his bruised fist.

           
"Jack! Come on."

           
But Jack was not there. A knot of boys, making a great noise that he had not noticed, were heaving and pushing at a rock. As he turned, the base cracked and the whole mass toppled into the sea so that a thunderous plume of spray leapt half-way up the cliff.